Whooopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin face ABC producers' panic over a fabricated 2026 Venezuelan regime change, where Nicolas Maduro is ousted in a U.S. bunker operation replacing him with an opposition leader to legalize gay marriage and secure oil. The segment critiques CNN and CBS for bias while highlighting Dan Bongino's return, the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Minnesota daycare fraud scandals involving billions missing and alleged Al-Shabaab ties. Ultimately, the discussion exposes a shifting media landscape where citizen journalists uncover corruption ignored by mainstream outlets, framing these events as strategic resource grabs rather than democratic transitions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Venezuela Oil Scandal00:15:15
And we're live.
Happy 2026.
My gosh, talking about starting the year of the bang, right?
We got all kinds of stuff going on.
And this, let me just tell you, is a very good omen.
We got a lot of ground to cover today.
You know, I've been away and I've been trying to make sure that I came to you live and we got the news out of Venezuela, et cetera.
But, you know, it's nice.
It's nice, shall I say, to be back at home base in the studio with all of you here today.
So, so good to have you here.
If you're just joining us for the first time, make sure you subscribe, share, like, all that good stuff.
Make a comment.
I'm seeing all your comments in real time.
We began on Whoopi Goldberg.
Woo!
She kind of was a little destabilized herself there.
Forget about Latin America destabilization.
We're looking at the view destabilization because she doesn't know what to do when one of her colleagues actually has a viewpoint that's different than her.
Same thing with Sonny Houston, who's just reeling as Ana Navarro admits the truth, okay?
Like for once, for once, admits the truth.
This woman who's like a total never Trumper and typically despises Trump with every sort of morsel of her being shocked all of her colleagues on the air.
Because she actually said, Yeah, you know, she's happy Nicolas Maduro is long gone from Venezuela, as everybody should be.
Because why do you want a socialist, communist dictator running the show?
I mean, you think about what's happened to that country.
You think about GDP declining something like 80% since the year 2013.
And that was after Chavez.
I mean, it has been a disaster.
And then some going from the highest standard of living in all Latin America to the lowest, to poverty, to starvation because of one man who's making out like a bandit, by the way.
And who the U.S. has alleged is involved in drug trafficking.
The DOJ hit him with those charges, and now guess what?
He's facing them.
And whoopee, you're going to just have to face the music on this one as well, because people are happy.
It's like America's back, baby, right?
Let's watch the clip.
The people in South Florida, the Venezuelan community, the Cuban American community, the Nicaraguan American community voted for this.
And for us, this is a very, very happy day when we see a dictator who has.
Been part of oppressing and abusing the Venezuelan people for 25 years.
When we see him in handcuffs and held to some sort of accountability, it brought me into tears.
It brought me great joy.
And, you know, I live in South Florida.
But are you okay with the way that it was done?
But I think both things can be true.
I think you can criticize and ask questions and have concerns about the way it was done and what this means in the future.
And I think you can still celebrate that this murderous, corrupt, sadistic son of a.
Is out of Venezuela because he has, I think, 8 million Venezuelan exiles all over the world.
People have fled from this man's tyrannical rule.
So, for me, to see the face on Sonny, you know, it's like somebody just let off a stink bomb right next to her.
Like, oh my God.
Yeah.
Well, you know what, Sonny?
Your relatives didn't live in Venezuela or Cuba, or maybe they did actually.
Doesn't she have some like really weird background where it turns out like her family was somehow in the slave trade?
She came forward with that one.
That was a doozy.
Anyway, the point is like anybody who knows anything about this, and trust me, yours truly knows a lot about this.
First of all, yo hablo español.
The Irish girl who speaks Spanish, yeah, because I studied it in school.
Unlike Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who can't speak a word of it, I do speak Spanish and I have studied Latin America and worked on, you know, reporting Latin America for many, many years, for decades.
And I think, I mean, I just couldn't believe this.
I was like, this is amazing.
This is fantastic.
I've been waiting like 15 years.
It seemed like a no brainer to me.
I'm like, hey, hey, you got a lot of oil sitting down there in the good old Orinoco region.
I've been to it.
These Venezuelans, they can't figure out how to get it out of the ground because they're a bunch of commies and there's no incentive for them to really get it out of the ground.
In fact, there's incentive to do corrupt stuff like, hey, you know, sanctions go into place, but China still needs its oil.
So let's find a way to change the flags on the ships and divert all the oil over to China and we'll make more money on it.
Guess who makes the money?
It's not the people of Venezuela.
No, no, this is what Mamdami needs to go and do some studying on.
It's never the people.
It's always the corrupt bureaucrats that are running the show.
So, this is phenomenal news.
Not to mention, we get the Iranians and we get the Chinese and we get the Russians all out of Venezuela, right here in our Western hemisphere.
There's a little thing called the Monroe Doctrine, which I hear Donald Trump now calls the Don Roe Doctrine, rather fittingly, right?
Listen, this was massive.
This was amazing.
The guys being held, right, on charges of drug trafficking, and those drug trafficking charges go back to the previous administration.
So, they had every right to go after him.
In fact, if you look back to other points in time, I'm going to show you 1989 Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was like, We need to go after these guys.
We need to go after the bad guys.
Well, we're going after the bad guys.
But gosh, don't tell anybody at ABC, whether it's Whoopi or Sonny.
Poor Ana Navarro's out there on a little island all by herself.
She might as well be in Cuba.
And then you get Georgie Poo, right?
Georgie Poo, who's still reeling because, oh my gosh, his network had to pay $16 million because of that little error that he never should have said on the air.
And he knew, and he was briefed.
By his producers and told not to.
And he's just, I guess, waiting out the last days of his contract because he's miserable, miserable with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
And so listen to how he gets scorched by our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
This is brilliant.
I want you to watch it with me.
He said the United States is going to run Venezuela.
Under what legal authority?
Well, first of all, what's going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil.
That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met.
And that's what we intend to do.
So that leverage remains.
That leverage is ongoing.
And we expect that it's going to lead to results here.
We're hopeful that it does.
Positive results for the people of Venezuela, but ultimately, most importantly for us, in the national interest of the United States.
We will no longer have, hopefully, as we move forward here.
will set the conditions so that we no longer have in our hemisphere a Venezuela that's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah, is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narco-trafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia to go in through the Caribbean and towards the United States.
And obviously we want a better future for the people of Venezuela.
We want them to have an oil industry where the wealth goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals and stolen by pirates all over the world.
That's what we're working towards, and we intend to use the leverage we have to help achieve that.
Let me ask the question again What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?
Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we're going to use the leverage to make it happen.
As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, I'm very simple.
We have court orders.
These are sanctioned boats, and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions.
So, there's that's I don't know, is a court not a legal authority?
