True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 513: Corollary in Caracas
Aired: 2026-01-08
Duration: 02:23:34


=== The Most Powerful Combination (03:42) ===

[00:00:00]  No other country on planet Earth, and it's not even close, could pull this kind of operation off.
[00:00:06]  And no other president has ever shown this kind of leadership, courage, and resolve.
[00:00:12]  The most powerful combination the world has ever seen.
[00:00:17]  As the president said, our adversaries remain on notice.
[00:00:20]  America can project our will anywhere, anytime.
[00:00:25]  The coordination, the stealth, the lethality, the precision, the very long arm of American justice all on full display in the middle of the night.
[00:00:35]  Nicholas Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance.
[00:00:41]  Until they didn't and until he didn't, he effed around and he found out.
[00:01:08]  Ladies and gentlemen, 2026, Truanon has returned.
[00:01:14]  Hello.
[00:01:16]  It's so nice to be back.
[00:01:18]  My name, of course, is Brace the Sublime Gentleman.
[00:01:22]  We have with us, and by us, I mean me.
[00:01:25]  We have, what's your fucking name?
[00:01:27]  My name's Liz.
[00:01:28]  Hello.
[00:01:29]  And of course, we have producer Young Chomsky.
[00:01:32]  And this is Truanan.
[00:01:33]  Hello.
[00:01:35]  Wow.
[00:01:36]  Wow, wow, wow.
[00:01:39]  2025 come and gone, barely a blip.
[00:01:44]  And 2026 has already proven to be quite the year.
[00:01:48]  You know, we've said that every time we go on vacation, something happens.
[00:01:52]  Obviously, your two-month trip to the Caribbean in September of 2001 was the cause of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States of America.
[00:02:03]  Obviously, our several stint taking a break, several year stint taking a break from this podcast to work on gain of function research in Wuhan, China, of course, coincided with the wet market fiasco there.
[00:02:15]  Short-sighted on our part.
[00:02:17]  Sorry about that.
[00:02:17]  Yes, true, because we weren't wearing our glasses out of deference to the Chinese.
[00:02:22]  And you don't need to make a face at me about that.
[00:02:25]  The Chinese listening to this will know what I'm talking about.
[00:02:28]  I think everyone knows what you're talking about.
[00:02:30]  I don't know what I actually meant by that.
[00:02:32]  I just sometimes just keep speaking.
[00:02:35]  And of course, are going on Christmas break so that, of course, Liz could go on birthright to Israel this year as led to the U.S. capture.
[00:02:51]  No, I cannot imagine.
[00:02:53]  I think of all people.
[00:02:54]  I've never been to Israel, obviously.
[00:02:56]  Young Chomsky, you've never been to Israel.
[00:02:58]  I've been to Israel.
[00:02:59]  You have?
[00:03:00]  What?
[00:03:00]  Yeah.
[00:03:01]  Oh, you have been to Israel.
[00:03:02]  I didn't go on birthright.
[00:03:04]  But you went just.
[00:03:05]  I went with my family when I was like a young lad.
[00:03:08]  I didn't like it.
[00:03:09]  Yeah.
[00:03:09]  I didn't know why I didn't like it.
[00:03:10]  I didn't have like politics, but I was just like, I don't want to be here.
[00:03:13]  These people are, I know.
[00:03:14]  I also, I had like a, I had an intense dislike for Israel.
[00:03:17]  It was prior to even knowing what really Israel was.
[00:03:22]  But Liz, I can think of a few people, I guess, that aren't Palestinian less suited to go to Israel than you, because you have quite a low tolerance for, I think, many aspects.
[00:03:33]  No, no, I'm not talking about, no, you have a high tolerance for Jews.
[00:03:37]  It's not tolerance, it's love.
[00:03:39]  Well, you claim often that you have a high tolerance for Jews.

=== Noise in the Streets (02:25) ===

[00:03:43]  We say that loudly and frequently.
[00:03:44]  But I think you have a low tolerance for like techno music, for like bang bang.
[00:03:49]  We go boom, boom, crazy.
[00:03:51]  Probably a lot of honking.
[00:03:52]  I can see you not liking that.
[00:03:54]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:55]  The noise in the streets would really get to me.
[00:03:56]  The noise in the streets.
[00:03:58]  I think you don't like mushy food, and I feel like there's quite a lot of music.
[00:04:01]  I don't like people who harass and grab women on the streets.
[00:04:08]  What?
[00:04:10]  Yeah, me either.
[00:04:11]  That shit sucks.
[00:04:13]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:04:14]  And so I think that I feel like you would have a bad time there.
[00:04:16]  But yet it is so crazy that you went because that vacation that you took so recently did lead to quite a few things happening.
[00:04:24]  And we were supposed to do an episode on the Epstein Files.
[00:04:27]  We were.
[00:04:27]  We're still doing that.
[00:04:28]  But that's what we had planned to do as the big episode for when we came back.
[00:04:34]  And then lo and behold, something bigger happened.
[00:04:37]  So after months of bombing boats in the Caribbean, Caribbean, however you want to pronounce it, that is your own prerogative or prerogative, however you want to pronounce that.
[00:04:47]  And just after bombing a dock on mainland Venezuela, inching closer to bombing the Venezuelan army or whatever, the government itself.
[00:04:58]  And right after pardoning convicted cocaine trafficker in Honduran head of state, or former Honduran head of state, Juan Orlando Hernandez, Trump has sent a bunch of Delta Force fentanyl addicts into Venezuela to arrest and kidnap the head of the government there, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife Celia and bring them to New York City on trafficking charges.
[00:05:25]  Can we pause for one second, even though there's obviously a lot of stuff to go through?
[00:05:30]  The you mentioned Hernandez pardoning.
[00:05:35]  It is absolutely insane that now Maduro is being tried for basically the same charges that Juan Orlando Hernandez was charged, convicted for, and then pardoned for.
[00:05:51]  And now Maduro is there in his spot receiving like the exact same kind of big trial.
[00:05:56]  Well, it's what's interesting as well is that Juan Orlando Hernandez's brother was also arrested on cocaine trafficking charges and also imprisoned in the United States, but he's still in prison.

=== Cyber Lies Unveiled (08:02) ===

[00:06:08]  Yeah.
[00:06:09]  And so is the Trump administration saying that, oh, Juan had nothing to do with this.
[00:06:14]  It's his brother that they didn't pay enough.
[00:06:17]  They didn't pay enough for the two.
[00:06:19]  They must not have.
[00:06:20]  But yeah, it is, it is really something.
[00:06:23]  I believe the same jurisdiction too in Southern District of New York.
[00:06:26]  So it seems like, and I'm sure that everybody's seen the pictures by now, that Trump was hanging down at Mar-a-Lago with his crew.
[00:06:34]  There were pictures of him and Marco Rubio eating dinner together and Trump DJing on iPad.
[00:06:41]  No Vance.
[00:06:42]  No.
[00:06:43]  Vance was busy protecting his wife from a where's Nancy situation.
[00:06:51]  So not to interrupt.
[00:06:52]  I didn't laugh at that, but it's just because I always think of the Kool-Aid man.
[00:06:57]  Well, of course, where's Nancy is the brutal hammer beating of Nancy Pelosi's drunken husband, Paul Pelosi, by a crazed freak here in San Francisco that has unfortunately, and actually I feel kind of bad saying this, I believe last Paul Pelosi in a year brain dead state.
[00:07:20]  And it appears that a sort of moonfaced gentleman did bust out the windows of Vance's home in, where was it?
[00:07:30]  It's like in Cincinnati or something.
[00:07:32]  It was like in a place where I was like, was he there?
[00:07:34]  No, he said he wasn't there.
[00:07:36]  He's like, I took in Washington, D.C.
[00:07:39]  No, he and Usha were having sex on the PJ, is what he tweeted out.
[00:07:43]  No, I think he was in D.C.
[00:07:45]  I don't know about the window smasher.
[00:07:48]  I've just seen the mug shot.
[00:07:50]  Of course, like every single person who does something, Trump World is like, as transgender.
[00:07:58]  But I think that might just be like what they say on Twitter, kind of about everybody who does everything.
[00:08:03]  But I'd like to hear, I'd like to hear his side of the story.
[00:08:07]  I'll share that.
[00:08:09]  But Mar-a-Lago, I mean, what a night.
[00:08:11]  You've got Rubio there.
[00:08:13]  You've got Trump there.
[00:08:14]  You're probably hearing YMCA 10,000 times with a little bit of Celine Dion mixed in.
[00:08:23]  Can you imagine how awesome it must feel to be looking over Trump's shoulder as his fucking piggy little finger, you see him scrolling on the hand that's got all the foundation on it?
[00:08:34]  Yeah.
[00:08:34]  Like that foundation's getting kind of smeared on the screen.
[00:08:37]  Yes.
[00:08:37]  Yeah.
[00:08:38]  It's all smudged.
[00:08:39]  It's just a little big greasy.
[00:08:40]  You just hear, you just see him smash Celine Dehan, put it on.
[00:08:45]  She's got some bangers, though.
[00:08:47]  Classical.
[00:08:48]  Yeah, I'll have to look into that.
[00:08:51]  Apparently the decision.
[00:08:52]  So this is, there's a lot of lies that are going around right now.
[00:08:56]  And I think this is sort of the first lie of the evening.
[00:09:01]  Apparently, they say the U.S. and Trump and everyone says the decision was made to strike around 1046 U.S. time.
[00:09:10]  I doubt this is the case.
[00:09:11]  Maybe they mean like final go-ahead.
[00:09:16]  Like that's what they mean when they say that.
[00:09:18]  But obviously everything was in position and had been like planned ahead of time.
[00:09:23]  Yeah.
[00:09:24]  They said like, oh, the weather, the weather was, was just right for us to send them in.
[00:09:29]  Yeah.
[00:09:29]  I mean, I do wonder, did you see?
[00:09:32]  I'm getting ahead of myself, but did you see, I can't remember if it was today or yesterday that Trump was on, he was on some news program.
[00:09:39]  He's been, you know, doing the rounds, calling in.
[00:09:44]  He loves a call-in show, which I appreciate.
[00:09:47]  But he was like, he was like boasting that it was like a bunch of cyber attacks that they used.
[00:09:52]  They use like these electro weapons to like paralyze their web, the Venezuelan weapon systems or whatever.
[00:09:59]  Yeah.
[00:10:00]  Which might be, you know, also, let's say, second lie of the evening right now that we're recording.
[00:10:10]  Because probably more likely is that it was like one of those blackout bombs.
[00:10:15]  You know, they use those in Iraq and Serbia where they're just like cluster munitions basically that hit electrical grids.
[00:10:22]  Yeah.
[00:10:23]  Yeah.
[00:10:23]  Rather than some like crazy cyber thing.
[00:10:26]  Well, alternately, like, you know how there's like sometimes attacks on the cyber on the grid here or whatever.
[00:10:32]  They're like the Chinese have hacked into, you know, you know, the grid in Mississippi.
[00:10:37]  Yeah, the mainframe.
[00:10:38]  I'm like, well, maybe it's the U.S. doing that and like testing shit out.
[00:10:42]  Well, it could be, I mean, NATO has that huge operational priorities given to all of this like cyber weapons stuff.
[00:10:49]  Yeah.
[00:10:49]  So it could be, but I just would be surprised if they use some sort of crazy electro thing.
[00:10:54]  I'm going to be real.
[00:10:55]  You could probably just like, I didn't, no disrespect to the Venezuelans when I say this.
[00:11:01]  You could probably just like hit some shit with a hammer a few times.
[00:11:05]  Well, no, but I just mean, I think it would have been a bigger story because there weren't like these like widespread, massive.
[00:11:11]  And there's kind of like rolling blackouts that are always happening.
[00:11:14]  But like that.
[00:11:15]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:15]  I think there was, there was a blackout for a couple days in some places, but like near, near certain places, but not the whole city.
[00:11:22]  And not the kind of like full communication.
[00:11:24]  But anyway.
[00:11:25]  Regardless, on they're like, all right, 1046 missions ago.
[00:11:31]  That happened.
[00:11:32]  That was 1046 on January 2nd.
[00:11:34]  January 3rd, of course, is when the operation actually took place.
[00:11:39]  And the reason I'm saying that it is fucking full lie when they claim that it was just happened to be that night.
[00:11:46]  It was just the stars align because it's the same day that the U.S. and by the U.S., I mean Donald Trump and commandos from the state of Israel.
[00:11:54]  Guess that makes it sound like Donald Trump was there with the commandos.
[00:11:57]  But Donald Trump assassins sent by Donald Trump and the state of Israel killed Iranian general Qasim Soleimani in Iraq.
[00:12:06]  And also, it's the anniversary of the day that the U.S. arrested Manuel Noriega in Panama.
[00:12:12]  Not the day that we invaded Panama, but the day that Noriega was actually arrested.
[00:12:16]  It's also the day that the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba back in the 1950s, I think, or maybe early 60s.
[00:12:23]  And the day that Bitcoin, I think, did its first little equation on the blockchain, whatever that means.
[00:12:28]  Hey, put all this together and you're seeing the MAGA, the MAGA image for 2026.
[00:12:36]  To be clear, I'm not a big numerology guy, but that is true.
[00:12:39]  I think that's it.
[00:12:39]  Yeah, you're more into angel numbers.
[00:12:41]  I'm into, I know, I like devil numbers.
[00:12:44]  Devil numbers.
[00:12:47]  But I guess there's a famous devil number, but I don't fuck with that.
[00:12:51]  I mean, I'm scared.
[00:12:52]  You mean the mark of the beast?
[00:12:53]  The mark of the beast.
[00:12:54]  Yeah, sure.
[00:12:54]  But when people are like, well, it's this date, it's this date.
[00:12:57]  Well, there's not that many dates.
[00:12:59]  There's only 365 of them.
[00:13:01]  And few things happen on Christmas.
[00:13:03]  Definitely rarely do things happen on Halloween because it's so scary.
[00:13:06]  And so you've got like 363 days of the year that people actually do things on.
[00:13:11]  And so it's like, you know, sometimes that happens.
[00:13:15]  Sometimes things line up.
[00:13:16]  Sometimes things line up.
[00:13:18]  And I mean, I love everybody in the world.
[00:13:21]  That is something that a woman would say.
[00:13:23]  And I don't think that's a bad thing.
[00:13:25]  I don't think that's a bad thing.
[00:13:26]  But it's also true.
[00:13:27]  Sometimes things do line up.
[00:13:29]  That's true.
[00:13:30]  I'm not saying that it's not even true.
[00:13:32]  I'm just saying that that is more likely, but it's, we can move on.
[00:13:38]  The New York Times and Washington Post, as reported by some of, knew that the attack was going to happen before it did, and then did this coy little thing of like, it's crazy.
[00:13:51]  Explosions seen in Caracas.
[00:13:53]  Yeah.
[00:13:54]  Like as the, as it was happening.
[00:13:57]  As it was happening.
[00:13:58]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:59]  This was apparently a joint operation between CIA law enforcement, they're saying whatever the fuck that means and every branch of the military.

=== Joint Operation Mystery (11:46) ===

[00:14:11]  I don't know if Space Force is involved, but we don't really know what they do, do we?
[00:14:14]  And not that it's like secret, but we just don't really care that much.
[00:14:18]  Because it's a goof one.
[00:14:19]  That's a fake, it's a fake Air Force.
[00:14:21]  You know, it's less, it's as we go through the years, it's getting less and less fake.
[00:14:25]  I think I agree with that.
[00:14:26]  I agree.
[00:14:27]  And they, but they just, they were a little too sci-fi at first and it made me be like, all right, this is a corner.
[00:14:31]  Because space weapons are the future.
[00:14:34]  That's facts.
[00:14:35]  However, I'm like, who's in the Space Force?
[00:14:39]  Liz Din LaRouche.
[00:14:43]  No, but I'm like, who are we putting in the Space Force?
[00:14:45]  Because if this is like a DHS situation, then I can't take Space Force seriously.
[00:14:48]  Seriously, I don't think that they can do that.
[00:14:50]  I don't think that they can.
[00:14:52]  I agree, but I also am like, they really are taking anybody they can for all the other stuff.
[00:14:58]  And it's not like you've got a ton of astronauts out there looking for work.
[00:15:01]  Yeah.
[00:15:02]  Yeah.
[00:15:03]  So this was Operation Absolute Resolve, which I got to say sounds a lot like Operation Inherent Resolve.
[00:15:10]  Absolute Resolve is terrible.
[00:15:12]  Yeah.
[00:15:13]  Well, I think they just.
[00:15:14]  I don't know who names these things.
[00:15:17]  My favorite was, what was the, what was Iraq?
[00:15:19]  Was it Iraq that was just cause?
[00:15:22]  But it also could be read as like, just cause.
[00:15:25]  Yeah.
[00:15:26]  And that was OIF, Operation Iraqi Friday.
[00:15:28]  Oh, yeah, wait, maybe it was Gulf War.
[00:15:30]  I can't remember.
[00:15:31]  It was like one of the, it was like something in the, in there, one of the adjacent operations, but Operation Just Cause.
[00:15:38]  But they used, they used a shit ton of airplanes and drones.
[00:15:45]  Yes.
[00:15:45]  So many, over 150 military aircrafts, which is like an absurd amount.
[00:15:50]  F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, B-1s, an E-18, like a bunch of helicopters.
[00:15:56]  There's a video of the helicopters kind of just like chilling, hanging out there.
[00:16:02]  They always look like little dragonflies.
[00:16:05]  It was just like a really absurd show of force that is clearly meant to be, you know, a bit of a projection for audiences at home and to people in Venezuela, obviously.
[00:16:20]  But certainly for all of the streamers watching at home.
[00:16:24]  You know, it's interesting.
[00:16:27]  There are videos of helicopters hovered at fairly low altitudes in parts of Caracas that, you know, cell phone videos.
[00:16:40]  You know, I'm, I'm of a, I don't know what the Venezuelan military's state looks like right now.
[00:16:47]  You know, obviously I can glean something from news articles, but, you know, you're not really getting a full picture there.
[00:16:54]  It doesn't look like there was a lot of fighting back.
[00:16:57]  At least that has been released on video.
[00:17:00]  There's certainly videos of helicopters blowing stuff up.
[00:17:04]  And in some, there looks like some return fire or some fire on the helicopters.
[00:17:09]  But very little.
[00:17:11]  Certainly not like from, I mean, we do know that Venezuela has like thousands and thousands of man pads that could have taken out those helicopters.
[00:17:21]  Yes.
[00:17:22]  And not to be like whatever about this, but listen, obviously during normal times, you probably don't have like 50 man pads in the mall where there's like some soldiers who are ready to take them out, you know?
[00:17:33]  Like your man pads are probably like in armories on military bases, right?
[00:17:38]  However, I will say when your country is, has like a shit ton of U.S. air assets around it and like naval assets, but like over like months, the buildup is increasing.
[00:17:51]  You're like, we are going to invade your country.
[00:17:54]  I would suggest just to anybody else listening to this who might be in this situation in the future that you disperse your anti-air shoulder fire and stuff at least a little bit, because that is sort of the strength of it by, you know, having it be rather portable.
[00:18:11]  That's well, it also could be that they did.
[00:18:14]  Yeah.
[00:18:15]  And that for whatever reason, because there's, again, it's difficult to get a full picture of what happened here.
[00:18:26]  For whatever reason, they weren't used.
[00:18:28]  You know?
[00:18:29]  Yeah.
[00:18:30]  Yeah.
[00:18:30]  It does not seem like there was much of a battle.
[00:18:32]  So the Americans did say one of their aircraft got hit.
[00:18:35]  That could mean anything.
[00:18:37]  You know, I mean, they have not given us any details about that.
[00:18:39]  That could be one bullet from some small arms fire.
[00:18:43]  That could be something bigger.
[00:18:44]  They're saying there were some injuries.
[00:18:46]  We don't know what those look like either.
[00:18:49]  You know, it's there's now been casualties released or at least continually released from the Venezuelan side.
[00:18:57]  32 Cuban officers, according to the Cuban, the foreign ministry of Cuba, were killed.
[00:19:03]  Some Venezuelans as well.
[00:19:05]  I think there's a total of 80.
[00:19:07]  I think Venezuela said there's 80 dead.
[00:19:09]  I don't know if that includes the Cubans.
[00:19:11]  It looks like those Cubans were part of like a bodyguard unit around Maduro.
[00:19:16]  Yeah.
[00:19:17]  And that is, you know, kind of a classic thing that Cubans have been able to provide for South American leaders.
[00:19:25]  And it looks like they might have just been fucking vaporized by some attack helicopters.
[00:19:31]  I'm not really sure there was much of a battle they were even able to fight.
[00:19:34]  Maduro's body.
[00:19:35]  We definitely, we know for a fact that some of Maduro's bodyguards were also killed.
[00:19:42]  It seems like the U.S. destroyed a lot of Caracas's air defense, or at least it was just like not in use.
[00:19:49]  Like that, that is, it's, it's a little unclear what, what percentage of it was destroyed, which for which versus which percentage of it was either stood down or just not manned.
[00:19:59]  Yeah, it does seem like what was destroyed hadn't been manned for like a while, which is what's also very the whole there's I've got a lot of questions.
[00:20:12]  Yeah, it's tough.
[00:20:13]  You know, it's tough.
[00:20:13]  I got to tell you, the S300 anti-air defense system that the Russians, you know, they're sort of, I think they've got the S400 now.
[00:20:20]  Maybe they even have the S500 now, but really has not had a lot of use because every country it gets deployed in, they just never end up using it.
[00:20:28]  It always is just sort of unmanned.
[00:20:30]  They should give it to me and I'll use it.
[00:20:32]  So we'll finally see what's up with it.
[00:20:34]  You know, I believe that Gaddafi was able to give the provisional IRA a Sam.
[00:20:40]  Oh, really?
[00:20:41]  Yeah.
[00:20:42]  And I feel like there's like a video of the, man, maybe I'm imagining this, or I've saw this like 15 years ago, but they just like had it in a basement in Ireland because it's an anti-bit, you can't just like set that up in Derry or whatever.
[00:20:59]  You could, I think.
[00:21:00]  I think that you've got a bit of a backyard.
[00:21:02]  But I will say, you know, air defense is tough.
[00:21:07]  No air defense.
[00:21:08]  That's even tougher.
[00:21:09]  Seems much tougher.
[00:21:12]  It appears that they got Maduro at Fort Tuna, which is like a base where then Trump tells it like this.
[00:21:20]  Trump is like, you know, Maduro was fleeing from our Delta boys, and he was, there was a steel-door safe room.
[00:21:30]  No.
[00:21:30]  And the doors were closing.
[00:21:32]  And Maduro was like maybe behind the doors, like watching them close, laughing, saying, oh, you Americans thought you got me.
[00:21:38]  And Delta Force prevented the doors from closing, likely by putting one of their titanium-encased oxycontin bottles between it and stopping the doors, injecting some steroids, quickly beating their wives who they brought with them for that purpose in order to get the testosterone up and ripping open the doors.
[00:22:00]  You know, it does, and I'm not even, it's unfortunately, I was joking there, but it does look like they might have beaten up Celia.
[00:22:08]  Yeah, no, she was in the courthouse yesterday and she had like black eyes.
[00:22:12]  She was having trouble standing.
[00:22:14]  That's how you know American special forces officers were involved.
[00:22:17]  I saw a woman.
[00:22:18]  They got too excited.
[00:22:19]  They're like, we got to just beat this lady.
[00:22:22]  Maduro and his wife, Celia, were blackbagged, taken to a U.S. ship, then flown to Manhattan where they were seemingly paraded around.
[00:22:29]  I can't tell though.
[00:22:30]  So like there's so much AI footage of shit that like, there's so, so my question is, how many of the outfit changes are AI?
[00:22:41]  Some of them were.
[00:22:42]  Some of them weren't.
[00:22:42]  I think a lot of the confusion around Maduro's outfits were because of some convincing looking AI pictures that came out.
[00:22:48]  Well, I have to say, the photo that Trump showed of Maduro in the now, I think, like iconic grade Nike tracksuit with the blue blockers and the beats by Dre was went so hard.
[00:23:10]  That photo is so good.
[00:23:12]  That was like, you failed rule number one.
[00:23:16]  Never release a cool photo of your enemy.
[00:23:19]  Well, that was, it was, it was in Honduras in the 2009 coup.
[00:23:25]  They took him out and he was wearing, I think, his boxers.
[00:23:29]  And it's like, that's, you know, or that guy in Iraq with the scraggly hair that they got.
[00:23:34]  Remember what I'm talking about?
[00:23:35]  Yes, of course.
[00:23:36]  Yeah.
[00:23:36]  I think the photo of Noriega getting arrested, he looks pretty good, too.
[00:23:39]  Yeah, well, you know, classic.
[00:23:41]  Kind of a dapper guy sure, but uh now now, Maduro is in the very troubled Mdc here in Brooklyn, the old Gray Bar hotel where Ghillain Maxwell, of course, herself was uh, was arrested and where just today this is on tuesday, we're recording this today Aiden Ross uh, Liz's friend and I don't know what your guys' relationship is now.
[00:24:07]  Confidant okay, now non-romantic.
[00:24:10]  Confidant, um is uh, is Dropping, is doing a live stream, dropping off Takashi6ix9ine to jail.
[00:24:19]  Now, I looked up Takashi6ix9ine's recent arrest because obviously famously, he did the stitching stuff like six or seven years ago five, six years ago, I don't know.
[00:24:27]  Uh, now I know, I know I didn't mean to say that, that's why I corrected myself and um, I guess Takashi6ix9ine, I didn't realize this, he's just been kind of beating women since then.
[00:24:38]  Oh yeah sure, I mean, I really.
[00:24:40]  I mean he's been beaten himself, let's be clear about that.
[00:24:43]  He is also not by women, although I think one of the incidents a woman did beat him, but he has been beaten several times himself.
[00:24:49]  But it appears that he's been consistently arrested for beating women since uh, since his little sort of snitching thing.
[00:24:55]  It'd be crazy if he linked up with Maduro.
[00:24:58]  Well, this is we're going to talk about a link up in there in a moment.
[00:25:03]  Uh, but Maduro's former intelligence chief, I believe, is in there, who has linked up with Luigi Mangioni.
[00:25:12]  There are pictures of uh, of uh, Ugo Caraval in there with uh, with Mangioni but uh, I believe uh, Puff Daddy, or as he's called now.
[00:25:21]  Uh, why is he in there, did he?
[00:25:27]  He hasn't been moved yet.
[00:25:28]  Oh, maybe he has been moved.
[00:25:30]  Actually, he probably has been moved.
[00:25:31]  No, I think he has been, because I saw him, like photos of him on the in the yard.
[00:25:35]  Oh yeah, well that he's been moved.
[00:25:37]  Uh, but it is a.
[00:25:38]  It is a really shitty jail to be in.
[00:25:40]  I mean it's, you know obviously, prisoners.
[00:25:43]  Uh, in Ghalain's trial that factored heavily in, but it really is shitty, like it's.
[00:25:47]  It's even the BOP Bureau OF Prisons acknowledges like it's a.
[00:25:50]  It's a very substandard jail, which is funny because, like the jail that Epstein was in, MCC was like, I think, shuttered because of that.

=== Venezuelan Negotiations Update (09:03) ===

[00:25:57]  Uh, like for, you know, a sort of revamp.
[00:26:00]  That's why they're all now, they're all stuck in Brooklyn.
[00:26:02]  Yeah yeah so okay, adding to a bunch of the questions that I have about what the fuck happened that have still not been answered.
[00:26:12]  So SKY NEWS reported very quickly, in the kind of immediate aftermath of this going down that the capture was actually part of a what they called a negotiated exit between Maduro and the U.s.
[00:26:26]  That didn't really that kind of narrative didn't really get picked up anywhere else, though obviously them reporting it they are getting it from somewhere yeah um, and I do think it's worth remembering that back in early december, Reuters reported that Maduro had offered basically a specific kind of what they call this step down proposal to the Us.
[00:26:47]  There was this like november 21st call with Trump, where Maduro told Trump he was willing to leave Venezuela, if the U.S. Granted him like a guaranteed exit, and that in return, what he wanted was like legal amnesty for himself and his family, removal of the U.S. sanctions, and an end to the pending ICC case against him.
[00:27:07]  And he had suggested, like, you know, in the aftermath, let's have my VP, Del Codriguez, run an interim government, then we'll call new elections.
[00:27:17]  And Reuters reported that Trump like turned him down.
[00:27:20]  But I do want to say, like, that is kind of what that's similar to what we're looking at in terms of the situation at hand, right?
[00:27:30]  Certainly not the removal of the sanctions yet or them dropping charges at the ICC or amnesty.
[00:27:41]  But you know what I'm saying?
[00:27:43]  You know, I haven't, I haven't, because I don't think the, the, uh, that he's actually been charged in the ICC yet.
[00:27:48]  I can't remember.
[00:27:49]  I don't, I don't think he has.
[00:27:51]  But it is funny that that would have been one of his requests because obviously the U.S.S. U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC, but we still exert this huge influence on it, right?
[00:28:00]  Like, you know, sanctioning judges and all this kind of shit.
[00:28:03]  So it is funny that like that is a theoretical thing that he could bargain for, even though obviously not a signatory to it.
[00:28:10]  So it's interesting to read that in line.
[00:28:13]  And again, like that's Reuters.
[00:28:16]  Like a lot of this is, we're reading this from American dominated outlets, U.S. American dominated outlets.
[00:28:23]  And so like, it's worth keeping all that in mind for basically everything that we're saying.
[00:28:27]  This we do know that Maduro himself has said, like, I'm negotiating with Trump.
[00:28:31]  I don't think that anything in that, that, that you just said there is out of the question for him to have negotiated.
[00:28:37]  In fact, I do believe that.
[00:28:39]  You know, it's, it's, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.
[00:28:43]  And I say all that to say that this next thing is from an October of 2025 article in the Miami Herald.
[00:28:51]  Now, obviously, this is a Miami Herald article dealing with issues involving the Venezuelan government.
[00:28:56]  So it is, I think, wise to take it with some healthy, one of those big old grains of salt.
[00:29:02]  What are that shit?
[00:29:03]  What the Maxon?
[00:29:05]  The big grains of salt.
[00:29:07]  Madsen?
[00:29:08]  Malden?
[00:29:09]  Malden?
[00:29:10]  You're talking about the flakes?
[00:29:12]  Malden.
[00:29:13]  It's good to take this with a big old grain of Malden salt.
[00:29:16]  All right.
[00:29:19]  Also, some of these details have been corroborated by like New York Times, et cetera.
[00:29:23]  So take it with slightly other different grains of salt, but that are also big, but that are different kinds of salt.
[00:29:28]  Let's maybe a little bit finer.
[00:29:30]  A finer salt.
[00:29:31]  So this is from Miami Herald.
[00:29:32]  A group of senior senior Venezuelan government officials led by Vice President Delsi Rodriguez and her brother Jorge, who's president of the National Assembly, have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a more acceptable alternative to Nicolas Maduro's regime, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks.
[00:29:57]  The proposals, funneled through intermediaries in Qatar, sought to persuade sectors of the U.S. government that a madurismo without Maduro, whoever that's a quote, that's madurismo.
[00:30:09]  I don't know if that's really they're doing, but Liz, they're doing political science in Florida much differently than we do it elsewhere.
[00:30:16]  Could enable a peaceful transition in Venezuela, preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.
[00:30:23]  Interesting.
[00:30:24]  So it goes on to say that there were two formal proposals by Venezuelan leadership, one in April and the other in September.
[00:30:30]  In both scenarios, or as I like to say, scenarios, Rodriguez stays on and Maduro goes.
[00:30:39]  Yeah.
[00:30:41]  Now, the Miami Herald says this was done with Maduro's knowledge.
[00:30:44]  We don't know who the Miami Herald sources are on this.
[00:30:47]  So the U.S.'s sources or that they're Venezuelan sources, I don't know.
[00:30:51]  I will say from what I am know that the Venezuelan government is fairly open to doing interviews and talking to people.
[00:31:00]  And so, you know, it's not, I don't think it's unheard of that the Venezuelans would even talk to the Miami Herald.
[00:31:07]  I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility, but I'm saying that is not identified here.
[00:31:12]  So some Trump people, some Trump world people rather, were referring to this scenario as cartel light, presumably in reference to the so-called cartel of the suns.
[00:31:25]  Did you see they've completely dropped all we'll talk about that?
[00:31:28]  We'll talk about that.
[00:31:29]  That is, I find that very interesting.
[00:31:32]  Could you read, could you read this a little bit from the Miami Herald?
[00:31:35]  The April proposal called for Maduro to step down, remain in Venezuela with guarantees for his safety, and negotiate an arrangement granting U.S. companies access to Venezuelan oil and mining industries.
[00:31:48]  In exchange, it suggested that U.S. prosecutors drop criminal charges against Maduro.
[00:31:53]  Under that plan, Delce Rodriguez would assume the country's presidency.
[00:31:58]  So the Miami Herald says this was shot down by a hardline group led by Marco Rubio.
[00:32:05]  I believe that.
[00:32:06]  Yeah.
[00:32:07]  He looked very grumpy and sleepy at that press conference.
[00:32:11]  Sleepy?
[00:32:12]  Well, his eyes were bloodshot, which could be sleepiness or perhaps the opposite of sleepiness.
[00:32:20]  He looked snizzed out of his brain.
[00:32:24]  Eyes on his brother.
[00:32:25]  Could you imagine?
[00:32:27]  Could you imagine brother-in-law?
[00:32:30]  I can't remember.
[00:32:30]  Your snip, your snippies radar.
[00:32:32]  Sniffy's radar goes off at Mar-a-Lago.
[00:32:34]  You head to the bathroom, single stall, of course, single use, but there's a lot of them because that's the mark of a nice place.
[00:32:41]  You go in there, you get your shit sucked, and then it comes up and it's fucking Marco Rubio, and he gives you the greatest bump of his life.
[00:32:47]  What do you think the grinder situation at Mar-a-Lago is like?
[00:32:51]  I would say it is out of no, I think it's a gentleman's agreement not to use it there.
[00:32:56]  You think?
[00:32:57]  And we just, yeah, we do.
[00:32:58]  There's just like a little lawn for us.
[00:32:59]  What if they have some sort of like advanced blocking tech?
[00:33:03]  Like, so it's like the perimeter of Mar-a-Lago is blocked to try to get it.
[00:33:06]  It's kind of geo-fenced.
[00:33:08]  You can't use Grinder here.
[00:33:10]  Yeah.
[00:33:10]  It's like to try firewall, but just for grinder.
[00:33:13]  Just for grinder.
[00:33:14]  Yeah.
[00:33:17]  The second proposal seems similar to the first, except Rodriguez would share power with Miguel Rodriguez Torres, not no relation to Del Corre, who was exiled in Spain, who was once interior minister before breaking with the government in 2017.
[00:33:34]  So apparently this, so apparently, sorry.
[00:33:39]  Apparently, this second proposal was also scuttled by Rubio.
[00:33:46]  You know, it's tough to say.
[00:33:48]  Like, we don't know if the Maduro government was doing this sort of two-track negotiation there from Maduro directly or maybe from Delsey herself.
[00:33:56]  Delsie is under, or Delsi Rodriguez is under U.S. sanctions, but she's not been indicted like Maduro has.
[00:34:06]  Maduro's been indicted since 2020.
[00:34:07]  Obviously, it doesn't mean anything in a real sense, like in the terms of guilt or innocence or anything like that.
[00:34:12]  It's just from the U.S.'s perspective, there is a $15 or $50 million bounty out on Maduro and no bounty out on Delsey Rodriguez.
[00:34:22]  So I don't know if they were just trying to negotiate from, you know, I don't know what they were trying to do.
[00:34:27]  I mean, none of it would surprise me.
[00:34:29]  Yeah.
[00:34:30]  Yeah, me either.
[00:34:31]  Because you also are trying to, you know, save the country and the party before, you know, and stop a kind of imminent invasion.
[00:34:46]  Yeah, I mean, for her part, Delsi Rodriguez commented on a Telegram channel associated with the government saying, according to DW, I didn't actually see the Telegram channel myself.
[00:34:55]  She said, fake, another media outlet joining the cesspool of psychological warfare against the Venezuelan people.