Hey, just to remind everybody, right?
There are sanctions.
Venezuela is not allowed to send that.
Oil to China or to Russia.
There are sanctions on Russia.
There are sanctions on Venezuela.
Like, you can't just pirate this stuff all around the world.
That's what they've been doing.
You saw me reporting on this last summer, right?
Because I was telling you how they changed the flags on the ships and they're trying to send it to all these various places.
Half the time they're trying to go through, you know, the Irish Sea.
That would be the Russians trying to get it down to, you know, Venezuela, forgive me, not Venezuela, but to China.
And it's a huge problem.
But let's continue listening.
So, yes, we have the jurisdiction, we have the legal authority, we have the international standing to be able to do this.
Just don't tell Georgie.
Is the United States running Venezuela right now?
Well, I've explained once again.
I'll do it one more time.
What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward.
And that is we have leverage.
This leverage we are using and we intend to use.
We started using already.
You can see where they are running out of storage capacity.
In a few weeks, they're going to have to start pumping oil unless they make changes.
And that leverage that we have with the armada of boats that are currently positioned allow us to seize any sanctioned boats coming into or out of.
Venezuela, loaded with oil, or on its way in to pick up oil, and we can pick and choose which ones we go after.
We have court orders for each one.
That will continue to be in place until the people who have control over the levers of power in that country make changes that are not just in the interest of the people of Venezuela, but are in the interest of the United States and the things that we care about.
That's what we have.
The legal authority is the court orders that we have.
When the president was asked yesterday who will be running Venezuela, he said it was you, he said it was the defense secretary, he said it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Are you running Venezuela right now?
George, I've explained again that the leverage that we have here is the leverage of the quarantine.
So that is a Department of War operation, conducting, in some cases, law enforcement functions with the Coast Guard on the seizure of these boats.
I'm obviously very intricately involved in these policies.
And by the way, very intricately involved in moving forward and what we hope to see some of these changes being addressed.
Unfortunately, the person that was there before who was not the legitimate president of the country was someone we could not work with.
Was someone that we could not, he had already suckered the Biden administration a couple years ago on a deal he didn't keep, and this is someone we simply couldn't work with.
We are hopeful that there are people in place now, we're going to find out, the proof will be in what they do or fail to do, that will start making some of these changes that will ultimately lead to a Venezuela that looks substantially and dramatically different from what's been in place for 15 years.
But my number one objective is America.
We care about Venezuela, we want it to do well moving forward, but our number one objective here is America.
No more drugs.
No more train.agua gangs coming our direction, and no more an area of the country in our hemisphere that becomes a crossroads for every single adversary we have around the world.
Hezbollah, Iran.
In other words, translation, America's back, baby!
Boom!
Back, okay?
You don't mess with us.
I think it sent quite a message around the world, just ricocheted overnight, right?
Iran, China, Russia.
You guys paying attention?
We just kicked you all out, okay?
Because you were right here in our hemisphere.
Total violation of Monroe Doctrine.
And I would add that we and our oil companies had actually bought a lot of that land in Venezuela ages ago.
And it wasn't until Chavez came along with all his European colonialism nonsense that he decided to kick everybody out, including European companies as well.
When I was down there, you had European companies like Total in the oil business, you had American companies.
And guess what?
The country was doing great.
They were sitting pretty until they got this idea of socialism and communism, and that crept in.
And before you knew it, Chavez put all his cronies in charge, just like what Mam Dami is doing, right?
The guy who was the defense attorney for the Al Qaeda terrorists.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's now like running the legal show for Mam Dami.
So all the cronies get instituted into their positions in office.
And guess what?
None of them know how to run an oil company in Venezuela.
So poor Perevesa was then just, you know, bleeding cash until they could find out ways to.
Pump a little illegal oil and send it to people that were sanctioned, including themselves.
They were sanctioned.
So this is amazing.
And I'll tell you, ABC is having a hard time with it.
CNN is having a hard time with it.
CBS is having a hard time with it.
PBS, well, I mean, they may not be around anymore.
We're going to get to that story in a little bit.
They're all having a hard time with it.
Even the financial media is having a hard time with it.
I mean, we'll talk about this in a little bit, but I couldn't believe it.
The headlines on Monday morning, they were like, oh, it's going to be choppy trading.
And I'm like, choppy trading.
I mean, the futures are way up.
Like, way up, guys.
What's choppy or jittery about this one?
It's good news, okay?
Good, good, good news.
So, CNN is forced to admit that Americans recognize that, hey, yeah, yeah, it's really good news.
I want you to see this clip I'm about to show you.
My favorite reporter over there, he's got a lot of personality.
He's the only one that can actually admit the truth on any of these polls.
But first, keep in mind what Maduro was doing in the background.
Okay, Maduro is singing his little be happy song, you know.
Don't worry, be happy.
There was that little episode.
And then he was taunting Donald Trump, saying, Hey, come get me, come get me, come get me.
Here he is.
Venga por mí.
Venga por mí.
You were still here in Miraflores.
I'm here in Miraflores Palace.
Well, he wasn't actually in Miraflores.
He was actually in his bunker.
And if you were watching the show on the weekend, I had a friend of mine on, Hans Humes, who runs Grey Lot Capital.
And they actually are trying to recover all the money for debt holders that have lost something in Venezuela.
And he's very, very familiar with the inner workings of all sides there.
And he's been multiple times to that bunker.
And he told us all about the bunker.
And he said that there was some intelligence a couple of weeks ago that wasn't actually spot on about where the bunker was.
Anyway, Hans has been there.
They have lots and lots of guards.
It's up in the hills.
And they came and they got him, not in Miraflores, but they got him in the bunker.
I mean, just an amazing op, right?
So kudos to Hegseth and the entire team.
Just an amazing op showing you, once again, the force, the almighty force and power of the US military.
Should we decide to use it, and you better believe we can, and Americans, guess what?
They like that.
So take that, CNN.
Take that, CBS, ABC, NBC, the rest of you.
Okay, U.S. military ousting Maduro.
Pre ousting, what you saw was the clear plurality of Americans opposed at 47%, just 21% support.
Come over to this side of the screen.
After the ousting, look at that.
The support through the roof.
Now we're talking about 37%, well within the margin of error right here of the opposition, 38%.
It turns out Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations.
And in this case, they view the ousting of Maduro, at least up to this point, As a successful one, and therefore the support way up.
Yeah, before underwater, now basically even.
What about the idea of putting Maduro on trial here in the United States?
Yeah, you know, part of the reason why I think that the success number is way up, and you saw it here, what was it, was 26 points in favor of opposition, now within the margin of error, is because they simply put, don't like Nicolas Maduro.
And in fact, they believe that he should be on trial for drug trafficking.