=== Debate Over Chinese Involvement (12:52) ===

[00:35:01]  They have no ethics or morals and they exclusively favor lies and filth.
[00:35:05]  Correct.
[00:35:06]  The Bolivarian Revolution has a compact and united high political military command focused on the will of the people.
[00:35:12]  And then she shared a photo with Maduro of her Maduro with the caption, together and united with President Maduro.
[00:35:19]  But now New York Times also has, I think, yesterday put out a piece saying that Trump struck Maduro or got Maduro because he didn't like his dancing.
[00:35:28]  So at first, I was like, this is so like blue and on lib lib style.
[00:35:35]  Like you just want Trump to be enticed, like so angered by the dancing.
[00:35:40]  But he, now I'm like kind of moved by this because he brought it up the dancing again.
[00:35:47]  Did he?
[00:35:48]  And like, he was like, yeah, he was, he said, and it was like a press conference or some rally.
[00:35:55]  I don't know what it was that he was like speaking at today, where he basically was like, he was trying to copy, you know, he's a violent man, but then he was trying to copy me with all the dancing.
[00:36:04]  But he's actually not friendly and not a good dancer.
[00:36:07]  He's, you know, a violent man.
[00:36:09]  Talking about Maduro.
[00:36:10]  Yeah.
[00:36:11]  And I'm just like, maybe he really was stuck on the dancing.
[00:36:15]  Yeah.
[00:36:16]  And that ended up being like the thing that the only thing they could use to convince him.
[00:36:20]  Because I do think that Trump is very, it's clear that, and we'll talk about this, but it is, it seems clear that he is very reticent to commit troops on the ground, despite what he says in press conferences to look big and strong.
[00:36:39]  Yeah.
[00:36:40]  But that the military doesn't, I don't think the military wants to have an invasion of Venezuela for a lot of reasons, but also the optics of committing American troops anywhere, as opposed to kind of doing a lot of the kind of, let's say, smash and grab style that they've been doing.
[00:36:59]  Not even Obama style.
[00:37:00]  It's even like crazier, in my opinion, but or like even more kind of lawless and detached in a way.
[00:37:09]  But I could see him being like, no, I'm not really sure.
[00:37:14]  You know, he's kind of like still very taco-y.
[00:37:16]  And then finally, it's just like all these videos of Maduro dancing.
[00:37:20]  And he's like, ah, fuck it.
[00:37:20]  Let's go in.
[00:37:21]  Yeah.
[00:37:22]  Yeah.
[00:37:23]  It is.
[00:37:23]  I mean, it's, we've talked about this a lot on the show.
[00:37:25]  And I think it's everyone kind of knows it by now.
[00:37:27]  But like it's interesting that like a lot of anti-war people are still, you know, I'm anti-war, like no troops in no boots in the ground in this place and this place.
[00:37:37]  And then these sort of wars happen or these attacks happen, but they're sort of limited in scope and they involve like a lot of you know air assets or like quick precision strikes with special forces.
[00:37:53]  And it kind of prevents in a way like a lot of people are confused.
[00:37:57]  Like, oh, why isn't there a big anti-war movement?
[00:37:59]  Well, it's because there isn't like thousands of troops being deployed on the ground in a place that has this like real visible footprint.
[00:38:09]  It's like these quick strikes are like, did we go to war with Venezuela?
[00:38:13]  Well, we committed an act of war against Venezuela, but like, are we currently at war with them?
[00:38:17]  I would say yes, but it's not the kind of war that you can really get people like, and I mean this in a very general way.
[00:38:25]  I guess it's not the kind of war you can get people very excited about.
[00:38:28]  There's also Wall Street Journal piece that came out that said that basically the CIA was like, Machado has no, people aren't loving Machado.
[00:38:40]  And we'll talk about that in a little more later.
[00:38:42]  But I think that is, it seems like it's interesting.
[00:38:45]  I'm like, I kind of wonder if with this, it's like these deals put forward by the by the Venezuelan government, allegedly put forward.
[00:38:56]  It's like Trump did sort of a wildcard negotiating tactic where he's like, well, I'll take part of your deal.
[00:39:02]  I'll take you up on some of this deal, except Maduro is going to jail and like I set the terms now.
[00:39:08]  And so it like he's operating from this position of strength rather than negotiation, which like in the very explicit way that this government is saying that they operate is well within those the boundaries of, I guess, logics of the U.S. government now, where they're saying like strength is what matters.
[00:39:26]  Power is what matters.
[00:39:28]  If we can take Maduro and also get the terms of the deal that we want, then what's the point of negotiating?
[00:39:35]  Well, I think that's true, but I would add that, and again, I'm talking about this in a little bit, but it's about the projection of strength rather than like actually maybe real power or real strength, but at least a big show of it.
[00:39:51]  I want to add to just actually two things, but to my list of questions for follow-up, as if per chance we might have a prime minister's question hour and I could be like, question for the prime minister.
[00:40:05]  And these are my questions.
[00:40:06]  One, six hours before the strike, Maduro was on state TV with a high-level Chinese delegation.
[00:40:14]  So it's possible that the Chinese delegation, along with the special envoy who's there, was still in Caracas when the operation was launched.
[00:40:23]  I don't even know if they were, but it's possible they could have been, which is insane on multiple levels, but also begs some questions, which is, obviously, did the Chinese know?
[00:40:36]  And if not, why?
[00:40:38]  Right.
[00:40:38]  And there are kind of two options there are one, we didn't tell the Chinese, which seems absurd to me.
[00:40:45]  Yeah.
[00:40:45]  I mean, I just think that would like violate, that would be so disrespectful and insulting on so many levels, possibly dangerous.
[00:40:55]  You know, China has like 60 billion in investments in Venezuela.
[00:40:59]  So like it would be using that moment to force the Chinese into a position of defending the country or potentially watching the U.S. seize their assets.
[00:41:09]  So that seems just like completely crazy.
[00:41:12]  Or on the flip side, if that's not true, then it means that we did tell the Chinese and they were given advance warning, which means they probably knew before they were there and what was being spoken between the Chinese and Maduro, which is very interesting to me.
[00:41:28]  These are my questions.
[00:41:30]  Yeah.
[00:41:30]  Yeah.
[00:41:31]  You know, one wonders too, like if the Chinese, you know, listen, I'm not an expert on this stuff.
[00:41:36]  I don't know, but one would think that the Chinese have hopefully have good enough intelligence to know when the U.S. is actually planning on doing something.
[00:41:46]  I mean, I think, I'm just, no, but I think that there's, I just can't imagine a scenario where the U.S. didn't tell the Chinese.
[00:41:53]  I just think that that would be seen.
[00:41:56]  I mean, we've bombed the Chinese on accident before and it's, it's created huge problems.
[00:42:00]  And so, yeah, I just wanted to.
[00:42:01]  And we're in a totally different scenario than we did in that moment.
[00:42:05]  Exactly.
[00:42:05]  Yeah.
[00:42:06]  I mean, we're basically in a, I mean, we've been in Cold War since like 2014 with them.
[00:42:11]  Yeah.
[00:42:12]  But so, okay, so that's some of my questions.
[00:42:14]  One last thing.
[00:42:16]  Now, right before the raid, someone bought a huge position on polymarket.
[00:42:22]  I think people have read about this, but it's worth just, again, talking about this.
[00:42:26]  So like someone bought like tens of thousands of contracts priced at about seven cents that would pay out to a dollar if Maduro was removed before January 31st.
[00:42:37]  And obviously that happened and the contract price jumped and the person made close to half a million dollars.
[00:42:44]  This is fucking insider trading, right?
[00:42:46]  Of course.
[00:42:48]  But this is also just like what happens now.
[00:42:51]  Like, I mean, information is meta.
[00:42:54]  And like, this is like all everything like turns on.
[00:43:01]  It's crazy to me.
[00:43:03]  It's, you know, there was, there was sort of a minor scandal.
[00:43:05]  Was it around OpenAI or someone from Google?
[00:43:08]  There was someone from a tech company that was like, I think it was Google.
[00:43:10]  Yeah.
[00:43:12]  Buying positions on, I think, Polymarket and Calci that, you know, trading on information from the inside, that they knew it was going to happen.
[00:43:21]  They were winning big because of that, even though they were doing some sort of small bets to they would purposely lose.
[00:43:28]  And there was kind of a debate around that.
[00:43:29]  And it seems like it settled like, okay, well, insider trading is actually okay.
[00:43:33]  No, everyone's like, okay, well, that's what it is.
[00:43:35]  Of course, that's what this is.
[00:43:37]  I mean, to be fair, that's what these platforms are there for.
[00:43:41]  Because no hedge fund is like moving massive amounts of money through this thing without insider information.
[00:43:46]  I mean, they're doing that in the stock market too, but like, this is very different.
[00:43:50]  Yes.
[00:43:52]  But it is just insane to me that this is just the world we live in now.
[00:43:58]  And I know we talk about this all the time that like fucking crime is legal.
[00:44:04]  There are no rules.
[00:44:04]  There's, there's nothing, but like, it's only going to get crazy worse.
[00:44:08]  Like, especially with the midterms coming up and all of the like official partnerships with Calci, there's like the CNN partnership with Calci and all this shit.
[00:44:17]  And people like actually, like, if you thought that the prediction markets were crazy for the presidential election, like, it's going to be even crazier, I think, for the midterms.
[00:44:26]  It's going to be insane.
[00:44:27]  Well, first of all, there's just, yeah, yes.
[00:44:29]  I think that I think it will be.
[00:44:31]  But really quick, funny, funny enough, this came out today that Polymark.
[00:44:36]  So there was the one.
[00:44:37]  So that guy made all this money on, you know, it was like, will Maduro be removed?
[00:44:43]  Which is very specific.
[00:44:44]  But there were other people that were betting on whether or not the U.S. would invade Venezuela.
[00:44:51]  And Polymarket is not paying out because they're saying that this doesn't qualify as an invasion, which is so funny.
[00:45:01]  And all these people are so fucking pissed because they're like, wait, but you like removed the head of state, kidnapping, but special forces and Polymarket, which mind you, partly like owned by or big investor of is Don Jr.
[00:45:18]  Yes.
[00:45:19]  No, he's on the board.
[00:45:20]  Yeah, he's on the board.
[00:45:22]  Yeah, they're saying them and Calci.
[00:45:24]  Yeah, they're saying that it's not, it doesn't qualify as an invasion.
[00:45:28]  Of course.
[00:45:29]  Which I can't say I disagree, but it's very funny.
[00:45:33]  So they're not paying out on these, on these contracts.
[00:45:36]  Got to read the fine print.
[00:45:48]  So at 11 a.m. on January 3rd, a, I will say, dope-sick-looking Donald Trump schlumped his fat ass out in front of a microphone to give a speech.
[00:46:03]  First of all, he was late.
[00:46:05]  Well, he was late.
[00:46:07]  Yeah.
[00:46:08]  He was late.
[00:46:09]  And frankly, Liz, he was late.
[00:46:11]  And I sat there looking at my phone and watching, listening to the reporters sort of jostle for space for an uncomfortably long amount of time.
[00:46:22]  He made several claims in a rather strained speech that I think are worth going over.
[00:46:29]  So, the first was, I think the thing that was that really threw people off the most was the claim that the U.S. is in charge of the country.
[00:46:38]  Now, we said, we're there now.
[00:46:39]  And what people don't understand, but they understand as I, as I say this, we're there now.
[00:46:44]  I'm reading verbatim.
[00:46:45]  So it's, we're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place.
[00:46:51]  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.
[00:46:58]  Okay, so that's not true.
[00:47:00]  We're not there.
[00:47:01]  We're not running anything.
[00:47:04]  Yeah.
[00:47:05]  What is he talking about?
[00:47:06]  So it's again, it's still unclear.
[00:47:09]  As of right now, as of the time we're recording this on Tuesday, it's unclear.
[00:47:13]  Maybe they'll come out tomorrow with some big fucking plan that they have.
[00:47:18]  It doesn't seem to invade.
[00:47:21]  I don't know.
[00:47:22]  Actually, I don't know if the government.
[00:47:24]  I mean, the way that it looks from everything they said is that like the government right now, which is led by Delsi Rodriguez, the former vice president, now president, has to do what the U.S. says, which we don't know what that is, although Rubio apparently has been talking to her, they say, or we kidnap her.
[00:47:43]  So is the idea that then the U.S. is just going to like the leverage the U.S. is going to hold is just like, well, if you don't do what we say, we're just going to keep kidnapping the heads of state.

=== Regime Change and Deportation (07:55) ===

[00:47:54]  I'm not joking.
[00:47:55]  Yes.
[00:47:55]  That is insane.
[00:47:57]  It is, it is, it is, yeah.
[00:47:58]  I mean, it's just recovery.
[00:48:01]  So much of this does not make sense.
[00:48:03]  Well, it, you know, well, I mean, what do you mean by doesn't make sense?
[00:48:06]  Because it makes a certain kind of sense, right?
[00:48:08]  Like, do what we say or we kill you.
[00:48:10]  Like, that is, that is, that is, again, the Trump government's upfront modus operande with dealing with the rest of the world.
[00:48:17]  It's you do what we say or we kill you.
[00:48:19]  Right.
[00:48:20]  But the classic, I would say the classic U.S. style, house style, is that's implied, but instead we get our guys in.
[00:48:31]  Yes.
[00:48:32]  And that's called regime change.
[00:48:33]  Yes.
[00:48:34]  That is not what is happening here.
[00:48:36]  Well, I know.
[00:48:38]  And we'll talk about that.
[00:48:39]  I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but I'm just saying so much of what the action that went down, the aftermath, and then the raisons given do not make sense.
[00:48:54]  No.
[00:48:55]  Well, Trump later goes on to clarify in questions.
[00:48:58]  Actually, clarify is a strong word.
[00:49:00]  Trump later goes on to state in response to a QA at sort of at the end of this little speech thing that Rubio and Hegseth, and now in the time since they've added Stephen Miller, are going to be, quote, running the country.
[00:49:15]  Now, Hegseth, obviously.
[00:49:17]  It's quite a Troika.
[00:49:18]  I mean, Hegseth is so drunk that to hear him pronounce Venezuela might irreparably harm diplomatic relations in the way that Maduro kidnapping could never even come close to with all Spanish-speaking peoples across the world.
[00:49:33]  You heard the Federman pronunciation.
[00:49:37]  He was like, the Venus.
[00:49:38]  What did he say?
[00:49:39]  It was like, Venus.
[00:49:41]  I can't even do it because it's so offensive.
[00:49:43]  Venezuela.
[00:49:44]  It was like Venezuela.
[00:49:47]  I would love to swaddle him.
[00:49:49]  Could you imagine?
[00:49:51]  Could you like a swaddle?
[00:49:53]  How much fabric?
[00:49:54]  Not for all the silken china could one swaddle Mr. Federman.
[00:49:59]  Well, Ruby, I have a question, actually.
[00:50:01]  Question?
[00:50:02]  Yes.
[00:50:03]  Miller getting thrown in there.
[00:50:05]  Well, it's because he loves Latinx people a lot.
[00:50:07]  But also, is it because you think what they want as a potential dumping ground for deportations?
[00:50:16]  Well, you know, it's interesting to think that one of the things is special.
[00:50:20]  The big claims that the U.S. has made against Venezuela is that they've emptied their prisons and mental institutions and sent them here.
[00:50:27]  And so one does wonder if we're- he still doesn't know what asylum means, right?
[00:50:31]  That's like what.
[00:50:33]  Oh, yeah.
[00:50:34]  I didn't even consider that asylum.
[00:50:35]  This is again another like, whatever.
[00:50:37]  Call me like Lib Francak.
[00:50:38]  I don't care.
[00:50:39]  Okay.
[00:50:39]  But thanks for handing that to me.
[00:50:41]  Yes.
[00:50:42]  But I think one of the like big like live accounts is like really on this, which I think is very funny.
[00:50:49]  But because Trump keeps reiterating that like they're coming out of the mental hospitals in conjunction with applying for asylum, they think that he's confusing asylum with like unasylum.
[00:51:06]  I could see that.
[00:51:08]  I could definitely see that.
[00:51:09]  Like in his head.
[00:51:10]  Well, I think what I think I'm assuming it's so that we can just wholesale deport all Venezuelans who've like come here under asylum.
[00:51:17]  I think not just Venezuelans.
[00:51:19]  Yeah, I could see that.
[00:51:20]  I could see that.
[00:51:23]  It is interesting to put, I mean, I guess Rubio speaks Spanish.
[00:51:26]  I was like, well, one out of three ain't bad.
[00:51:30]  It is unclear, again, what they mean by this.
[00:51:34]  And clarification has not yet come.
[00:51:36]  However, they did say, or Trump said rather, we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.
[00:51:43]  So we were prepared to do a second wave if we need to do so.
[00:51:47]  That is the sentence he said.
[00:51:48]  It's just the same thing twice.
[00:51:50]  We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary, but now it's probably not.
[00:51:53]  The first wave, if you'd like to call it that, which, okay, the first attack was so successful, we probably don't have to do a second, but we're prepared to do a second wave, a much bigger wave, actually.
[00:52:04]  Just sounds like fucking bullshit.
[00:52:05]  Yes.
[00:52:06]  So he states that the U.S., so I mean, but again, like, that's a hint that, like, you do what we say or we kill or kidnap you.
[00:52:12]  And also, I think it's important to note that Delsi Rodriguez may have sanctions against her for being a part of the Venezuelan government.
[00:52:18]  There is not a legal case against her, which was the, again, stated reason for us getting Maduro, but it wasn't.
[00:52:26]  I mean, the legality of that itself is obviously very questionable.
[00:52:32]  And it's just a fucking, it's a joke.
[00:52:34]  I mean, really, is what it is.
[00:52:37]  Trump also went on to state that there was a decision that the U.S. is making whether to take Maduro to New York or Miami.
[00:52:43]  The Miami thing was very confusing to me.
[00:52:45]  I'm like, do they, is he like, do you, are you going to imprison him in Mar-a-Lago?
[00:52:50]  No, but they just think that's a big show for all the locals there.
[00:52:55]  Yeah, I was like, is that like a midterms thing, like parade Maduro through Miami?
[00:52:59]  I mean, could be.
[00:53:01]  He also claimed that Maduro sent Trenda Aragua over.
[00:53:04]  He's been obviously claiming this for a while and cites the viral Colorado apartment complex video.
[00:53:10]  Trump then went on a long, discursive journey talking about crime in various cities.
[00:53:14]  He actually spent most of his speech doing this.
[00:53:17]  In fact, far longer than he spoke about the country of Venezuela or the person of Nicolas Maduro.
[00:53:22]  He made reference to the murder of Jocelyn Nungare, a 12-year-old girl who was raped and strangled by a pair of illegal immigrants from Venezuela, but refers to them as Trenda Aragua.
[00:53:32]  Now, I looked into this.
[00:53:33]  It doesn't appear that they are at least they were, it doesn't appear that the government has treated them as members of Trenda Aragua.
[00:53:42]  That seems to come from a warrant that was issued to TikTok in relations to emojis in the men's TikTok bios that the government was wondering if were related to Trende Aragua.
[00:53:55]  Getting arrested for flag and bio is really bad.
[00:53:59]  It was, I think it was a sword, a ninja emoji, and like a building.
[00:54:04]  And they were like, are these Trenda Aragua symbols?
[00:54:06]  But like we know from the gang database stuff, like it's like a lot of the, and from the arrest and deportation of people that the U.S. claimed were in Trende Aragua, that they have very, let's say, liberal criteria for what makes a member of TDA.
[00:54:26]  So he then moved on to the oil, calling it the largest theft in American history, which was a idea, I guess, pioneered by Stephen Miller, who was like really the person who kind of first came out saying this month ago.
[00:54:36]  He said, massive oil infrastructure taken as if we were babies.
[00:54:43]  I do like, I mean, I do, he obviously means like candy from babies, but it does sort of also sound like as if, you know, he's talking about stealing babies.
[00:54:56]  Yes.
[00:54:56]  Yeah.
[00:54:58]  So he says later in taking questions, he says, well, we're going to be running it with a group and we're going to make sure it's run properly.
[00:55:03]  We're going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars.
[00:55:06]  It'll be paid for by the oil companies directly.
[00:55:09]  They will be reimbursed for what they're doing, but that's going to be paid.
[00:55:13]  Yeah.
[00:55:14]  Let's get the oil in a little bit.
[00:55:16]  That's another thing, again, doesn't make sense.
[00:55:18]  Doesn't make sense.
[00:55:19]  But we do know, we do know for sure that he told CEOs of oil companies that this was going to happen and did not tell members of Congress.
[00:55:27]  Yeah.
[00:55:28]  Which is a good insight into how the U.S. government operates.
[00:55:31]  He claims that Venezuela was getting offensive weapons and used them last night, possibly in coordination with cartels on our border.
[00:55:39]  Well, there's all these claims that, you know, Iran has set up like weapons manufacturing facilities in Venezuela.

=== Soft Power's Decline? (11:09) ===

[00:55:50]  Usually, I think it's like drone facilities, which I think could be true.
[00:55:54]  But, you know, they like to link it up then with Hezbollah.
[00:55:58]  That's always the classic move.
[00:56:01]  He also claimed again that like Hegseth and Rubio were going to control the company, but Machado didn't really come up.
[00:56:10]  And when he was asked about Machado, and I know we're not really shedding many tears for her, but one does feel a pang of pity.
[00:56:19]  It's like she is so creepy.
[00:56:22]  So it's not pity.
[00:56:24]  But it's mixed with disdain.
[00:56:27]  Yes.
[00:56:28]  Yeah.
[00:56:29]  So he said, oh, I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader.
[00:56:32]  She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country.
[00:56:36]  She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect within the country.
[00:56:39]  Now, did you see that Machado on an interview with Fox News was like, I'd like to present my Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump.
[00:56:46]  Dude, it was so pathetic.
[00:56:48]  I did see that video.
[00:56:49]  And there was this reporting that Trump, which I mean, take this in the same way as you might take the dancing news reporting that like he ate a Maduro because of the dancing.
[00:57:00]  But there was a report that Trump didn't like her because she, even though she dedicated the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump.
[00:57:06]  But that's almost worse.
[00:57:08]  I know.
[00:57:08]  I think that Trump, Trump doesn't like grovelers.
[00:57:12]  He does like the act of groveling, but he does not respect you if you get down on your knees.
[00:57:18]  She's been nowhere but.
[00:57:20]  Which, like, you know what?
[00:57:21]  I gotta, I'm, I'm with him on that.
[00:57:23]  Well, all these opposition outlets were like, well, there must be some mistake.
[00:57:28]  He must have.
[00:57:29]  I loved this.
[00:57:30]  So like Elliot Abrams wrote this huge, he's been making the rounds him and Bolton.
[00:57:36]  But he wrote some huge thing in the in the free press where he was like scandalized that Trump would besmirch the good name of Machado, who has the people's backing.
[00:57:49]  But it's been so funny to see all these neocons kind of come out and get really pissed at the absolute just lack of any kind of, you know, moralistic, democratic, you know, kind of narrative that neocons really rely on to sell this kind of projects that Trump is just completely allergic to.
[00:58:14]  Absolutely.
[00:58:16]  And so to see them just completely, yeah, I think scandalized is the right word because they, they just can't think of, they're just like, why, why would you be so rude to this great woman?
[00:58:29]  It's, it's so funny too, because Trump's, I mean, the entire reason that we've been so opposed to Maduro officially, right?
[00:58:39]  Officially, the primary reason is that he is the usurper of power since the 2018 elections and cemented again in the 2024 election that he stole these elections, that he's not the real leader of Venezuela, that Juan Guaido was before he was quietly dropped, unfortunately, to become a, what was it?
[00:59:03]  He's at the, is it he's at the new Gulf Davos?
[00:59:09]  You can check him out there.
[00:59:10]  I wonder if he'll get the Riyadh comedy hour.
[00:59:13]  I can't remember.
[00:59:14]  What was the name of this school?
[00:59:15]  Whatever.
[00:59:15]  We covered it the last episode we did on this, but my brain is sucking fucking.
[00:59:18]  University of Austin.
[00:59:20]  No, University of Miami.
[00:59:21]  It's like Florida University in like the libertarian school there or whatever.
[00:59:27]  But it's funny because I don't think Trump mentioned like a democratic transition or Maduro is still in power or anything.
[00:59:33]  No, because that's not on the table.
[00:59:36]  Not on the table.
[00:59:37]  And we don't care.
[00:59:39]  We don't care.
[00:59:40]  It's funny because, you know, Machado's been going around trying to, and, you know, this is sort of point crude words, prostitute her country to the Americans by saying, oh, it's going to be a trillion dollar bonanza.
[00:59:52]  Everyone can come in.
[00:59:53]  Everyone from America come in here and just take, as long as you overthrow Maduro.
[00:59:58]  And what does that get her?
[00:59:59]  It gets her nothing.
[01:00:01]  Trump also said, and this is, this is something that has been echoed by many in this administration, many a MAGA world in the past few days.
[01:00:09]  The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security.
[01:00:16]  Just like tariffs are, they made our country rich and they've made our national security strong, stronger than ever before.
[01:00:21]  But these are the iron laws that have always determined global power.
[01:00:25]  Now, everybody's an administration has basically come out over the past few days and said, might makes right.
[01:00:32]  Something that bothers me.
[01:00:34]  I mean, it's true in a way, right?
[01:00:36]  Like if this is, I mean, one can't argue with reality.
[01:00:40]  I mean, I guess one can't argue with reality.
[01:00:43]  Well, I mean, I don't know if that's always true, right?
[01:00:49]  The U.S. is governed through soft power.
[01:00:51]  And actually, soft power has, I mean, always hard power, yes.
[01:00:56]  But soft power, especially post-Cold War, has, and during the Cold War, was gear.
[01:01:04]  I mean, that was one of the more like kind of obvious ways to outline U.S. hegemony across the globe.
[01:01:12]  And there's an argument to be made, you know, and there's a lot of people having these arguments right now that when you have a kind of waning hegemon, it's the soft power that goes and it sort of starts to rely only on the hard power.
[01:01:31]  Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
[01:01:32]  Our disengagement from a lot of international institutions since kind of literally since the 1970s has been sort of, it's just like led us to this, I guess.
[01:01:44]  But it's funny because, you know, this is a concession to barbarism, right?
[01:01:48]  I mean, the strength is the only thing that matters.
[01:01:53]  And yeah, again, in a sense, that is, I guess, literally true if it comes down to it in some places.
[01:02:01]  But it is also, I mean, I guess, yeah, what it is is a concession to like anarchy and barbarism and like the rule of the strong.
[01:02:10]  And I think that we have to, I think that people really need to grapple with, like, in many ways, that is the world that we're living in.
[01:02:15]  Like, the post-World War, the death of the post-Second World War order has kind of long been telegraphed, but I think has finally occurred or is in the process of occurring acutely.
[01:02:28]  And I think a lot of people maybe need to, including myself, you know, update some priors on that, some Bayesian priors on that one.
[01:02:38]  But, but, you know, that is a, it's not in many ways, I think it is a supremely arrogant position to be in.
[01:02:47]  Obviously, these are supremely arrogant or position to take rather.
[01:02:52]  And obviously, in a lot of ways, these people are supremely arrogant in everything that they do.
[01:02:58]  But, you know, it's tough because it does all but guarantee at some point another global world war.
[01:03:05]  So they're exit.
[01:03:07]  Yeah, but we're already in that.
[01:03:08]  I mean, I think just real quick, like one of the things about that is like the U.S. has shown like time after time that it'll just lie in negotiations.
[01:03:21]  Yes.
[01:03:22]  And it will then launch a like do a big show of power.
[01:03:27]  I mean, I want to talk about this a little bit later, but so much of this reminds me of the big show that was put on in Iran with the attack on Fordo, which really was a lot of theater, right?
[01:03:44]  And didn't end up, from what we know from reporting, actually damaging the reactor in ways that they said it did.
[01:03:54]  And then, like, if that doesn't work, we'll just move to like kidnapping the head of the opposition or whatever.
[01:04:01]  Just take them and then we'll just like drum up fake charges.
[01:04:05]  And that'll help support the like kind of narrative of what we wanted to do in the first place.
[01:04:10]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:11]  But like, it none of this is, I mean, we talk about withdrawing from kind of like an international, you know, these kind of international institutions or even these ideas of, you know, law or cooperation or mutual respect, whatever, whatever.
[01:04:30]  But it is kind of crazy that like the rest of the world right now is just sort of left to look on like in aghast.
[01:04:39]  Like, I mean, the reaction from Europe was so wild.
[01:04:43]  I mean, I know it's Europe.
[01:04:45]  But literally just saying, like, we're monitoring the situation.
[01:04:48]  We're monitoring the situation.
[01:04:50]  Oh, but, but please don't take Greenland or like even saying like, this is good, but don't do it to us.
[01:04:55]  It's, it's really wild to me.
[01:04:57]  Like everyone, I don't know.
[01:04:59]  I just, I think there's ways to see this.
[01:05:02]  I think, again, maybe we can get into like this bigger kind of questions a little bit towards the end of the show, but like this, you know, there's ways to see these clearly the administration wants to present this as like very strong moves.
[01:05:17]  Yes.
[01:05:18]  And these are, these are tactical moves of strength and power.
[01:05:22]  And look at the military might and blah, blah, blah, but there's a way where it also feels like, and even this like neo Monroe doctrine stuff, Dondreau doctrine stuff, that's tough to say.
[01:05:36]  Well, like I, like I've said before, it sounds like you're making fun of someone saying Monroe Doctor.
[01:05:41]  I know it does.
[01:05:42]  But it does feel like, you know, what if then the U.S. is just now a regional power?
[01:05:48]  Yeah.
[01:05:49]  Right.
[01:05:49]  Like if we talk about this like waning, the waning soft power that the U.S. has across the world, right?
[01:05:56]  If every nation is like, okay, these guys are just going to go into any negotiation with you and fucking lie to your face and then kidnap you, which is just like, you know, that's the move of a weak pariah state, right?
[01:06:09]  Yeah.
[01:06:12]  Like now it feels like you, you know, in my opinion, the future, you know, belongs to big states that are doing big projects with big public funds.
[01:06:22]  And right now that's China.
[01:06:23]  It doesn't have to only be China, but that's kind of where we're at right now.
[01:06:28]  And instead, you have the U.S. like locking itself into this like very dated geopolitical gate, like game of like, oh, we're just going to, you know, kind of play around on this little, in this little regional space because that's actually all we can do.
[01:06:46]  And everyone else is like, what the fuck happened to the great empire?
[01:06:50]  That's what it feels like to me in this moment.
[01:06:54]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting to see how this will play out, but like it does.