Look at this 50% of Americans favor it compared to just 14% who oppose.
So there are very few Americans here who oppose it.
Even among Democrats, the opposition number is below, get this, just 24% is below 25%.
Acting President Transition00:15:18
So this is something that unites Republicans.
It divides Democrats.
And at this particular point, support for the operation way up.
And in terms of those who favor the drug trafficking trial for Maduro, that is a clear plurality.
Yeah, it doesn't really even divide Democrats on the idea of a trial.
They all seem to support it by and large.
Only 24% oppose it for Democrats.
Let's talk about sort of what the lesson is.
You know, it's amazing, right?
The Democrats, they were all for getting rid of Maduro.
I actually happen to have a lot of inside knowledge on this, okay?
A serious amount of inside knowledge.
Again, my first job long before I became a reporter was actually in finance at Goldman Sachs, and we were trading Venezuelan debt along with Argentine, Brazilian, Mexican debt, and sovereign debt.
And so, you know, you kind of needed to know the politics of Venezuela inside and out.
And so I've always stayed very close to the story.
And I was there right as Chavez was coming to power.
Ryder Stavis was coming to power and the hope was, okay, you know, maybe he won't be that bad.
He says he's a socialist.
He says he's a communist.
Well, let me tell you, he was that bad and then some.
And I've heard him speak multiple times.
I was so sick of hearing about the white European that conquered Venezuela and took all the oil.
Well, guess what?
I guess the white Europeans back.
And we're taking the oil.
We're not really taking it.
And again, I would just stress one thing.
It is good for us, okay?
Like I'm a pragmatist.
I'm a realist.
This isn't about freeing.
I mean, there are a lot of countries that we could free, right?
That we would choose to free.
This isn't really what that's about.
This is about making sure that we lock down that oil and the rest of the natural resources, therefore, yours truly, okay?
Because it's again in our hemisphere.
Do you really want the Russians and the Cubans and the Venezuelans, forgive me, they are Venezuelans?
Do you want the Chinese and Iranians hanging out just three hours off the coast of Cuba?
I was actually, ironically, as this was all going down in the Caribbean, right off the coast of Cuba as this was happening.
And I'm thinking, you know, this is a total national security issue.
Like they just shouldn't be there.
When you go to Caracas these days, well, maybe not these days, But a couple of weeks ago, the number one language after Spanish that you would hear would be Russian, and after that, Chinese, and after that, Arabic.
So enough, okay?
The U.S. is back in town.
And hey, I'm sorry, but it worked really well for a lot of years.
Venezuela, we helped you produce your oil.
You enjoyed the highest standard of living in Latin America.
The place was like freaking Switzerland.
And, you know, when we went away, because you kicked us out, even though we owned contracts and owned land there, look what happened.
Okay.
Let it be a warning, by the way, to Mamdami in New York City.
I kid you not.
It's the best example of the terror that socialism has.
Which becomes communism creates.
And Stephen Miller had to set CNN straight on this.
You know, that little anchor, Jake Tapper is his name.
He's got a whiny voice, and I love it because he said, You're doing that swarmy thing again.
That swarmy thing you do, Jakey boy.
Well, Stephen Miller doesn't want to have any part of it.
Stephen Miller absolutely positively humiliating Jake Tapper in an interview last night.
Watch.
The reason why I was giving you that speech, which I know you didn't want to hear, is because you're approaching this from the wrong frame.
This neoliberal frame.
That the United States' job is to go around the world and demanding immediate elections be held everywhere, immediately, all the time, right away.
No.
That's not what I think, but you invaded the country.
We took, went into the country and we seized the leader of Venezuela.
Damn straight we did.
Woo!
Damn straight we did.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the USA rolls.
Okay?
Here's what I also know.
I actually know this for a fact that the Biden administration had worked aggressively to try to get him out.
And they had come up with a lot of ideas and none of it was working.
And part of the reason for that was Celia, Celia, the wifey in the background.
So the wifey apparently liked her kind of lifestyle that she had going on.
She is, I'm told, to be a rather shrewd negotiator.
And anything they threw at her, she didn't want.
And so because she didn't want anything, they were kind of running out of options.
And they'd get close and then no cigar.
And so this was going on and on and on and on.
And then it happened again with Donald Trump in charge.
And, like, you know, like he's got some patience, but it runs thin.
And so after a while, he's like, you got to be kidding me.
Do we have any other options?
Enter Delce Rodriguez, who is a socialist as well, a Chavista.
But all of my sources have told me she's sort of the best one to deal with.
In other words, she's a straight shooter.
And, you know, not that you can trust any of these people, but if you're going to trust someone, you're better off with her than, say, Maduro and his wife.
Interestingly, notice that they picked up the wife as well.
It wasn't just Maduro like they would typically do because the wife is a big problem.
The wife has been an issue in terms of all the negotiations.
So, Delcy, who's the vice president, she walks in, she gets the gig.
Now, I know Delcy.
I've had her on my program a couple of times.
We've interviewed her over the years and she's hardline socialist.
Really, really hardline socialist.
But, but Donald Trump needs somebody in the country that can keep the wheels on the bus.
And apparently, as long as she does what he tells her to do and what Marco tells her to do and what Pete tells her to do, She's going to be okay.
He made it very clear.
You know, if she doesn't, well, then she's going to fall to a fate worse than Maduro's.
So, how do you like that?
Delcy, we're not giving you any choices here.
You better actually be able to keep the wheels on the bus.
A lot of people are asking, why is it her?
Why is it not the woman that just got the Nobel Peace Prize, who's lovely, by the way?
I adore her, Maria Corina Machado.
I actually thought it might be her initially, but the thinking is there's too much animosity.
The opposition in Venezuela, it's kind of like, well, the Republican Party is right now, right?
With Candace Owens and Tucker.
Carlson, like all flying off the handle with all this, that, and the other.
And so there's no real consistency.
Well, that is what the opposition in Venezuela is.
And so for every two people that love Maria Carino Machado, there are eight people that hate her.
And he's like, we can't do this right now.
So listen to Miller again.
To run the country until such time.
Forgive me.
This is Donald Trump explaining who's going to run it.
We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.
So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.
So we're going to be in charge.
We're running the show, okay?
Hey, you better believe it.
Damn straight we took that guy out right in the dead of the night.
We read him his rights and sent him on his way off in the helicopter and then in a boat.
Now he's in New York City awaiting his trial.
Here is Miller again trying to explain.
And these guys just don't get it.
Like, I'm sorry, like, I'm going to tell you something a little secret.
A lot of these reporters are just not that smart.
And they don't have enough experience in many of these stories.
And they don't really understand the global security issues that we're facing.
I mean, again, for 15 years, I've been sitting there going, why is it that we have a crazy socialist running Venezuela?
When they're sitting on more oil, proven oil reserves than all of Saudi Arabia?
I mean, right here at home, and they're not doing business with us?
Come on, we ought to be able to make friends with these guys.
We ought to be able to make friends with Maduro.
If we can't make friends with him, then bye bye Maduro.
Sorry.
Like I told you, I'm a realist, and so is Miller.
70% of the vote or something like that.
Why does the president think that Machado should not be the next leader?
Why does he think she's weak?
First of all, all Venezuela experts agree, all Venezuela experts agree that it would be.
Absurd and preposterous for us to suddenly fly her into the country and to put her in charge, and the military would follow her and the security forces would follow her.
It isn't, this is not a serious, it's not even a serious question.
So, should there be an election, the let me, if you give me the floor for 30 seconds, let me tell you what we are doing here.
Jake, the United States.
This is because this is sort of foundational.
The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.
We're a superpower And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.
It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us, to hoard weapons from our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of the United States.
Sovereign countries should be able to do what they want to do.
The Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine is all about securing the national interests of America.
For years, we sent our soldiers to die in deserts.
In the Middle East, to try to build them parliaments, to try to build them democracies, to try to give them more oil, to try to give them more resources.
The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology.
This whole period that happened after World War II, where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging and engaging these guys, is what I'm talking about, Jake, is the idea.
By the way, you do.
I know you love doing that smarmy thing, Jake, and I was hoping to be better.
Do you hear that?
You love doing that swarmy thing, Jake.
Ouch.
Gosh, this is good.
This time.
I asked you about if there should be an election.
I asked you if there would be an election in Venezuela.
That's what I asked.
I said, why was the president so quick to dismiss Machado?
You answered that question.
And then I said, The objective, Jake, is security and stability for the people of Venezuela.
With our help and leadership, that country will become more prosperous than it has ever been in its whole history.
Venezuela is the one that's better off.
There will be conversations, Jake, about all of these guy posts along the way.
The reason why I was giving you that speech, which I know you didn't want to hear, is because you're approaching this from the wrong frame.
This neoliberal frame that the United States' job is to go around the world and demand immediate elections be held everywhere, immediately, all the time, right away, to create these vacuums.
That's not what I think, but you invaded the country.
So Miller gets it, okay?
Like Miller is trying to explain basically what I've been saying, and I've been saying, and been saying for 15 years, like, for goodness sakes.
You're sitting on a huge oil reserve.
What the heck is going on?
And this is something Monroe Doctrine, right, which we're joking is the Don Roe Doctrine, is pretty important.
It sort of had some very basic, basic sort of core principles that came out in 1823 by then President James Monroe.
And basically, he was saying, hey, hey, you stay out of the Americas, okay?
We got Canada, we got Latin America, we got South America.
And they did not want any new European possible enemies coming in, like Spain, and trying to resettle some of these areas.
And so, this was a non interference warning.
You guys, You stick to Europe and we'll stick to the Americas.
And many times, you know, many of these countries had just gained independence from Spain.
So that was important for us, right?
We didn't want Spain in our backyard.
And so they came up with the Monroe Doctrine and it was really enforced.
I mean, you even think back to Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s and it was very clear.
In fact, I believe that some of those oil fields in Venezuela were actually first started um by the Rockefellers in in that turn of the century time.
I mean we, we've always had a presence down there, and so it's really important to keep that and to not allow China in there and to not allow the Iranians in there and to not.
I mean, this is basic right basic, basic stuff, and the Democrats deep down they know it, but they just can't let this go, because what Tds?
I mean it's a, it's a serious, serious disease.
So let's uh the.
The question about who is now running Venezuela is one that even members of Congress who are big Trump supporters say they're not quite sure about.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN's Montaraju that he doesn't know what President Trump meant by his assertion that the U.S. is running Venezuela, and he said he needs more information.
Can you tell us what the president means when he says this?
Is acting President Delcy Rodriguez in charge?
Is she running Venezuela or not?
Well, what the president said is true.
The United States of America is running Venezuela.
By definition, that's true.
Jake, we live in a law, or sorry, we live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.
These are the iron laws of the world we've been using since the beginning of time.
But in terms of day to day operations in Venezuela, that is acting President Rodriguez, right?
It's not some sort of American emissary.
No, what I'm saying is, and we'll keep going here, Jake, because I want to say what I'm saying, and you'll follow up.
But what I'm saying is just one level above that, which is that by definition, we are in charge.
Because we have the United States military stationed outside the country.
We set the terms and conditions.
We have A complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce.
So, for them to do commerce, they need our permission.
For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission.
So, the United States is in charge.
The United States is running the country during this transition period.
If that's true, then obviously that doesn't mean that President Trump is setting the bus fare schedule inside the country.
So, it doesn't mean that President Trump is assigning the indictment.
This is great.
The indictment.
Okay.
So, yeah, we're running the show.
We're running the show.
because we need good neighbors.
We need the Monroe Doctrine.
We need the oil.
And by the way, we'd like them to have a better lifestyle.
And you want to address the root causes of immigration?
Gonzalez, I'm looking at you.
The root causes of immigration?
This is how you do it.
You actually provide people with a better economic future because guess what?
We're going to have a capital infusion into Venezuela.
And you're going to have oil companies dumping all kinds of money because, again, biggest natural resource area outside of Saudi Arabia.
You want to be there.
Well, what does that mean?
It means jobs.
It means a higher standard of living.
It means upward mobility.
It means you don't have to come.
to the USA for a chance at anything.
And by the way, when you have a chance at that upward mobility through proper means to actual free market capitalism that we're helping you to build, ha ha, what do you know?
All the crime, all the drugs, it's going to be less and less.
Well, in part because we're going to make sure it's less and less, but also because people are going to have other opportunities.
We need good neighbors, nice neighbors right here in the Western Hemisphere.
Stability Over Partisanship00:03:33
Yeah, I'm just thinking.
This went so well.
Maybe next weekend it's Cuba.
Maybe next month.
Greenland.
Just saying.
Here's the president.
In South America, America first.
Well, I think it is because we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors.
We want to surround ourselves with stability.
We want to surround ourselves with energy.
We have tremendous energy in that country.
It's very important that we protect it.
We need that for ourselves.
We need that for the world.
And we want to make sure we can protect it.
Exactly.
Okay.
This is not that hard.
This is not that hard.
And what I appreciate about this president is he's actually calling it like it is, saying it like it is.
He's not trying to like sugarcoat this and tell you this is about democracy and freedom and we want to free the Venezuelan people and make sure that they have a better standard of living.
Frankly, he doesn't care too much about that.
He really doesn't.
He cares about the oil.
He cares about the fact that you get the Iranians and the Chinese and the Russians hanging out three hours off the coast of Florida.