=== 2020 Indictment: Fentanyl and Cocaine (16:01) ===

[01:06:59]  I mean, what strikes me of this is like the U.S. is essentially, and like members of this administration have explicitly said that like the law is what we say the law is and you have to obey it, but we do not.
[01:07:13]  Yeah.
[01:07:14]  Like, and that's that's they haven't said that that latter part explicitly, but they've certainly said it by their actions.
[01:07:21]  And I think that to me is like what's so baffling to me.
[01:07:23]  It's, it's, what's so baffling by anybody can is, and there are a lot of people who, who like this administration, the people who say they do, you know, it's, it's extraordinary to me that, that anybody would tolerate this.
[01:07:36]  And like, again, the U.S. has acted like this for many, for a long, time.
[01:07:42]  I will say it has become much more acute in recent years.
[01:07:48]  And at least, and I think there is a, there is a, a difference.
[01:07:52]  And I, you know, whether that is a big difference or a small difference, I don't know, of the explicitness of which it said that like you have to obey the law, but we don't, you know, and the law is, again, what we say the law is.
[01:08:07]  This government is a government made up of criminals and they're governing apparently this hemisphere at least in the name of law and order.
[01:08:16]  Again, we just released a convicted cocaine trafficker from prison because Trump wanted to in some way influence an election in Honduras, which he apparently was successful at.
[01:08:29]  And, you know, his endorsed guy won, although there was a lot of confusion there with the electoral council.
[01:08:37]  But then, and then taking in Maduro like this, I mean, nobody believes this is about fentanyl, but the government says it is, explicitly says it is.
[01:08:46]  I don't know if you saw it, but the White House tweeted out a video today of so-called angel families, which I thought an angel family was.
[01:08:54]  Oh, no, an angel family.
[01:08:55]  So I think angel families are people whose kids were killed by illegal immigrants.
[01:09:03]  I genuinely call them angel families.
[01:09:05]  They call them angel families.
[01:09:06]  I think that's a good idea.
[01:09:07]  I feel like that is just respectful.
[01:09:10]  To angels?
[01:09:11]  No, just like to everyone involved.
[01:09:13]  Like, I don't, your kid dies, don't become a fucking political meme.
[01:09:18]  I'm sorry, Gold Star family.
[01:09:19]  I think that's what it's called when your kid dies in war.
[01:09:22]  Yeah.
[01:09:22]  No disrespect.
[01:09:23]  It sounds like your kid choked on a pretzel because gold star sounds like, you know, you're giving it because you learned to read at age 17 or whatever.
[01:09:35]  I'm not saying it, but I'm just, you know, that's just, it sounds what it's what it sounds like to me.
[01:09:40]  But they, they, they tweeted out this video of all these people thanking Trump for capturing Maduro because their kids died of fentanyl overdoses.
[01:09:49]  Babe, he's not bringing in the fentanyl.
[01:09:52]  But the thing is, the government knows this.
[01:09:53]  JD Vance himself tweeted out a long thing about this.
[01:09:56]  This like, oh, isn't it so?
[01:09:58]  I know that they're not bringing, you know, the cocaine is still bad.
[01:10:01]  Can we just real quick?
[01:10:03]  He, I hate his tweets.
[01:10:08]  Yeah.
[01:10:08]  He's not good at it.
[01:10:11]  But you can tell he looks at Twitter a lot.
[01:10:13]  He loves it and he's so bad at it.
[01:10:16]  It does bring me joy that he will never be cool or good at it.
[01:10:20]  But him tweeting out the like, um, actually, really, this, you know, this is actually really about fentanyl.
[01:10:31]  And if you knew anything about this, and him going on, and it's like a billion characters and it's a whole essay.
[01:10:38]  Stop.
[01:10:39]  Just stop.
[01:10:40]  Well, he says, he says, you see a lot of claims that Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs because most of the fentanyl comes from elsewhere.
[01:10:47]  First of all, no.
[01:10:47]  You see a lot of claims that Venezuela has nothing to do with fentanyl because that's true.
[01:10:52]  Yeah.
[01:10:52]  He says, I want to address this.
[01:10:54]  First off, fentanyl isn't the only drug in the world.
[01:10:56]  Oh, wow.
[01:10:57]  And there's still fentanyl coming from Venezuela, or at least there was.
[01:11:01]  To just be like, actually, fentanyl isn't the only drug in the world.
[01:11:06]  And then just move on as if that's like, that says anything about what the argument is.
[01:11:10]  Second, cocaine, which is the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela, is a profit center for all the Latin American cartels.
[01:11:16]  You cut out the money from cocaine or even reduce it.
[01:11:18]  You substantially weaken the cartels overall.
[01:11:21]  Also, cocaine is bad too.
[01:11:22]  No, it's not.
[01:11:24]  It is awesome.
[01:11:26]  No, it's not good.
[01:11:26]  It makes you.
[01:11:27]  Why didn't you make the argument that the fentanyl is going into the cocaine?
[01:11:30]  And so he should be like, he doesn't even fucking know.
[01:11:34]  Our most precious people are, you know, dying because they're doing a sweet little bump.
[01:11:40]  And then there's a little bit of fancy.
[01:11:41]  Make a little nod to downtown New York.
[01:11:44]  Like, you know, he wants to be down there anyway.
[01:11:46]  Yeah.
[01:11:47]  Third, yes, a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico.
[01:11:49]  That continues to be a focus of our policy in Mexico and is the reason why I brought blah, blah, blah, shut the border day one.
[01:11:55]  And then he goes on top of the oil.
[01:11:57]  It's just, are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing?
[01:12:05]  Your stuff, first of all, what is that?
[01:12:07]  Your mom's fentanyl?
[01:12:09]  Like, I'm sorry.
[01:12:10]  You're fucking, you're crackhead, mom.
[01:12:14]  Wait, but steal our stuff.
[01:12:16]  It's not your stuff, JD.
[01:12:18]  But also, it's like, what are you fucking talking about?
[01:12:21]  Like, why are you doing that?
[01:12:23]  You are ostensibly a statesman and you're talking about a state stealing your stuff.
[01:12:29]  Yeah.
[01:12:30]  Have some fucking respect for your job.
[01:12:32]  He doesn't have respect for anything because he didn't respect himself.
[01:12:35]  And how could he?
[01:12:36]  That is so true.
[01:12:37]  How could he?
[01:12:39]  So why was Maduro arrested?
[01:12:42]  The question that's on everybody's lips.
[01:12:45]  We're all, we're a lot order bunch here.
[01:12:47]  So this is from, there's two indictments.
[01:12:49]  One, which we I talked about the last time we talked about Venezuela, like a month ago, but this is from the 2020 indictment, which we've covered again on the show.
[01:12:58]  Would you read this?
[01:12:59]  Today we announced criminal charges against Nicolas Maduro Moros for running, together with his top lieutenants, a narco-terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past 20 years.
[01:13:11]  The scope and magnitude of the drug trafficking alleged was made possible only because Maduro and others corrupted the institutions of Venezuela and provided political and military protection for the rampant narco-terrorism crimes described in our charges.
[01:13:24]  As alleged, Maduro and the other defendants expressly intended to flood the United States with cocaine in order to undermine the health and well-being of our nation.
[01:13:34]  Maduro very deliberately deployed cocaine as a weapon.
[01:13:42]  Sorry.
[01:13:43]  It's just crazy.
[01:13:44]  This is really funny.
[01:13:46]  Weaponized bulls.
[01:13:46]  Everyone in the U.S. is like, please stop bringing in the cocaine.
[01:13:49]  No, my fucking nose hurt.
[01:13:52]  Nicholas Maduro is responsible for what's it called?
[01:13:56]  What's that shit that happens in your nose when you do too much Coke?
[01:13:59]  Something you, your shit hurt.
[01:14:01]  You know what I'm talking about?
[01:14:02]  You need a nosebleed?
[01:14:04]  Deviated septum.
[01:14:05]  He's responsible for millions of deviated septums.
[01:14:09]  Watch out, y'all.
[01:14:10]  There's cocaine in the cocaine.
[01:14:12]  You know, I got to tell you, I got to tell you.
[01:14:15]  I have definitely been getting, I've been getting like Canadian.
[01:14:17]  I mean, I haven't done cocaine for a long number of years.
[01:14:20]  The cocaine I did was a weapon because, again, it made me have to take a shit at bars.
[01:14:25]  Pause, but not in that way.
[01:14:28]  Okay.
[01:14:28]  Did you see?
[01:14:29]  I can't remember if it's in this indictment or in the superseding indictment that they basically are like, also they had to bring in shittier cocaine to New York than Miami.
[01:14:39]  Like they were talking about the branding.
[01:14:40]  I basically broke both indictments.
[01:14:41]  They were like, they were like, they said that some of the shipments couldn't be accepted in Miami because the grade was too low or something like that, which actually is like really funny.
[01:14:54]  They were sending that shit to San Francisco.
[01:14:55]  Let me tell you that.
[01:14:58]  Okay, wait.
[01:14:59]  Maduro very deliberately deployed cocaine as a weapon.
[01:15:02]  While Maduro and other cartel members held lofty titles, not my lofty titles, in Venezuela's political and military leadership, the conduct described in the indictment wasn't statecraft or service to the Venezuelan people.
[01:15:17]  As alleged, the defendants betrayed the Venezuelan people and corrupted Venezuelan institutions to line their pockets with drug money.
[01:15:26]  So the 2020 indictment, that was, there's now a superseding one, which adds a few changes.
[01:15:37]  First of all, it adds his wife, which we'll get to.
[01:15:41]  But the 2020 indictment was very focused around Nicholas Maduro being the head of the Cartel of the Suns.
[01:15:48]  Yes.
[01:15:49]  And this is something we've heard so much about from this administration.
[01:15:53]  In fact, the State Department wanted tip site for Maduro is still up.
[01:15:58]  And it was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
[01:16:03]  Yes.
[01:16:04]  And now the government is basically saying, this is the thing.
[01:16:07]  I think we mentioned this maybe in the last episode.
[01:16:09]  There is like the cartel of the Sons doesn't exist as like, there's not an organization.
[01:16:14]  It's not like the Sinaloa cartel or whatever you want to say.
[01:16:16]  Like, well, maybe that doesn't exist either.
[01:16:18]  But like, there's, it's like, it's, it's a.
[01:16:20]  There's no organization.
[01:16:21]  There's no organization called a cartel of the suns.
[01:16:24]  This is not real.
[01:16:25]  This is something that the U.S. made up.
[01:16:27]  And the U.S. seems to have realized that.
[01:16:30]  Well, it's interesting.
[01:16:31]  I mean, they certainly realized it that like maybe this would cause some problems in a legal sense.
[01:16:35]  It seems like the first indictment was really maybe written with not having to actually bring any of the stuff up in court.
[01:16:40]  Maybe in 2020, they didn't think they'd actually be arresting Maduro.
[01:16:43]  And now that they are actually arresting Maduro, they went through and they were like, okay, well, we have to take some of this out.
[01:16:49]  It's worth noting that the tip line about Maduro refers to the Cartel of the Sons in like one paragraph five times.
[01:16:56]  The tip line email address itself is references cartel of the suns.
[01:17:00]  And in the new indictment, I think Cartel of the Suns is mentioned a single time.
[01:17:05]  Well, they also describe it in a different way.
[01:17:08]  So instead of it being this like organization, they're like, or literally being a cartel or a gang, which is basically how it's been described before.
[01:17:16]  I mean, it's a foreign terrorist organization, right?
[01:17:19]  Like, they say that it's like an informal agreement between like various members of the state and outside organizations as they call it literally a patronage network.
[01:17:34]  Yeah.
[01:17:34]  That's what they refer to it as, which is very different.
[01:17:37]  And it's so funny then.
[01:17:39]  I don't know.
[01:17:40]  I mean, I don't know how you can have DOJ describe it as a patronage network and then it still qualify as a foreign terrorist organization.
[01:17:50]  It's interesting.
[01:17:51]  How that kind of like crosses.
[01:17:54]  But it is funny that they had to, like you say, that now that they're sort of forced to actually legally defend this, these charges that they had to kind of like rewrite a bunch of this stuff.
[01:18:11]  Well, the other defendants are Diosdado Cabello, who's the interior minister and famous enemy of Marco Rubio, who he dubbed Narco Rubio because of Marco Rubio's clear connections to cocaine trafficking in Miami.
[01:18:27]  Which I want to say, great article by a friend of the show, Mo over at the Prospect on that.
[01:18:32]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:18:34]  And who, according to Rubio, threatened to have Marco Rubio assassinated, which is really funny.
[01:18:39]  That's so funny.
[01:18:42]  Narco Rubio is good.
[01:18:44]  It's up there with little Marco.
[01:18:46]  Ramon Rodriguez Chassin, or I don't know how to pronounce that, but that's probably how it is.
[01:18:50]  Former intelligence officer and governor, Celia Adela Flores de Maduro, Mrs. Maduro, of course, who's held multiple political positions, including as a member of the National Assembly, and their son, Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guerra, aka Nicolasito, aka the Prince, who's also, I believe, a member of the National Assembly.
[01:19:13]  And then Hector Ruthensford Guerrero Flores, aka Nifio Guerrero, the alleged leader of TDA Trende Aragua.
[01:19:22]  They also detail several organizations, including the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia, ELN, the National Liberation Army, also Colombia, Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas, and Trende Aragua.
[01:19:36]  So they accuse Maduro of selling passports to traffickers, accused Celia Maduro of taking bribes from traffickers, accused Diosdado Cabello of overseeing traffic and shipments and working with Hugo Caravelle to ship them to the U.S.
[01:19:48]  And one wonders, oh, interesting.
[01:19:50]  How do they get information about him working with Hugo Caravelle?
[01:19:53]  Or why would they say that?
[01:19:54]  Why would they bring that guy's name up?
[01:19:55]  That's because Hugo Caravel was arrested in 2019 in Spain on a U.S. warrant, pled guilty in June of this year to drug trafficking charges with promises of cooperation with the U.S. government.
[01:20:09]  He actually, the reason he was in Spain is because he threw his support behind Juan Guaido in 2019 and went into exile into Spain when the whole Guaido thing didn't work out.
[01:20:18]  And he got arrested there, which is, boy, what a gamble that went wrong.
[01:20:23]  So he's been in jail.
[01:20:24]  He got arrested on drug trafficking charges.
[01:20:26]  I mean, obviously, it's like a way to put pressure on Maduro.
[01:20:29]  It's taken the U.S.
[01:20:31]  And this is from Miami Herald, the Miami Herald reporting around this.
[01:20:36]  According to sources familiar with the case, Car Vajal was offered to provide U.S. authorities with documentation and testimony implicating Maduro and other top Venezuelan officials in a range of illegal activities from drug smuggling and election tampering to espionage operations and the weaponization of street gangs.
[01:20:56]  So he apparently told prosecutors that Maduro himself helped create Trende Aragua.
[01:21:02]  Like he was there at sort of the planning meeting for it.
[01:21:05]  I'm sure that's how that went down.
[01:21:06]  It's also said that he could help the U.S. government.
[01:21:09]  And remember, this plea shit came.
[01:21:12]  He pled guilty to his charges and as and pledged cooperation.
[01:21:16]  And so remember, this is under Trump.
[01:21:18]  He said that he'd be able to help the U.S. government with knowledge of vote hacking by Venezuelan by SmartMatic, I guess.
[01:21:26]  And then, of course, again, recently pictured out with hanging out with Luigi Mangioni in jail.
[01:21:31]  I assume he's been moved to prison at this point, but that would be really funny if Maduro ran into him because Maduro is bigger than him.
[01:21:40]  He's a big boy.
[01:21:41]  He's a big dude.
[01:21:43]  But if Maduro got sent to the same jail with like 1400 inmates that his fucking Judas was in, but I mean, I assume this guy and there's a couple other guys sort of similar to this are the people who the U.S. sort of built their case around and they're saying whatever they can do.
[01:21:59]  They're rats and rats squeak.
[01:22:02]  And so like they're trying to get themselves out of jail.
[01:22:05]  They're basically under you know pressure to get out and live their lives as free men.
[01:22:10]  And so they're saying whatever they think the U.S. government wants to hear about Maduro, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:22:18]  And so like, again, as the sources for a lot of this, I mean, these are, these are, these are informants.
[01:22:23]  These are not, they're not informants.
[01:22:24]  They're state's witness.
[01:22:26]  And so it's, I would, they're trying to get themselves out of trouble first and foremost.
[01:22:32]  He accuses, they accuses Diostado, the indictment accuses Diostado Cabello of working with FARC who were transporting cocaine for El Chapo and the Sinaloans, and then paints a picture of Nicholas Maduro Jr. as a direct trafficker, plotting shipments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to the U.S.
[01:22:48]  So I want to mention that Diostado is still in Venezuela.
[01:22:53]  Yes.
[01:22:53]  Now, there's some reporting that they tried to get him, but that he escaped.

=== Machine Guns and Conspiracy (02:27) ===

[01:23:01]  I don't know if that's true, but that he was also a target by the sort of, you know, whatever special forces that went in, but that he was able to kind of like, you know, outmaneuver them.
[01:23:14]  They eat him.
[01:23:14]  But who knows?
[01:23:15]  Who knows if that's true?
[01:23:17]  It's interesting that, like, yeah, Nicolas, Nicholas Maduro Jr., you might say, and Diostado Cabello are still at large in Venezuela.
[01:23:28]  And like, not at large, is in like they're in hiding.
[01:23:30]  I guess that's not really what at large means, but they're not, they were not arrested.
[01:23:33]  And they are, and we don't know, maybe, because there was a lot of different sort of missions that seemed to go out that night.
[01:23:39]  Maybe they were unable to get them, which I would not be surprised at.
[01:23:42]  Or maybe there weren't.
[01:23:43]  I mean, again, a lot of questions.
[01:23:46]  Yeah.
[01:23:46]  So many questions.
[01:23:47]  It's all like, there's just, it's, and it's just sort of fodder for speculation.
[01:23:51]  So there's four charges.
[01:23:54]  Oh, one, yeah, yeah.
[01:23:55]  Prospect, we call it.
[01:23:57]  Narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy.
[01:24:02]  So wouldn't it be, I don't know, exportation?
[01:24:06]  I don't know.
[01:24:07]  Because he's not bringing them into like he's not in.
[01:24:11]  Maybe they were imported into Venezuela because they're saying they're like, it's cocaine from Colombia.
[01:24:17]  Maybe they're like, but they don't have jurisdiction over what you bring into.
[01:24:22]  Well, you might say that, but then how come they charged him with possession of machine guns or destructive devices?
[01:24:28]  So I actually looked this up because I was like, I don't understand that charge.
[01:24:33]  That's absurd.
[01:24:34]  Like, there's nothing more absurd than we're going to charge you with machine.
[01:24:39]  Like conspiracy to possess machine guns is so funny.
[01:24:43]  But I guess that they also did the same with Bin Laden when they charged Bin Laden.
[01:24:49]  Really?
[01:24:50]  Like way back, obviously before.
[01:24:53]  And the reason why is because it's a way, it's like an enhancement charge to get the theoretical maximum sentence like 50% higher or longer, I guess you would say.
[01:25:05]  So it's like, even if you can't really pursue the weapons charges, that just adding them on like bumps up the entire thing.
[01:25:14]  But I just don't understand the legality around it because I don't know how you can charge the commander-in-chief of the armed forces with possession of machine gun or destruction.
[01:25:22]  I mean, none of this seems legal.
[01:25:24]  Yeah, I guess it's not legal.
[01:25:26]  I mean, the whole thing's illegal.
[01:25:27]  You can't kidnap the headset.