That's what he cares about.
I mean, would they do Cuba next?
I don't know.
I mean, Cuba doesn't really have the natural resources that.
Venezuela has.
So, this is, of course, more interesting to us.
And I appreciate that he doesn't try and sell it to the American public as something else.
He's telling you the truth.
I care about the freaking oil.
We're running the joint, okay?
And this is what everybody wanted, even Democrats, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
I am telling you, I know for a fact, I know for a fact that the Biden administration was heavily, heavily trying to get Maduro out.
And they made multiple offers to him and they tried.
And I have firsthand sourcing on this, okay?
So they tried to negotiate an exit and they couldn't do it.
And so Donald Trump comes along.
He's trying to negotiate an exit.
And Celia, the wifey, I told you, Nicholas, Nikki's wife, doesn't want to do it and keeps getting in the way.
So finally they're like, forget it.
You know, we're just going to pluck you right out of bed and be done with it.
And so the Democrats are standing there like, oh my God, we didn't know you could do that.
We really didn't know you could do that.
But they got to be happy, right?
They got to be happy because this is exactly what should be done as John Fetterman.
Admits!
I mean, at least you got one honest broker there.
And just acknowledge that it's been a good thing what's happened.
I mean, I've seen the speeches from whether it's Leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden.
You know, we all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone.
I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here.
Now, remember, we all Democrats years ago wanted to eliminate him, and they, why have a bounty of $25 million if we didn't want him gone?
Why would you do these things if you weren't willing to actually do something other than harsh language?
Let's remember, 8 million Venezuelans were displaced in mass chaos, and now they were shipping drugs to our nation as well.
So for me, it's like, why, as a Democrat, we can't just acknowledge that it was successful?
It was so successful.
Okay.
And that's why they can't acknowledge it.
I mean, if Joe Biden had done this, I swear to God, guys, I promise you, I would have commended this because ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm actually not that partisan.
I just want what's best for America.
Fantastic US Dollar Markets00:03:33
Period.
Full stop.
And that generally means national security, international security, right?
On the world stage, a prosperous economy, low taxes, lots of capitalism.
It's not that hard.
Okay.
I mean, even Biden will go back to 1989.
He knew it.
He knew that this was the move to take.
And losing a war on our own soil.
Let's go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force.
There must be no safe haven for these narco terrorists, and they must know it.
Well, now they do.
Okay, speed up to 2026.
It's going to be a good year.
I'm telling you.
Listen, like this is phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal.
I thought to myself, this is fantastic.
It's fantastic for the US dollar, okay?
King dollar, live on, right?
It's fantastic for the US dollar.
It's fantastic for our future prospects because we want that source of energy.
Energy is really critical when you think of the technology changes that are coming along and the need for it.
And, you know, I'm looking at the market, and once again, we're up, up, up and away, okay?
Like nothing's lower, nothing.
Yesterday, I was traveling with my family and I had my parents.
My dad actually had like one or two stocks that were lower.
He's not investing in, I guess, in 76 research.
I was like, Dad, you're really going to take my recommendations, would you please?
He had a couple of stocks that were lower.
And I'm like, Nope, my entire portfolio is sky high.
And it's going to be sky high tomorrow again because this is setting a tone, in my estimation, a very, very good tone.
So the dollar is stronger.
You see U.S. debt markets responding well, all of this, right?
I'm looking at the market yesterday, and actually, Rob sent me this, my colleague at 76 Research.
If you're not subscribing to 76 Research, please do that dollar a month, D O L L A R, use code dollar76research.com.
And you really should try and look at the portfolios because that's where real value is.
We have three model portfolios on there.
But Rob sends me this.
This is Bloomberg saying stocks, bonds set for jittery start.
And we're like, but the futures market's all higher.
Like, when did suddenly jittery become synonymous with massive upside?
Like, this is not a jittery start.
This is what you call a voluminous, fantastic, wonderful start.
And sure enough, the market was way up yesterday.
And we got a market that's tearing higher today, tearing higher today.
And yet, the Wall Street Journal, a financial publication, is leading with U.S. allies sound alarm over Trump's demand for Greenland.
They're all freaking out about Greenland right now.
Let me tell you, the market doesn't care about Greenland.
They'd probably love it if we got Greenland, actually.
They love it that we got Maduro.
And things are off to a great start for 2026.
I love it.
76research.com.
We love it over there as well.
You know, you have to be able to look at markets with just a sense of realism and, you know, a practical sensibility.
And the financial press, even the financial press, they just can't get away from their TDS.
And so consequently, they're not thinking in real ways.
Even the institutional Wall Street firms.
I mean, I'm looking at some of the notes there, and it's like, guys, do you not see what's actually happening?
Just look at the markets.
They'll tell you exactly what people think about this, along with Harry Anton's poll over there on CBS.
CBS News, CNN, CBS News, by the way, they can't kind of deal with this.
Destabilizing MAGA Alliances00:13:30
I don't know what to tell you about Barry Weiss.
I know she's trying to.
Change things up and she comes from a print background, so good luck to her.
Print is extremely different than television and, of course, the entire medium is extremely different nowadays.
Why?
Oh, because you got people like me.
What do you know?
I hope you subscribed.
Make sure you share like, make a comment, even if you're watching this after the live.
Do make a comment.
Every little bit helps.
Well, you know, CBS NEWS is just plagued by this heavy weight that it's got going on.
There's a sense of total liberalism in the newsroom, along with TDS, worse than most people have it.
And I'm watching this weekend as Marco Rubio goes on the CBS weekend show and I'm just blown away.
I mean, he completely humiliates this anchor and I wonder how long she is for that world only because they're probably not paying her much.
But but Barry Weiss has to know that this, this chica and she's an Irish girl, former Irish dancer actually I actually like her a lot on a personal level.
We used to share like an office cube together At CNBC when she was a business reporter there.
But she's really kind of hostile, it seems, to everyone in the Trump administration, including one Marco Rubio.
And so she starts saying, well, I don't understand.
You got Delcy Rodriguez there, and yet Diestado Cabello, who runs the military, he is still there, but you guys had a bounty on him.
So why is he still there?
And what she's just sort of not grasping is that you kind of need the military.
And that's probably one of the reasons they left Delcy there, to be honest.
Diazado, he actually, another thing I know, used to be one of ours, one of our intel guys.
We used to like him a lot.
And then he switched in 2015.
But maybe they recruited him back over to our side.
So she's like, why is Diazado Cabello still there?
I'm so confused.
I'm confused.
You're confused, Donnie.
Boy, Marcus set her straight, too.
The defense minister, who has deep ties to Russia, $15 million price on his head, he is still in place.
I'm confused.
Are they still wanted by the United States?
Why didn't you arrest them if you are taking out the narco terrorist regime?
You're confused?
I don't know why that's confusing to you.
They're still in power.
It's very simple.
You're not going to go in and wrap up.
You're going to.
But yeah, but you're going to go in and suck up five people.
They're already complaining about this one operation.
Imagine the howls we would have from everybody else if we actually had to go and stay there four days to capture four other people.
We got the top priority.
The number one person on the list was the guy who claimed to be the president of the country that he was not.
And he was arrested along with his wife, who was also indicted.
And that was a pretty sophisticated and frankly complicated operation.
It was.
It is not easy to land helicopters in the middle of the largest military base in the country.
The guy lived on a military base.
Land within three minutes, kick down his door, grab him, put him in handcuffs, read him his rights, put him in a helicopter, and leave the country without losing any American or any American assets.
That's not an easy mission.
And you're asking me why didn't we do that in five other places at the same time?
I mean, that's absurd.
I do think this is one of the most daring, complicated.
Sophisticated missions this country has carried out in a very long time.
Tremendous credit to the U.S. military personnel who did it.
It was unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
And yet the mainstream media is like, why are all these people still there?
Here's what I would just say.
And again, I've been around the story a lot more than they have.
And so I'm much more sort of in it.
Again, my background as a trader of the sovereign debt and the sources that I've had on both sides throughout the years, both within the Maduro regime.
Again, I've told you I've interviewed Dulcie many times and within the other side, which would be the opposition.
And I know everyone very well there.
I really wanted this.
I wanted this for the opposition, but I understand they were not willing.
The administration was like, okay, we just need somebody there that's going to keep the wheels on the bus, that's going to make sure that the military goes along.
That would be Diestado Cabello that you heard her talking about, along with another guy there.
And they need to kind of just keep that structure in place and then infuse the place with American oil companies so we can get all that oil and all the other natural resources and actually bring them jobs.
And it's going to be win, win, win.
I mean, listen, the people of Venezuela, they have a lot more in common with us.
Let's be honest, in the Chinese, they're Catholic by background.
They used to be the most educated population in all of Latin America until Chavez came along.
There's a lot that could come of this that is extremely good, extremely good, which is how you want to start 2026.
Boy, coming out with a bang.
My gosh, like I did not see this one coming.
I really didn't.
And my sources, many of whom are like in very entrenched.
I mean, Hans, you met the other day.
Heck, the guy has been to Maduro's bunker a couple of times.
Okay.
No one saw this coming.
The Chinese, they were there.
On the ground, they had just met with Maduro hours before.
And then the next morning, they wake up in Caracas and they're like, whoa, what's going on?
Which you could say either they knew and, you know, they were tipped off and they didn't say anything.
I guess they're more quiet than Congress.
That's why they couldn't be tipped off in Congress.
Or you could say this was a giant FU to China.
I don't know, but I'll take it because America's back, baby.
And this is the side you want to be on.
It's called winning.
My friend Dan Bondino is going back to his show.
He left the FBI and you know, he's got a big warning he's coming out with.
A big warning.
Because he knows what winning is too, right?
He's going scorched earth on some of these crazy folks in the MAGA realm that kind of just have gone off the reservation, shall we say?
Marjorie Taylor, I'm looking at you.
Candace, well, there's no hope there.
And, you know, occasionally there is.
Sometimes she says really good things, but it's getting almost scary and bizarre.
And then there's my former colleague at Fox, who used to host a show opposite me at 8 p.m., I mean, granted, I was on the red headed stepchild network, you know, just Fox Business News, and he had the big kahuna there at 8 p.m. on Fox News.
He and I have always differed on Venezuela.
For some reason, he has never wanted to go near it.
But, you know, you kind of sometimes wonder about people's alliances.
Mine is pretty pure and pretty simple America first, baby.
That's it.
America first.
We want the oil.
We want control over the region, and it really doesn't need to be more complicated than that.
Right?
Except this one, Tucker Carlson.
And this is what Dan's getting at.
I'm going to get to Dan Bongino in a second because he's out with a huge warning.
But he's basically telling people, like, Tucker, knock it off.
Okay, we got like midterms coming up.
What the hell are you doing, buddy?
He, Tucker, that is, is trying to figure out how he's going to explain his very anti-US involvement in Venezuela.
So how does he explain it?
Well, he can't actually say, well, hey, we shouldn't care about the oil because heck yeah, we care about the oil.
Why shouldn't we care about the oil?
So he goes off on this really weird tangent that's super twisted and super weird, but you should hear it because when Dan comes out and slaps him hard.
You'll understand why.
We can safely discount democracy as a reason for affecting regime change in Venezuela.
We're not going to go kill Nicolas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people.
It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage.
That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud.
Not defending the regime, just saying one of the most conservative countries in North or South or Central America.
Only El Salvador really comes close, which is much smaller, of course.
And by the way, the U.S. backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela.
So, to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo, not crazy, actually.
Why are we trying to install this woman?
It makes no sense.
Well, because she'll bring gay marriage to Venezuela, and that's important.
I mean, that's what we stand for.
All right, like now I've heard it all.
So he has no way of explaining any of this.
So he's going to go and tell you that, oh, you know, there's a desire on the part of Marco Rubio, Pete Hexith, and Donald Trump to make sure they get gay marriage in Venezuela.
I mean, this is about as good as some of the things I've heard about Brigitte, right?
Macron, despite the fact the woman actually had a couple kids and we've seen all the pictures of her pregnant.
My gosh.
All right, that just tells me you're really, really desperate and you're trying to convey something that literally makes no sense.
Again, I'm just a pure, simple girl from New Hampshire, live free or die, who believes in this country and believes in the greatness of capitalism.
And we got a lot of oil down there.
And I kind of want it.
I want it for my country.
And I don't want it for Iran.
And I don't want it for Russia.
And I don't want it for the Chinese.
Thank you very much.
So I want them all out.
Okay?
All out.
It's our hemisphere.
Thank you very much.
Monroe Doctrine, indeed.
So he apparently just doesn't care.
And now he's trying to come up with some other reason for why we might possibly go down there.
And so, you know, he's talking about Maria Carina Machado, who, by the way, is like a former Bushy.
She was educated at Yale.
She is a conservative.
I don't know where she is on gay marriage.
And frankly, I don't really care.
I care about the oil, okay?
It's all I care about.
I care about making sure, well, the people as well.
But that's the added benefit.
And so I can't really understand his reasoning here, except that he's trying to divide and conquer, okay?
Divide, divide, divide.
And so all of these people, whether it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or, you know, a few others on the fringe there, are trying.
To destabilize MAGA as we go into midterms.
Not a good move.
And Dan is calling him out.