=== The Whole Thing's Illegal (03:41) ===

[01:25:28]  That's what they should say.
[01:25:30]  The whole thing's illegal, Your Honor.
[01:25:32]  Well, I mean, Maduro did say, oh, also, I should say, the final charge is conspiracy to possess machine guns or destructive devices.
[01:25:41]  You know, I would say, I would say it's obvious that he's not going to win, but then I remembered, and this has sort of been my lineup.
[01:25:46]  Then I remembered how many federal cases the U.S. has lost or forced to withdraw.
[01:25:52]  It's like a quarter of all of them now.
[01:25:55]  And they are not, they have a bad batting average right now.
[01:25:59]  But I'm like, well, what?
[01:26:00]  And this is a political, Trump political prosecution, right?
[01:26:05]  This was done on the behest of Donald Trump by the DOJ.
[01:26:09]  And their batting record on that, their batting average on that has been rather poor.
[01:26:14]  And so I'm wondering, I'm like, well, maybe Maduro could win.
[01:26:18]  First of all, he's very charming.
[01:26:20]  Yes.
[01:26:21]  Well, the judge, the judge played, or excuse me, the judge is 92 years old.
[01:26:25]  Yes.
[01:26:26]  Which that should not be how I do feel like at us there needs to be a forced retirement age when for a lot of professions.
[01:26:38]  I can't do this in my head.
[01:26:40]  When was 92 years ago?
[01:26:42]  Can you add the Jeopardy music for... 1934!
[01:26:52]  You know I just wrote, add Jeopardy music.
[01:26:55]  Did you really?
[01:26:56]  Yes.
[01:26:57]  1934.
[01:27:00]  The judge was born during the Great Depression.
[01:27:05]  The judge was born during the Great Depression.
[01:27:07]  He was in grapes of wrath.
[01:27:10]  That's crazy.
[01:27:11]  The judge was born like right after Hitler got into power.
[01:27:14]  Oh, I told you about that new show I'm watching.
[01:27:16]  Well, it's not a new show.
[01:27:17]  It's an old show.
[01:27:18]  About Hitler?
[01:27:19]  Yeah.
[01:27:19]  Well, it's not about Hitler.
[01:27:21]  It's about Germany.
[01:27:23]  But it's called Heimat.
[01:27:26]  And it's a German TV movie series that spans like 1919 to like 2000.
[01:27:34]  But it follows this one, it kind of jumps in the like it goes to Heimat 2, Heimat 3.
[01:27:40]  I think Heimat 2 is in the 70s or the 60s, 70s.
[01:27:43]  And then Heimat 3 is like Berlin Wall post-Berlin Wall.
[01:27:47]  But it like follows this one family or this kind of community because Heimat means like homeland in German.
[01:27:57]  And so it in the Rhineland.
[01:28:01]  But we just got to 19, it's like 1939 just hit.
[01:28:04]  And it's funny watching them all, like a bunch of people in the town started sporting Hitler mustaches, and they're all like really excited because they're like, everyone's doing so well.
[01:28:14]  There's so much money.
[01:28:16]  And so much me.
[01:28:19]  But they're like, oh, our kid can't come back.
[01:28:22]  We don't really know why, but they won't let him in the country.
[01:28:25]  And like one of the cousins gets abducted for being a communist, but everyone is still like trying to, you know, please the Fuhrer.
[01:28:35]  Well, speaking of Maduro has pled not guilty.
[01:28:42]  They've held off on asking for bail because they're like, we need a little more time.
[01:28:46]  He's got this lawyer.
[01:28:47]  I think it's the same lawyer as Julian Assange, one of Julian Assange's lawyers.
[01:28:52]  And he is saying that he's a prisoner of war and it's been kidnapped.
[01:28:59]  And I think that they're actually, you know, I've asked some lawyers I know.
[01:29:02]  I got to still get in touch with some of the big guns that I know to be to like see if that is if there is some legality to that.

=== Maduro's Legal Battle (15:33) ===

[01:29:10]  I mean, obviously this whole thing is illegal in some way or in probably a million ways.
[01:29:15]  But I'm trying to figure out exactly how it's illegal.
[01:29:18]  And I think it might be one of those things that's so illegal that it almost doesn't matter.
[01:29:22]  You know, like it's like almost unprecedented.
[01:29:24]  It's illegal.
[01:29:25]  Well, it's also such a show trial that is, and show trials by definition are basically kind of illegal because of the nature of a show trial.
[01:29:37]  I don't know.
[01:29:38]  The whole thing is crazy.
[01:29:39]  Also just what a spectacle for now the you know bright red, bleeding communist New York City under Zorhan Mamdani to now have this high profile anti-socialist trial downtown.
[01:29:59]  It's funny there was this, like there was this crazy video on you know some one of the major networks that was talking about Maduro and they were like when he found out, when he was read his rights, he couldn't believe that he had such rights, such legal rights in the country.
[01:30:18]  He couldn't believe that he was afforded all of these legal luxuries, like right to an attorney, a right to, you know, not incriminate yourself whatever whatever, whatever.
[01:30:29]  And it was just such crazy propaganda and crude, even like it's not or like so vulgar.
[01:30:37]  You know it was not even like yeah man we're, we really are not, we're not sending our best.
[01:30:45]  No, I believe me, i've been, i've been uh sort of exploring uh, young people, gen Z tick tocks talking about this and it's tough, it's tough, it's a tough landscape out.
[01:30:55]  What are they?
[01:30:56]  What are they saying?
[01:30:57]  It's like a lot of like stupid about how badass Delta Forest is.
[01:31:02]  There's some woke stuff.
[01:31:03]  I've been kind of looking for the woke stuff.
[01:31:05]  Sure, it's like some woke stuff about like don't speak for Venezuelans or whatever, like we're glad the dictator's gone um, it's just, it's all the shit that you can imagine, but it's just sort of gents, I mean, and frankly, they all ate, they all ate and left no crumbs.
[01:31:19]  Um, but Maduro is uh, it's interesting.
[01:31:23]  And also just to say that, back to the Zoron thing, real quick his fucking he got I don't know what he was smoking, but when he said that uh, he's like Maduro and uh, A Diaz Canal are both dictators and like brutal I think you call them brutal dictators in a, in an interview it's like why even bring that up?
[01:31:46]  You should just say, I mean, maybe he believes that, I don't know.
[01:31:49]  Certainly some people uh, within DSA do believe that um, although I think it's probably a minority position.
[01:31:56]  But he uh he, it's like just say, you don't know who they are.
[01:32:01]  Sorry, I got distracted because I was imagining when you said they ate and left no crumbs first and we're talking about propaganda, I just imagined, like Yomni Park adopting that to appeal to Gen Z, but is talking about eating rats.
[01:32:17]  We ate the rats and left no crumbs.
[01:32:23]  We, we would, we would.
[01:32:25]  When we were in, when we were in North Korea in the camps, we could only dream of reheating someone else's nachos.
[01:32:35]  We could only dream of such things when we were snatched too.
[01:32:42]  We were snatched, Okay, we should talk a little bit about Del Codriguez before we get into the oil stuff because I do want to talk about both of these things.
[01:33:01]  The new president of Venezuela.
[01:33:03]  Yeah, so there's some consensus building around Del Cotentially betraying him, selling him out to Maduro.
[01:33:14]  And then there's a lot of people pushing back on that consensus.
[01:33:17]  Yeah.
[01:33:18]  Just like kind of a narrative landscape I'm giving you.
[01:33:22]  There was a lot of money out on what Duro said.
[01:33:26]  I'm just going to say that.
[01:33:27]  Yeah.
[01:33:28]  I would not be surprised if someone got paid off or multiple people got paid off.
[01:33:33]  People should, I think, remember, but maybe they don't know this.
[01:33:39]  But like we, you know, when we, right before we went into Iraq, we paid off a ton of generals in Iraq so that they stood down.
[01:33:49]  That was not something they really wanted coming out, but it was something that was confirmed by CENTCOM, I think, and Tommy Franks even.
[01:33:59]  This is going back a long time, aging ourselves.
[01:34:02]  But no, I mean, they paid off and bribed a ton of generals before actually going in to make the entire thing a lot easier.
[01:34:11]  Yeah.
[01:34:11]  Yeah.
[01:34:12]  I mean, it's, it's, I mean, there's also, you can say, you know, we kill you or you do this or et cetera, et cetera.
[01:34:17]  I think, you know, it's, it's.
[01:34:19]  Though money talks.
[01:34:20]  Yeah, money does talk.
[01:34:21]  You know, it's obviously one is reminded a little bit of the fall of Assad as well and like the speed at which that happened.
[01:34:29]  Obviously, it's a completely different scenario in many ways.
[01:34:33]  But it is also, it's a country that's been under a lot of sanctions for a long time, hollowed out.
[01:34:39]  Although Venezuela was certainly doing better than Syria in many ways, but and certainly government was much stronger.
[01:34:47]  It's just, it's, it's, we don't know.
[01:34:49]  I mean, that's the thing is like there's a lot of portrayal of Del Codriguez as having sold Maduro out.
[01:34:58]  And there's points to be made for that, I guess, and points to be made against that.
[01:35:02]  And like, again, like, the thing is, like, all anyone can really do is like speculate with facts that are only kind of half facts because a lot of the reporting coming out about this is English language reporting in media that has been openly hostile to Chavismo and Venezuela, you know, since the early 2000s.
[01:35:20]  And so it's tough to say.
[01:35:23]  I will say the circumstances don't look great.
[01:35:25]  Well, Delsi has come out and insisted that Maduro is still president, though she's been sworn in, right?
[01:35:30]  And you read that, you know, this thing that she said on Telegram or whatever, pushing back on a lot of stuff.
[01:35:37]  I mean, she does have to say that constitutionally, or I believe they have to call elections within like 30 days.
[01:35:43]  So this is kind of buying her and whatever kind of, you know, little kind of coalition of power that she's, that she's kind of, you know, you know, trying to build a bunch of time, especially now that Trump has like signaled that it's not going to be machado, you know, I think that, and that she's kind of come out and said that she's open to working with the U.S. and we're going to, you know, we're going to work with them on.
[01:36:12]  I mean, look, everyone wants the sanctions lifted.
[01:36:15]  I think even the U.S. would be down to lift the sanctions.
[01:36:17]  I think the U.S. actually does want to lift the sanctions, but needs a lot of political cover to kind of do so.
[01:36:23]  Maybe we can talk about that at the end.
[01:36:26]  But weirdly, there was a so Reuters reported as everything was going down that Delsey was in Russia at the time of the attack.
[01:36:33]  Yes.
[01:36:33]  And then that got walked back a few hours later by the Russians.
[01:36:39]  And then the New York Times kind of confirming and reporting that she was in Caracas.
[01:36:44]  This is very weird.
[01:36:46]  Well, that's what makes me be like, are they trying to portray her as like a, you know, as having stabbed Maduro in the back?
[01:36:54]  And like, so this is, is this a psychological operation?
[01:36:57]  Because if she wasn't in Russia, then why is four sources telling Reuters she's in Russia?
[01:37:04]  Or perhaps they wanted that there was supposed to be something different that went down.
[01:37:10]  Maybe they were going to, if there was an avenue open for them to replace the government, they would have tried to do, you know what I mean?
[01:37:18]  Like maybe some of that was getting kind of like staying open.
[01:37:21]  I have no idea, but I would love a follow-up on that.
[01:37:24]  I would love someone to kind of talk to Reuters about that and get some more information about how they came to report that.
[01:37:34]  Because that's really crazy.
[01:37:37]  Let's talk for a minute about Delsi.
[01:37:38]  So she is, you mentioned this already, but she's the sister of Jorge Rodriguez, who is a foundational figure within Chavismo.
[01:37:47]  He was part of Hugo's circle for like very, very early on.
[01:37:54]  And Jorge is third in the line of succession as well.
[01:37:57]  They're the kids of Jorge Rodriguez Sr., who is a very famous leftist activist who died in custody after being tortured by the Venezuelan state in the 70s.
[01:38:07]  And that was really the kind of, you know, having Jorge next to him, that was really important to Chavez because it lended Chavismo an important kind of historical and moral credibility that the other technocrats within his orbit like just didn't have.
[01:38:26]  Yeah.
[01:38:27]  So Jorge was Chavez's VP and he was like head of National Electoral Council.
[01:38:32]  He's also Minister of Communication.
[01:38:34]  These are not ceremonial positions.
[01:38:36]  These are big positions.
[01:38:37]  Okay.
[01:38:38]  So Jorge was really, you know, attuned to the machinery of the state was like maybe a way to put that.
[01:38:45]  But there was always a little bit of a tension between the two of them.
[01:38:49]  Jorge was very ambitious, not, you know, necessarily trying to replace Hugo as kind of like a symbol or being some charismatic leader, but literally at kind of maybe getting his hands on more of the state decision making power and the direction of the state.
[01:39:09]  And, you know, if anyone knows anything about Chavez, they should know that he was very sensitive to that and kept people kind of, you know, at a distance in order to prevent anyone kind of from being kind of seen as a pull of authority against him.
[01:39:27]  And so he kind of, you know, he, there was a kind of falling out period with him in Jorge where not like falling out, but like a cooling where he kind of like Chavez, like what he did with a lot of other people moved him out of like, you know, very front-facing power and into kind of like less visible roles as a way to kind of contain a potential like political drama between all of them.
[01:39:54]  So Delsie is kind of the opposite of her brother.
[01:39:56]  So she's not really, I would say in the machinery of the state so much as like a very kind of like a useful attack dog.
[01:40:08]  She's kind of a performer, enforcer.
[01:40:10]  If you've ever seen her speak, even just the thing that you read, like she is very publicly loyal and very good at speaking the language of the state, especially the kind of like anti-imperialist language and kind of drumming up popular support.
[01:40:31]  So I think she's never been seen as someone who would become her kind of own independent power center, from my understanding.
[01:40:41]  Yeah.
[01:40:42]  So after Hugo's death, Delsi's role really expanded under Maduro.
[01:40:47]  She became vice president.
[01:40:49]  She was like chief sanctions manager.
[01:40:52]  I think she was economic minister at one point, but she was very involved in the head of PEDAVESA too at some point.
[01:40:58]  That would make sense.
[01:40:59]  She still is.
[01:41:00]  She was very involved in a lot of the navigating a bunch of the sanctions stuff, which is interesting.
[01:41:07]  But the two siblings are kind of operating as this like dual structure that Chavez deliberately avoided consolidating, which is kind of interesting.
[01:41:15]  So you have on the one hand, Jorge, who's this like internal management and institutional control.
[01:41:19]  And then on the other, Del C, who really is this like forward-facing kind of public messaging, you know, sending out regime signals, all of that.
[01:41:31]  Now, I would say if, because it's on the table, if these two betrayed Maduro, it's not because they're necessarily like they've turned and are embracing the opposition, but rather they are kind of prioritizing their own survival over their personal loyalty, right?
[01:41:51]  Kind of more of a like not stopping what could have been stopped or, you know, kind of structurally positioned to kind of let it all happen.
[01:41:59]  When she was VP, she was meeting with a bunch of U.S. officials.
[01:42:04]  Yeah, it's, you know, she again, like, you know, if she's managing sanctioned stuff, this stuff does make sense.
[01:42:10]  You know, her and Dios Dado Cabello met with a State Department deputy in Haiti during Obama.
[01:42:16]  Rodriguez also met with John Kerry directly in 2016 at an OAS General Assembly.
[01:42:21]  Kind of nothing came of this because when Trump gets back, gets in, not back in, it's the first term.
[01:42:26]  It's kind of back to square one.
[01:42:27]  And remember, he obviously had Elliot Abrams advising him on Venezuela.
[01:42:31]  Various politicians do go down there.
[01:42:34]  You know, there's the whole Guaido time, but then also there's the Sitco 6 where six members of, or six employees at Sitco arrested by the Venezuelan government.
[01:42:44]  And there was this sort of American attempts to free them.
[01:42:48]  And so various, you know, congressmen and senators go down there.
[01:42:52]  I did think that was one thing that stood out.
[01:42:54]  And I don't know what this means or anything by it, but Eric Prince did go down there to meet with her in 2019.
[01:43:01]  Obviously, that is Eric Prince, the head of Blackwater.
[01:43:04]  Apparently they had dinner at her house and had a meeting.
[01:43:08]  Shouldn't be too shocking.
[01:43:10]  You know, Prince had developed a plan to actually invade Haiti a year before and present it to the U.S. government, which they allegedly denied him.
[01:43:21]  You know, at the same time, Eric Prince is working pretty closely with the Chinese government.
[01:43:25]  And so it's not like, you know, there's some connections there.
[01:43:29]  The trip was interesting.
[01:43:31]  And this is sort of Bloomberg report about it.
[01:43:33]  It was arranged by an ex-SAS man named Ian Hannum, who was a JP Morgan sort of like mining goat.
[01:43:39]  Like he was really like one of their top mining guys.
[01:43:42]  He left JP Morgan and like Prince, he had been interested in minerals in Afghanistan and mining there.
[01:43:49]  And Bloomberg reports that the pair met with Delce Rodriguez in her home to discuss Prince providing security for Hannem's mining operations in gold mining regions and to negotiate to free the Sitco 6.
[01:44:00]  Now, it's worth noting that basically all this was denied by essentially every party.
[01:44:06]  So we don't know what they actually talked about there.
[01:44:09]  Although Eric Prince, to be clear, has shown himself to be rather ideologically flexible and sort of like this, not ideologically, I guess.
[01:44:17]  Ideologically, I'd say he's pretty firm, but flexible in some ways.
[01:44:22]  And really all he wants is gold and killing.
[01:44:27]  And just, you know, and I don't know what that means.
[01:44:30]  I don't think it really means anything here.
[01:44:31]  I'm just saying like these contacts did happen.
[01:44:35]  And it's, you know, it's an interesting contact.
[01:44:39]  Delceie Rodriguez seemed like she was pretty well placed to take over.