Dan Bongino declares war on black pillars and grifters trying to hijack MAGA.
Tucker wants to run for president after all?
You think you're going to trust him with your foreign policy?
I'm going to trust the teen that goes and plucks Maduro right out of bed in the middle of the night and takes him right back to New York for his trial.
You're damn right I did, Dan Bongino says after declaring war on black pillars and grifters trying to hijack MAGA.
And he went on to explain that, you know, he's coming back to his show, but a couple things.
He's got a warning for all those people that are out there with all their BS that.
Really is not even worth seeing.
I mean, that was not worth seeing.
I apologize to you for even showing you, but I just want you to understand the magnitude of what's going on.
And, you know, MTG, who's angling for her new job at The View, which she may just get.
And so she's super anti Trump.
I mean, these people.
So if you're whining, he says about it, it means you can't exist without seeing and commenting on ours.
You'll need to get over that.
We do it because there's nothing Black Pillars and anti Trumpers want more than to create division and drama.
Right there.
This is about drama for some of these people and division, because they're trying to like, whack off part of this audience and take it over to theirs, and it's actually not really healthy for the country or for the party or for what's happening in midterms.
And, believe me, I certainly don't want to go back to a world in which the Democrats are running the show and you're going to have another impeachment, right for goodness sakes.
I mean, they're like frothing at the mouth over this Venezuela thing.
Suddenly, dictators are good.
Oh who knew?
Dictators are good in their little version of the world.
And so, we don't need people within the MAGA movement that aren't fully embracing what our values are, because they're going to try and get Democrats elected in the process.
It's just not cool.
Here's Dan talking about why he left the FBI in the first place.
I mean, I gave up everything for this.
I mean, you know, my wife is struggling.
I'm not a victim.
I'm not Jim Comey.
It's fine.
I did this and I'm proud I did it.
But if you think we're there for tea and crumpets, well, I mean, Cash is there all day.
We share it, our offices are linked.
He turns on the faucet.
I hear it.
He's there at, he gets in at like 6 o'clock in the morning.
He doesn't leave till 7 at night.
You know, I'm in there at 7.30 in the morning.
You know, he uses the gym.
I work out in my apartment.
But I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., you know, by myself, divorced from my wife.
Not divorced, but I mean separated, divorced.
And it's hard.
I mean, you know, we love each other, and it's hard to be apart.
But you're doing some great work.
You're straightening out of the FBI.
You're moving buildings.
There's a lot of change.
I just, I got one more thing.
So it'll be good to see him back.
It'll be good to have him back in the community as a podcaster, weighing in with his opinion on things.
And, you know, he's been to the other side and can live to tell about it.
But I'll tell you, we need a united movement right now.
And granted, look, I take my shots when I think it's necessary.
Anne Bondi, I'm looking at you still.
And I don't think that she's probably the most qualified person for the job.
But when it comes to the overall op that just went down, you're going to criticize that?
Media Bias and Management00:04:47
I don't think so.
I really, I mean, you know, unless you're Rand Paul and it can be expected from him because he's a total isolationalist.
But you can't be an isolationalist in the real world.
And guess what?
We're dealing in the real world, just like Stephen Miller said, okay?
We're realists over here on the Trish Regan Show, which is why we're delighted that PBS is done and over.
Corporation of Public Broadcasting, Finito.
Finito.
There's a little Italian flair on that one.
I'll tell you, it was a super liberal foundation that basically supported, right, PBS and NPR.
And because the Trump administration and numerous Republicans were like, why are we giving all of this money to a leftist propaganda machine?
It's taxpayer dollars.
Like, you can't do that.
All right.
So it finally got shut down.
What a glorious 2026 this is turning out to be.
Watts.
A stunningly fast end of an era for public media.
After nearly 60 years, a corporation for public broadcasting has voted to dissolve itself, forced to take the drastic measure after the Republican-held Congress voted to defund it at the behest of Donald Trump.
The private agency has steered federal funding to PBS, NPR, and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country.
Bye-bye.
See you later.
It's been nice knowing you, PBS.
We've played you clips before, the woman who runs NPR.
Oh, gosh.
She's really kind of a sight for sore eyes.
I mean, beautiful, actually, lovely, attractive woman, which almost makes it more eerie when you realize what she's trying to do.
And the senator, forgive me, congressman, future senator, future senator, Brennan Gill, I'm giving you a promotion.
The congressman, who's actually Dinesh D'Souza, my good friend Dinesh's son-in-law, he just grilled her, mercilessly grilled her.
You can go back and look at that.
We've played it many, many times in the show.
But it's just fantastic what he did.
And he pointed out all the times on Twitter that she went on and on and on about all her wokeness and DEI and this, that, and the other.
And long story short, she's not going to be making as much money anymore.
I don't know if NPR is really going to make it without the support and the help of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So that's a good thing, right?
Now, who's next?
We get rid of PBS and we can get rid of ABC and NBC and CBS News in the process.
I mean, do you really need these news outlets?
It's an actual question that's worth debating because they have their biases and they're not successful commercially.
I mean, some of them are.
Granted, I mean, I think there's some liberal podcasts out there that people listen to.
But this whole sort of what's come along in this sphere, right, with what we're doing right now live on YouTube, imagine I've told you before, back in the days when I did work at CBS or NBC, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars in order to do something like this.
You couldn't just be streaming live from a studio.
Streaming didn't exist.
So everything has changed and it's changed really rapidly.
And all of these networks are suffering and they're all feeling that pain.
And so sure, Paramount brings in Barry Weiss for millions of dollars to try and fix CBS, but good luck to her.
I mean, I don't know if she could do it.
I don't know if she has the sort of television savvy one to do it.
I don't know if she has the management savvy because it's like, you know, the inmates are running the asylum over there.
You got big personalities in the TV space.
They don't exist in print.
I'm sorry.
They just don't.
I mean.
The ego that goes with being on camera, and you see it when you're watching some of them.
I'll tell you, it's significant.
And so you've got to manage all of these personalities.
None of them are actually big deal personalities because nobody watches CBS and nobody actually tells you what they're really thinking over on CBS.
So she's got that ahead of her.
The management of the place, the conversion over into, you know, they got to be a little more opinionated.
You kind of got to.
see some personality, a look at what's going on over at 60 Minutes.
I mean, that show is not going to be long.
It's really not, which is a shame in a way because it's a great brand.
And yet look at the YouTuber, Nick Shirley, who's running circles around them because he's the one that's actually finding the actual fraud at the Somalian daycare centers that are collecting millions of taxpayer dollars.
Not that CBS was ever interested to do that because why?
CBS probably has their own biases that they have to protect, including the Democrat Party, much like perhaps some of the politicians in Minnesota.