=== Chevron's Mysterious Oil Deals (11:10) ===

[01:44:43]  And Trump hasn't even like, they've been almost poo-pooing the thought of like elections coming up or anything.
[01:44:49]  They seem to just be totally uncommitted to Machado coming in.
[01:44:55]  They don't seem that she has a plan.
[01:44:56]  They seem to understand that that would drag the country further into chaos.
[01:45:00]  And so they're seemingly like ready to work with the current Venezuelan government, although they're still blockaded.
[01:45:08]  It doesn't make any sense.
[01:45:09]  Well, that's the whole thing, right?
[01:45:11]  I mean, they're completely ready to work with this administration or like this, you know, these new leaders who are basically saying the same thing that Maduro was saying, just now there's no Maduro.
[01:45:27]  Yeah.
[01:45:27]  Like Maduro was like, yes, come in.
[01:45:31]  We will open up everything for the U.S. oil companies.
[01:45:35]  We will open up every, we will work with you guys, like whatever you need, you know?
[01:45:41]  And Delsey seems to be saying the same thing.
[01:45:43]  And the Americans are now amenable to it.
[01:45:46]  It's almost as if they just needed.
[01:45:49]  I do think there's a tinge of taco here, I will say, in the sense.
[01:45:54]  How so?
[01:45:54]  In the sense that like Trump needed, there was this huge fucking military buildup, this huge show of strength.
[01:46:02]  And what came of it was the status quo, but without Maduro, like nothing, again, we're going to talk about this, but nothing has structurally changed in its place, except for now the U.S. can say, okay, great.
[01:46:21]  We look strong, we win.
[01:46:24]  And now we have the political cover to potentially lift the sanctions and work with you and, you know, get some, maybe get something out of it.
[01:46:35]  Whereas we couldn't really do that before because I'd look weak and caving to Maduro.
[01:46:41]  For what it's worth, this is what she posted on Instagram.
[01:46:44]  God, I hate this world.
[01:46:47]  I believe it was the day after, yeah, two days ago.
[01:46:50]  Venezuela reaffirms its, and this is in English, right?
[01:46:53]  Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence.
[01:46:56]  Our country aspires to live without external threats, an environment of respect and international cooperation.
[01:47:01]  We believe that global peace is built by first guaranteeing peace within each nation.
[01:47:05]  We prioritize moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the U.S. and Venezuela and between Venezuela and other countries in the region, premised on sovereign equality and non-interference.
[01:47:16]  These principles guide our diplomacy with the rest of the world.
[01:47:18]  We invite the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.
[01:47:27]  President Donald Trump, our peoples in our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war.
[01:47:32]  This has always been President Nicholas Maduro's message and is the message of all Venezuela right now.
[01:47:36]  This is the Venezuela I believe in and I've dedicated my life to.
[01:47:38]  I dream of Venezuela where all good Venezuelans can come together.
[01:47:41]  Venezuela has the right to peace, development, sovereignty, and a future.
[01:47:45]  Dulcy Rodriguez, acting president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
[01:47:49]  And, you know, I think a lot of people were like, that's her caving.
[01:47:52]  That's her caving.
[01:47:53]  The fact of the matter is, is that Maduro says this exact same stuff in, if you've been following this at all, Maduro has been talking like this the entire year.
[01:48:03]  Yes.
[01:48:04]  Not just year, like kind of since 2024.
[01:48:08]  Yeah.
[01:48:08]  I mean, they've been liberalizing the country also for a long time.
[01:48:13]  Yeah.
[01:48:14]  Yeah.
[01:48:14]  I mean, under the sanctions stuff, the economy has changed a lot.
[01:48:17]  Yes.
[01:48:19]  Now, we got to talk about the oil because there's a big old debate.
[01:48:23]  Was this about oil?
[01:48:25]  Was this not about oil?
[01:48:26]  Trump had come out, came out and said outright, he's like, this is about oil.
[01:48:30]  And he literally like zero humanitarian language.
[01:48:34]  I guess there was the gang stuff.
[01:48:35]  That's not humanitarian.
[01:48:36]  It's like kind of just, I don't know what that is.
[01:48:38]  I don't know what that is.
[01:48:39]  It's just kind of a little racist.
[01:48:42]  There's no like moralistic neocon democracy script, no international law messaging.
[01:48:48]  He was just like, this is fucking about oil.
[01:48:51]  Black gold.
[01:48:53]  And we're going to go in there and we're going to take it and it's going to be ours.
[01:48:56]  And he's like, the difference between this and Iraq, he said this today.
[01:49:00]  Between this and Iraq is in Iraq, they didn't keep the oil.
[01:49:03]  Man.
[01:49:05]  So there you have it.
[01:49:06]  He's not wrong, by the way.
[01:49:08]  That's true.
[01:49:08]  But it's funny because this has been like, this got like repeated and celebrated by a bunch of MAGA guys that were just like, yeah, fuck you.
[01:49:17]  Fuck you.
[01:49:17]  Yeah.
[01:49:18]  Fuck you.
[01:49:18]  Like not knowing anything about everyone, everyone be living in the past.
[01:49:23]  Facts.
[01:49:25]  But Trump was speaking today about it too.
[01:49:27]  And he's like, we have a lot of oil to drill, which is going to bring down oil prices even further.
[01:49:33]  So for people who don't know, oil prices are real cheap right now.
[01:49:36]  Yeah.
[01:49:36]  Historically, we don't really want to, I mean, maybe that's about the midterms and he's confusing that with gas prices.
[01:49:44]  But I think he might be.
[01:49:45]  Yeah, we don't want U.S. shale and the majors would be like pretty bummed at oil getting cheaper than what it is now because it started the industry starts to get pretty fragile under a certain kind of price.
[01:50:01]  But, you know, you, you mentioned this.
[01:50:03]  I want to say Politico published a piece like shortly after the kidnapping, like same day, that the admin had basically been working the phone lines for the, you know, the past 10 days talking to oil execs, trying to get them to commit to, you know, throwing a bunch of money in to rehabilitate Venezuela's oil production facilities.
[01:50:28]  And they were basically like, look, if you guys want compensation for all the assets that they quote unquote stole, then you kind of have to go back in now, commit billions, tens of billions, really, and rebuild the oil sector there.
[01:50:44]  And there was like a similar piece in the FT that came out a few hours after that, but it was like from a different angle where it was like the oil companies were not stoked on this because they were just like, this is a huge capital investment over like a massive period of time.
[01:50:59]  And the government, you know, was like, look, the, you guys want reimbursement or whatever for these stolen assets.
[01:51:07]  It's that, that's really, there's like the two cases.
[01:51:10]  I think maybe there's maybe the more cases, but the big ones were with ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips with in the ISDS cases.
[01:51:22]  And I think they both, maybe it's just the Conoco Phillips one that had a judgment, but it was like, I don't know, four.
[01:51:30]  Exxon's.
[01:51:30]  Maybe it's Exxon's too, but like it was like something like four to six billion dollars, I think, that they're owed.
[01:51:38]  Well, Exxon's still in Venezuela.
[01:51:40]  Chevron.
[01:51:41]  Chevron is.
[01:51:42]  That's what it is.
[01:51:43]  Yeah.
[01:51:43]  Chevron.
[01:51:44]  Chevron is.
[01:51:45]  They're the one exception to the sanctions.
[01:51:49]  But basically, the government is like, look, you guys want your money back, you know, gun to the head.
[01:51:56]  In order to get that, you got to go in and actually commit some money to rebuild, which is a very like classic Donnie deals to me.
[01:52:05]  Like that feels like a kind of Trump style, mafia style infrastructure deal.
[01:52:11]  But I do think we should talk through the oil thing for a second because there is a bunch of debate and confusion about the like, we did it for oil.
[01:52:18]  No, we didn't do it for oil kind of thing.
[01:52:21]  And it is a bit of a canard, as they say, if you mean it literally, like as in U.S. wants to oil barrels.
[01:52:33]  I don't think that makes sense.
[01:52:34]  A lot of people come out and said the same thing.
[01:52:36]  It doesn't really make sense given the market and the we're not living in the kind of age of the petrodollar, which may be talking about.
[01:52:45]  But oil is very, very cheap now.
[01:52:48]  And thanks to shale, U.S. supply isn't constrained.
[01:52:51]  In fact, we have an abundance of oil.
[01:52:56]  We export a lot of oil.
[01:52:57]  Yes, we are.
[01:52:58]  We're a net exporter.
[01:53:02]  And, you know, any serious pressure would like risk near-term disruption and like, you know, could actually, you know, be really bad politics going into the midterms.
[01:53:15]  Plus, rebuilding Payta Vesa is going to take maybe a decade and tens of billions, if not $100 billion, which would all pay out after Trump leaves, which, so none of that kind of really makes sense.
[01:53:28]  Also, like, and I do think this is an important point.
[01:53:33]  Energy companies are huge globally global publicly traded firms.
[01:53:39]  They are not like national companies in any meaningful sense.
[01:53:43]  They're not like the U.S.
[01:53:45]  This is not the 1920s, 1930s, and not even the 1960s or 70s.
[01:53:50]  Like these are massive, like global firms that also like deal in other forms of energy as well, right?
[01:53:59]  Like this idea that it's some kind of commercials.
[01:54:01]  No, but it's, you know, that there are these, there's this kind of like MAGA nest, like MAGA trades on this like very strange 20th century nostalgia.
[01:54:13]  And you see it in this kind of like, yeah, the U.S. companies going in and taking the oil.
[01:54:18]  Like that is not how any of this fucking works.
[01:54:21]  You know, this is like a real kind of cosplay moment for the right where they're like acting out this version of state power that actually doesn't map onto how these firms or how power in general like actually operates.
[01:54:35]  It's, I mean, it's interesting.
[01:54:36]  You can see from like the U.S., you know, it's the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Homeland Security sort of meme, AI meme or, you know, kind of whatever dissident alt-right videos that they kind of post or whatever.
[01:54:49]  So much of it is like 1990s style.
[01:54:52]  Yeah.
[01:54:52]  And so much of it seems like, you know, it reminds me of like, do you remember when people wore those like Reagan Bush t-shirts?
[01:54:59]  Yeah.
[01:55:00]  That was like a big thing.
[01:55:01]  It reminds you of that.
[01:55:02]  It's like, it's this sort of like draping yourselves in the 1980s or 1990s as if it's like the 1950s, 1960s.
[01:55:10]  It's the same way.
[01:55:11]  It's all kind of like this sort of brew of the past.
[01:55:15]  It's a bit lynchian, funny enough, or even nostalgia for Lynch.
[01:55:19]  It's like a, you know, on top of that.
[01:55:22]  It's, but it's, it's interesting like to see these people sort of talk like that.
[01:55:26]  It's almost like they're, it seems like, I mean, and again, this is just me sort of observing like right-wing chatter about this, but like a lot of it seems to be almost an imitation of maybe cheering on like the invasion of Granada or the capture of Manuel Noriega and the invasion of Panama.
[01:55:44]  It seems like these people are almost sort of like acting out what they would have done in those circumstances.
[01:55:49]  I don't know how to explain it.
[01:55:51]  No, there's a dreamlike quality to a lot of this.

=== Rare Earths' Geopolitical Leverage (15:59) ===

[01:55:54]  Yeah.
[01:55:54]  And I think that the audience, like, yeah, they're like lapping it up because they bought this idea through these memes and through the kind of shit that people like Vance and Trump say that you can like return to this imagined past.
[01:56:12]  And that, like the way that this is why the kind of performance that, like Trump and Hegseth do specifically in that speech is so fascinating to me, because I think it's doing so much work to sell this narrative, which includes American oil companies, are profit, are like going in, like it's um, you know,
[01:56:41]  setting up these banana republics, as if that is even really I don't know, even really maybe a big show of power, given the geopolitical stakes and the changes in the world that have taken place over the past hundred 150 years.
[01:57:01]  You know what i'm saying.
[01:57:02]  Yeah yeah um, you know.
[01:57:06]  The same thing has been brought up also with the rare earth stuff, which is kind of interesting.
[01:57:13]  Like Trump has there, you know there is uh, Venezuela does have a bunch of minerals.
[01:57:19]  Marco Rubio mentioned the minerals as well.
[01:57:21]  I think Trump did too.
[01:57:23]  Uh, he came out and was like actually, you know he did, Trump did say something that's like so facts, where he was like rare earths are not rare yeah, they're from the earth, they're from the, and I was like damn, that's so good.
[01:57:35]  But then the second part of that quote was like the thing that's rare is processing and I was like damn, that's even more facts, because that's true and famously, the Chinese, of course, have built up that supply chain for decades and can process these rare earths and these minerals in the?
[01:57:57]  U.s.
[01:57:57]  Can't, like we don't need to have a major processing conversation.
[01:58:02]  Well, the thing is is also, I mean yeah, China also has a little bit more space than we do and can commit, you know, are they?
[01:58:11]  They're much more amenable to the environmental destruction that processing these rare earths you know wrecks on the locations that these facilities are placed in.
[01:58:23]  So um anyway, just something to kind of like mention because again, it being like now we have access to these rare earths, that doesn't seem to really hold as much as the same thing as like we're gonna pump a bunch of oil out of Venezuela.
[01:58:38]  There was a huge piece in Bloomberg defending the idea that this was to like start some big U.s Opec Style like producer cartel.
[01:58:49]  I also I don't know if i'm like convinced by that.
[01:58:51]  I mean, I think maybe that's some goal, but it's kind of like straight, how do I say this?
[01:58:59]  China keeps pushing ahead with all this like new tech yeah, and the?
[01:59:03]  U.S. Is clearly willing to like lock itself into this older, higher cost technology path that has like basically zero future, and especially when you're looking at potentially reaching peak oil.
[01:59:20]  Demand right growth, growth demand uh, or demand growth, sorry is like real soft right now and continuing to get like softer as more and more um, electrification especially especially.
[01:59:34]  gets adopted around the world.
[01:59:36]  Well, and especially as these damn gas stoves are man, these mandates to replace them with electric stoves, these convection ovens no, but just in general, like everyone knows, electrification is the future and I know that we talk, you know many, many Verso Style talks have led with the, the?
[01:59:52]  U.s.
[01:59:53]  Locking itself into its own like death spiral or whatever um, especially with fossil fuels.
[01:59:59]  But like it does, you know, it is crazy um and, and it adds to the like, none of this actually makes any sense, and The same thing with the oil, where it's like, you know, just to like put it like point blank, getting acc, you know, having access to the Venezuelan oil, like, and not being profitable for the U.S. in any kind of way only works if, one,
[02:00:28]  you can actually add real supply and there's actual demand for it and prices are high enough to justify the capital needed to bring the supply online.
[02:00:41]  And we don't live in that world right now.
[02:00:43]  Yeah.
[02:00:44]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:00:46]  And the bet that we will live in that world in 10 years or however long it takes to bring all of this stuff online seems like a bad bet.
[02:00:56]  Well, what if we go to war with a country that has mass electrification, like Denmark, for instance, and take them over and our sort of satrap in charge of it declares that it has to be gas stoves, gas cars.
[02:01:07]  Your little electric bike is now a gas bike.
[02:01:10]  You're all driving motorcycles now.
[02:01:11]  I mean, we could create the demand.
[02:01:12]  This shit is expensive.
[02:01:15]  Yeah.
[02:01:16]  No.
[02:01:16]  I mean, I do think on the flip side, one way to look at oil as a potential kind of mover here is less about pumping barrels and more as a kind of lever.
[02:01:32]  Right.
[02:01:33]  Now, what I mean by that is, you know, U.S. can't really, it doesn't really set global oil price, but it does care about price dynamics at the margin.
[02:01:44]  And especially like Venezuela, you know, was its production were kind of like these discount barrels, right?
[02:01:53]  Yeah.
[02:01:53]  Because they're operating under sanctions and the discount barrels and kind of who controls marginal supply that drags prices down.
[02:02:03]  Okay.
[02:02:03]  And when you're in an environment where demand growth is soft, those marginal barrels actually matter more to the general market.
[02:02:13]  I mentioned that shale, you know, shale gets fragile below certain price floors.
[02:02:17]  And so what you kind of want to target with oil is this like managed tightness where there is stable floor for producers, no inflation spikes, and a kind of tightness that doesn't push shale into a boom, which is just like kind of monkey's paw style recreates a bus cycle and is bad for the industry.
[02:02:39]  So Venezuela comes into play here because all of its supply has been like very chaotic production wise because of the infrastructure and the restrictive sanctions.
[02:02:51]  And so, and also heavily discounted.
[02:02:55]  And all of it was getting like kind of, not all of it, but lots of it got routed to China.
[02:03:00]  Yeah.
[02:03:01]  So those discounted.
[02:03:02]  4% of China's supply or whatever, officially.
[02:03:05]  Officially, yeah, totally.
[02:03:07]  And those discounted barrels like also undercut price floors globally and make downturns a bit worse.
[02:03:16]  So you could argue that pulling Venezuela barrels into kind of US aligned channels isn't really about like adding volume super fast because that would be a disaster in the market, but about cementing control and reducing chaos on the margin.
[02:03:32]  Then, you know, I think really the biggest payoff here is the dollar system.
[02:03:39]  Now, one of the biggest stories, if not the biggest story of 2025 was the debasement story, aka the decline of the dollar.
[02:03:49]  And, you know, Venezuela has become a little bit of a lab for selling oil through gray channels and experimenting with non-standard settlement.
[02:04:01]  They were doing, because, you know, because of the sanctions, they had, they were doing all this kind of like bypassing and trying to find new routes around U.S. controlled financial systems.
[02:04:11]  And that would include like stablecoin settlement or paying in the yuan, trying to get around, you know, SWIFT systems.
[02:04:21]  And now, you know, the U.S. can kind of once now that they have also the political cover to lift the sanctions, they can kind of force U.S., you know, Venezuelan production to go under U.S. firms and licensing control.
[02:04:37]  Yeah.
[02:04:37]  Um, for the export pathway, regardless of the output of what Venezuela is putting out there, but they're going to then push settlement back into dollar rails because like all of the contracts and the insurance shipping compliance and the payments and all of it then has to run through U.S. controlled systems, which will shore up the dollar, right?
[02:05:02]  So that's kind of a, you know, it's a defensive move that hits China and Russia also in like separate ways.
[02:05:07]  So I think there's a way to kind of treat oil as a claim rather than a barrel, right?
[02:05:13]  Like its value then is more in future control rather than immediate production.
[02:05:22]  That makes sense to me.
[02:05:23]  You know, and unproduced.
[02:05:24]  It's not really immediate production anyways, right?
[02:05:26]  Like it's, it would take so much infrastructure investment that like we wouldn't get the real black gold for like a decade.
[02:05:33]  Well, not enough to justify like they could, they're still producing now.
[02:05:41]  So you could take those barrels, but it's again, very chaotic, kind of like not maybe worth the investment, you would, you would say.
[02:05:50]  Yeah.
[02:05:51]  But unproduced, it's like basically works as leverage, you know, as a kind of like geopolitical bargaining power.
[02:05:58]  And I think that is a way to kind of understand the oil move.
[02:06:02]  So Rubio was on like meet the press or whatever on Sunday, and he said something totally different where he was like, we don't need Venezuelan oil.
[02:06:10]  We have plenty of oil in the United States, in fact.
[02:06:12]  What we're not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States.
[02:06:17]  They're not going to come from outside our hemisphere, destabilize our region in our own backyard and have us pay the price for it.
[02:06:26]  It's interesting.
[02:06:27]  And so he's like, okay, we're actually, we don't need the oil.
[02:06:30]  We're good on that.
[02:06:31]  We just can't let anyone else have the oil.
[02:06:33]  Well, it's just that he also said like U.S. wouldn't be running Venezuela at all, contradicting Trump.
[02:06:39]  Yeah.
[02:06:40]  And then he was like, we're going to instead be we're going to pressure the country through the oil blockade.
[02:06:46]  And again, this is the status quo.
[02:06:48]  Yeah.
[02:06:49]  So it's already doing that.
[02:06:50]  Why would we blockade if it's our oil?
[02:06:54]  Yeah.
[02:06:54]  Well, yeah, one wonders, right?
[02:06:56]  I mean, it's, it's like, it seems like they're saying like, oh, we'll use this as leverage or whatever, but like leverage to do what then?
[02:07:01]  Is it this the thing that you like?
[02:07:03]  It doesn't make sense.
[02:07:04]  No, it makes absolutely no sense.
[02:07:06]  They want it like both ways at all times.
[02:07:09]  And it's just like another part of how what everything that happened, none of it makes any sense.
[02:07:15]  Yeah.
[02:07:18]  And, you know, it's like all of these, you know, for what happened, like Maduro didn't need to go for structural, for these like structural outcomes, right?
[02:07:28]  Like the security and economic institutions are still intact.
[02:07:31]  It's literally the same government continuing under a new label, but not even a new label.
[02:07:36]  It's like the same label.
[02:07:38]  Yeah.
[02:07:38]  Just like different cork.
[02:07:41]  Yep.
[02:07:41]  Yeah.
[02:07:42]  Just literally there's two people gone.
[02:07:45]  And then they're doing what Maduro was ready and willing to do.
[02:07:49]  So I mean, I don't know.
[02:07:51]  I think one thing for me at least, I wonder how you feel about this.
[02:07:57]  Like it definitely seems like the U.S. is not interested in a long war of attrition unless they have a proxy doing it for them.
[02:08:05]  No, absolutely.
[02:08:06]  Well, no, that's, but that's been the case for a while.
[02:08:09]  Like that's, I think, I think that's the sort of lesson that the U.S. or whatever has learned from Afghanistan is that like you don't send guys really, like, or you send like a vanishingly small group of guys to get in, get out.
[02:08:26]  Get in, get out.
[02:08:26]  Or, I mean, you know, it, it doesn't, I don't know.
[02:08:29]  I mean, certainly like the Trump method of doing stuff is he's really enamored by special forces.
[02:08:34]  He thinks they're fucking badass.
[02:08:37]  And so if he has these like objectives that I guess he lays out that they fulfill and that he doesn't qualify those as war.
[02:08:45]  It's like, it's almost like it's part of negotiations is you kill some people here, you kill some people there, and then you're a stronger left.
[02:08:52]  It's part of Donnie Deals.
[02:09:05]  So I think there's a few big questions.
[02:09:07]  One of which is this regime change, which I would say that's a little too early to tell.
[02:09:13]  I mean, the regime has not changed.
[02:09:16]  The regime is still there, but I don't know.
[02:09:18]  But again, like if the U.S. is essentially running it from an aircraft carrier, which is not clear.
[02:09:23]  I don't know.
[02:09:23]  I don't know.
[02:09:24]  I don't think that's the thing.
[02:09:25]  I don't know.
[02:09:25]  It doesn't seem like it is.
[02:09:27]  I don't understand what's happening.
[02:09:29]  It seems like Del C Rodriguez is in conversation with Rubio.
[02:09:32]  We have no idea what the U.S. is asking for.
[02:09:36]  You know, like, are they literally just asking, like, hey, open up this oil field?
[02:09:39]  Or like, oh, do this, do this, do that?
[02:09:41]  Like, we don't know.
[02:09:41]  Maybe it's a tweak.
[02:09:43]  Yeah.
[02:09:43]  Kick the Chinese out.
[02:09:45]  But no, you know what?
[02:09:46]  Trump said, like, one of the first things Trump said was like, oh, the Chinese get their oil.
[02:09:51]  Exactly.
[02:09:52]  Yeah.
[02:09:53]  But it's maybe it's like it goes through us.
[02:09:55]  You know, it doesn't, it doesn't make this.
[02:09:58]  I mentioned it being that we're like in Cold War II.
[02:10:02]  The fact that this none of this makes sense reminds me of the Cold War.
[02:10:06]  The first Cold War.
[02:10:06]  What do you mean?
[02:10:07]  Because there was all these like military operations that were like just totally disguised where that didn't seem to have like a clear motive or like stated reasons that made sense.
[02:10:18]  Like the stated reasons didn't make full sense.
[02:10:20]  Yeah.
[02:10:22]  And there's a big show of propaganda to get people to kind of like buy into them.
[02:10:26]  And it's only through later reporting that you start to understand kind of the chessboard or the moves on the chessboard.
[02:10:34]  You know, like, you know, I mentioned that like if I mean, I do think we're in Cold War II, but like, and that started in like 2014.
[02:10:43]  But I think that you could potentially read some of this as like a hedge against maybe some forthcoming moves in Iran that could produce a blockade.
[02:11:00]  I have no idea.
[02:11:02]  Again, I don't really love to read too much like 12-dimensional chess in this, but I do think that the fact that there are so many questions, even as simple as like, this wasn't regime change, it was just kidnapping of a leader.
[02:11:16]  And now everything is the same as it was before, except different, but not that, not different at all.
[02:11:23]  Yeah.
[02:11:24]  It's very fucking confusing.
[02:11:26]  Yeah.
[02:11:27]  It's, you know, the Iran, the Iran stuff, obviously, Lindsey Graham had this whole appearance on Trump's jet with him.
[02:11:34]  He's wearing a make Iran a great hat again hat.
[02:11:37]  And sweet Aunt Lindsay.
[02:11:41]  Sweet Aunt Lindsay, which Trump has also posed with too.
[02:11:43]  And Trump has been talking about every time there's a protest in Iran.
[02:11:47]  They're like, this is it.
[02:11:48]  They have Patrick Bett David come out and be like, Reza Pahlavi, it is your turn now.

=== Iran Propagandaocalypse (10:32) ===

[02:11:53]  You've got to get away.
[02:11:54]  Your wife is sleeping with her yoga instructor.
[02:11:56]  You need to get back to Iran and lead the people.
[02:12:00]  But they're saying the Iranian, the regime's about to fall.
[02:12:04]  I don't know.
[02:12:04]  Trump has been sort of talking about Iran a little bit.
[02:12:08]  Cuba has come up quite a bit.
[02:12:10]  Trump said that we're not messing with them.
[02:12:12]  They're just, you know, that thing is going to fall on its own.
[02:12:15]  But they just lie all the time.
[02:12:16]  So who knows?
[02:12:17]  I will say that Cuba has had quite an acute energy crisis as of late.
[02:12:22]  And it's been really, things are tougher there now than I think since the 1990s.
[02:12:28]  And Venezuela was a huge supply of oil to them.
[02:12:32]  And I don't know what's happening with that.
[02:12:34]  You know, that doesn't seem like it's going to go very well for Cuba.
[02:12:37]  And so this could be also, I mean, Marco Rubio famously, Cuban, claimed his dad fled from Castro.
[02:12:45]  Obviously, his dad fled before Castro even took power, you know, and was maybe assisted in the assassination of JFK, according to the current president Donald Trump.
[02:12:54]  And, you know, I think they do want to go after Cuba.
[02:12:58]  I think that they probably want to prevent refugees, which is, I think, something that they have probably top of mind.
[02:13:07]  And so they probably want to do it in a way where there are as few refugees as possible.
[02:13:11]  And they talk about Mexico, too.
[02:13:14]  You know, it's interesting.
[02:13:16]  Someone, you know, I'm aware that the Mexican defense ministry is also aware of the fact that if the U.S. starts drone striking Mexico, which they probably already have, then the Mexicans can't actually do anything about it.
[02:13:32]  There's like nothing, there's no recourse they can have.
[02:13:34]  They can't even really publicly complain.
[02:13:37]  And I think that just, you know, that's the de facto world we were living in before.
[02:13:43]  Now it is just the explicit world we're living in now.
[02:13:46]  I don't know, maybe that's better or worse in some ways.
[02:13:50]  I think it's letting people see a little more nakedly how it is, but obviously awareness doesn't mean fucking anything.
[02:13:58]  I mean, it means something, but not much.
[02:14:01]  And this is, this comes from my past weekend spent reading Lukash.
[02:14:06]  And which one?
[02:14:10]  History and class consciousness.
[02:14:12]  But it's also with some more, some more essays in it.
[02:14:16]  And I was in the, what's his, his big essay on organization.
[02:14:19]  I've been, I've been reading.
[02:14:22]  Not big.
[02:14:22]  It's like 30 pages.
[02:14:24]  But I've been reading it closely.
[02:14:26]  And although it doesn't really tell you anything you don't already know, but I don't know.
[02:14:32]  He's a smart guy.
[02:14:34]  Some of the stuff he writes, I'm like, I don't know.
[02:14:36]  I don't know what you're saying.
[02:14:38]  But I try to figure, I try to do like little diagrams to try to figure it out on the page because otherwise it gets a little heady for me.
[02:14:45]  But his little book on Lenin is great.
[02:14:47]  I got to want to read his book on Solzhenit, which is, it's funny because I, it's, yeah.
[02:14:55]  But, but anyways, we're talking about going after Greenland now.
[02:15:00]  And people are just saying shit.
[02:15:02]  I know, but I kind of think that they will go after Greenland.
[02:15:05]  I actually like do think that's going to happen.
[02:15:07]  Liz, the 250th anniversary of this great, amazing nation is coming up in July.
[02:15:12]  Yes, the Sesquintennial.
[02:15:15]  We need a 51st state, baby.
[02:15:17]  I want to say, I mentioned this last year as the thing to watch because I think the fact that it is the USA's 250th anniversary is fucking huge.
[02:15:28]  And a lot of these moves are going to get crazier and crazier the closer we approach that date.
[02:15:35]  For all you morons out there, it's 4th of July.
[02:15:40]  But I do think that Trump loves a pageant.
[02:15:48]  He loves a big show.
[02:15:50]  He loves big explosions and sparkly grandeur.
[02:15:59]  And I just think it's going to get crazier and crazier the closer we get to that date as they're sort of like trying to make this a really, really, really, really big show of power and strength and, you know, projecting that to the world in a moment where the U.S. maybe isn't in that position.
[02:16:22]  Yes.
[02:16:22]  You know, I mean, I think like I mentioned it before, but I want to really like talk about this because the showman angle of this entire operation just really floored me, I think.
[02:16:37]  And I'm like really stuck on it because obviously like war has always kind of come with its own propaganda and its own big showpiece.
[02:16:46]  Sure.
[02:16:46]  Or even just like, you know, like wag the dog kind of style, like literally, you know, false flags or making up things or whatever, whatever.
[02:16:56]  Like, okay, sure.
[02:16:58]  But it's not like, I feel more and more like all like conflicts are being like manufactured to be perceived in a certain way for an audience.
[02:17:11]  And that sometimes like both sides are effectively like cooperating to kind of keep the performance coherent.
[02:17:19]  Like I really always, I, you know, I mentioned it before, but just the kind of the incident with Fordo where the U.S. struck the nuclear facility, again, to like a debatable effect, but it was like really built up in the media and the whole show of it.
[02:17:35]  And then in return, Iran struck the U.S. airbase in Qatar, but that was like pre-agreed upon and no one was there.
[02:17:43]  And it's all sort of like pre-arranged.
[02:17:45]  And it ends up just being this like complete show for this like global audience that is increasingly like glued to their phones and getting all this stuff all from the same place.
[02:17:56]  And I was thinking about that when, I mean, that photo of them in the like, you know, makeshift sit room or whatever it was at Mar-a-Lago with Heg Seth like on the fucking laptop with the projector behind him of the screen.
[02:18:13]  And he's literally searching Venezuela mentions on Twitter.
[02:18:17]  Yes.
[02:18:17]  And I'm just like, it, I, I, the whole thing, it like that is, that to me is like the number one image so far of Trump too.
[02:18:29]  Right.
[02:18:29]  Like, and well, it's a fake situation room at Mar-a-Lago with Twitter on the monitor.
[02:18:35]  Yes.
[02:18:36]  And, you know, it's like, I don't know.
[02:18:40]  The country is like stuck in all of these like simulations and feedback loops and these like performances and cosplays and so obsessed with my mentions.
[02:18:54]  You know what I mean?
[02:18:55]  Like for proverbially speaking, I guess, that that image sort of like, I don't know, it is such a perfect, it condenses so much of what is like sick about this moment in American history and like where the state kind of is at for me.
[02:19:18]  I don't know.
[02:19:20]  It's all just a bit, it's like the show is more important than what they're actually doing.
[02:19:28]  Well, I think that's true in many ways for Trump.
[02:19:32]  You know, to me, so much of what's happening right now is, and this is such a sort of trite observation, but like just the fact that there is no socialist poll.
[02:19:40]  I mean, there is, in a sense, some multi-polarity, but like not in a similar way to like the USSR or anything like that, or even China pre-Mal Dementia really getting to him.
[02:19:53]  And It really is like, it seems, I don't know how to describe it, but like, like for Cuba, for instance, like you have this, this, you know, communist country fairly close to Florida, one of the few even nominally, at least in name, communist countries in the, in the world right now.
[02:20:12]  And there's just not really like a block around that.
[02:20:15]  So it's like you have this really isolated socialisms in these different countries.
[02:20:20]  And it doesn't, it's clearly unable to put up, and I mean this in like a general sense, a fight against the U.S. or a fight, let alone a fight against global capitalism or anything like that, I guess, as embodied by the U.S.
[02:20:34]  And it's, you know, it's, it seems like right now is a time of just sort of savagery run amok.
[02:20:43]  And again, like one thing that we, you know, it's really kind of the past, like really since we've been doing this show, but before that as well, but I guess it's the time I've been speaking publicly, is that it just seems like there's just nobody in charge in many ways.
[02:20:58]  And there's certainly nobody fighting back against the people who are nominally, who are in charge and like intent on ruining and wrecking, you know, as much of the world as they can, either the pursuit of profit or in many cases now, probably the pursuit of like a perception that they have on Twitter.
[02:21:14]  And it's, I mean, I, that's very reductive.
[02:21:16]  And I'm sort of half kidding there.
[02:21:18]  But not really.
[02:21:19]  Well, it embodies, I think, a lot of what they're after.
[02:21:23]  And I just, I hate these people.
[02:21:25]  I think these people are evil.
[02:21:26]  I think they're legitimately evil people.
[02:21:28]  They're evil.
[02:21:29]  They're also trashy.
[02:21:31]  Yeah.
[02:21:31]  Well, we also look down on them.
[02:21:33]  I do.
[02:21:33]  Fucking watching that press conference.
[02:21:37]  I was like, this is so crazy.
[02:21:41]  The fucking like Kenny Powers occupied government.
[02:21:45]  This shit is.
[02:21:48]  I just, I hate what the fuck are they talking about?
[02:21:51]  These people.
[02:21:53]  And we are in a country that has been made fucking so stupid by memes.
[02:22:01]  And I mean that again in like a larger sense, but like in this, in the way that propaganda works now, it's just, it not only makes people believe things that it says, but it also makes people just stupid in general.
[02:22:15]  And I am sick of it.
[02:22:16]  I'm sick of it.
[02:22:17]  And like, this is the world, regardless of whatever they say, they want a world in which people are fucking stupid.
[02:22:22]  And like that to me, I object to stuck inside a fantasy.

=== Objecting to Fantasy Politics (01:07) ===

[02:22:26]  Yeah.
[02:22:27]  You know?
[02:22:28]  Yes.
[02:22:29]  And content living in a fantasy, fantasy politics, fantasy history, fantasy present where they can believe these stories that have absolutely no like relation, adherence to actually exist the actually existing world or how things like power or even just like anything fucking operates.
[02:22:59]  Yeah.
[02:23:02]  On that pleasant note, I'm Brace.
[02:23:06]  I'm Liz.
[02:23:08]  And I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[02:23:10]  And this has been Druidon.
[02:23:12]  We will see you next time.
[02:23:14]  Bye-bye.
[02:23:34]  Come on.