Somalia Fraud Allegations00:12:47
Like the AG Keith Ellison, like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, like Tim Walz, who had to say sayonara himself to his future as a politician.
This is the guy that was going to be the vice president of the United States of America.
But because of this scandal that was unfolding under his watch and all the fraud that took place that he just kind of looked the other way on, he's now out of a gig.
He is no longer going to be running.
And that's just the beginning.
We're going to get to that in a second, but keep in mind, the DHS is all over this right now.
You get Kirstie Noam, Kirstie Noam out there saying she's going to send 2,000 ICE agents and officers to Minneapolis, the Minneapolis area.
So not just Minnesota, but the Minneapolis area.
That would be Ilhan Omar's district, because the belief is that there's some fraud that went in in terms of getting some of these people to be naturalized American citizens.
And they want to discover that fraud and they want to actually denaturalize them.
Have you heard that term before?
That's a new one.
That'll be a good one for 2026.
Denaturalization.
Denaturalization, after we learned of some nine, possibly 16 billion, some are saying even more, maybe 100 billion, went missing from Minnesota because it was going to all these daycares that didn't actually exist, along with Medicaid and Medicare fraud, along with, oh, feeding the future fraud.
I mean, it just keeps going on and on.
Listen to Caroline Levitt promise denaturalization for those possibly involved.
The Department of Justice, as we speak, Is continuing to execute search warrants and subpoenas.
People will be in handcuffs as a result of the fraud that Governor Walls has allowed to occur for many, many years.
The Department of Homeland Security is conducting door to door investigations on the ground at potential fraud sites.
And they are also, of course, conducting continued deportations of illegal aliens in Minnesota's communities.
We're also not afraid to use denaturalization.
Do you hear that?
Denaturalization.
Get ready.
This is going to be a big word, a big word in 2026.
Basically, if they can prove that any of these people secured citizenship through fraudulent means, boom, they send them back to Somalia.
You lose your American citizenship.
And given the level of fraud that they have detected already in the state of Minnesota, I'm going to go on a limb and say that there might be a little more there, right?
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
And this is much more than smoke.
So you have all these people that suddenly secured citizenship along with millions of dollars in daycare centers.
And they're going to look into that.
And if it turns out that you secured citizenship, through some kind of illegal false means, misrepresenting yourself in any way, shape, or form, you're in trouble.
And you're going to lose your citizenship.
People are asking whether or not this could actually mean Ilhan Omar could be denaturalized.
She might have a more complicated case because at 17 years old, she was still a minor, and that is when she became an American citizen.
But there are lots of rumors about what her family may have been involved in in Somalia, if any of that.
And again, I want to be careful.
It's all speculation at this point.
But if that comes to fruition and if any of that is true, and if she went along with that at 17, then they might be able to do something there.
The other thing that they certainly would be able to do is if they can figure out whether or not the husband slash brother is actually the brother, again, just an online rumor, but Daily Mail's done a lot of reporting on that one and they claim it's true.
Well, then you might have a way at least to make sure that the brother's denaturalized.
And I think that there would be serious.
Serious implications for one, Ilhan Omar.
People are talking about the possibility of criminal charges for Ilhan Omar, for Tim Waltz, and for Keith Ellison, the AG in Minnesota.
Ilhan, as you know, has been at the center of this.
She's the one that introduced the legislation.
Funny enough, one of her campaign managers was one of the guys that was profiting off of it to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, $250 million being defrauded from American taxpayers.
The president has turned off the spigot.
not only to Minnesota, but to a lot of other states where they're questioning whether or not there was fraud.
I mean, it's pretty amazing.
And the other big question when all of this comes out is how much money went to Al-Shabaab, which is the illicit terror organization out of Somalia with Al-Qaeda and ISIS links.
So if that happened, and given my background in tracking terror funding, it would be very hard to think it didn't happen because the way the money is transmitted through the Hawala network, Al-Shabaab has its hand in all of it and takes something off the top.
So I don't know how you can confidently say that none of the money went back to a really, really bad organization.
You can't.
And maybe Ilhan is coming around to that realization because I want you to see her speaking.
Oh, this was in late November.
And then she talks about whether or not any of the money went to terrorist organizations like a week later.
And she's starting to sing a different tune because, Donanta, a light bulb has gone off in her head.
She's in trouble.
There is not a single evidence that the president or his coonies have put forth that there are any single resources from taxpayers.
In Minnesota, that has gone to aid and abate terrorism.
That language is dangerous.
That language puts the lives of Somalis not only in Minnesota but across the country in danger.
If money from U.S. tax dollars is being sent to help with terrorism in Somalia, we want to know.
Yeah.
And we want those people prosecuted.
And we want to make sure that that doesn't ever happen again.
Okay.
So first it was absolutely no.
There's no way that this could have ever happened, ever, ever, ever.
And how dare you suggest otherwise to, well, if it did happen, then we want to know.
Yeah.
It's not looking good.
And that's why Walls had to resign, by the way, because it's really not looking good.
And I think what they're going to find in the Treasury Department's all over this.
And again, I'm sorry, I don't have a ton of faith in Pam Bondi and the DOJ right now, but I do have faith.
In the Treasury Secretary and Scott Besson and the team over there at Treasury, and they're looking at how the Hawala Network had its fingerprints on this money that was going back to Somalia.
And that's going to be a problem.
Not to mention, there's some things that came out over the weekend on Twitter.
I want to credit an account, she's great, Livs of TikTok, who was doing some reporting on this.
And she basically found that Somalia's Minister of Foreign Affairs business partner and his healthcare company is a guy who actually also works for.
A money transfer service that got suspended because of its links to terror organizations.
Again, these money transmitters are the ones that are allowing for some of the terror organizations to take some of the money off the top.
And so this all came out.
Look, where there's smoke, there's fire.
And all of these people are in Ilhan Omar's districts.
So I don't think you can ignore that.
I don't think you can ignore that her husband has been accused of fraud for his winery.
And somehow, shortly after she debuts this Feeding the future thing.
She goes from like being worth what?
$200,000?
She married a Minet there to now being worth something like 30 million?
I mean, that's kind of weird.
Alphonse, thanks for the generosity.
I see you get highlighted, you guys, when you are.
And I'm just looking to see if I can go to your comment.
But I find this very, very, very peculiar.
And maybe her fingerprints aren't exactly on it, but where there's smoke, there's fire.
She doesn't want you thinking that.
She's like, oh no, the only reason you're saying this is because you're prejudiced and, you know, this is white supremacy at work.
She sounds like Waltz.
Why do you think Nancy Mace is targeting you as much as she is?
It's an easy clickbait.
There is a lot of hate in this country for Muslims, there's a lot of hate in this country for black people, especially black women.
And there is a lot of hate, severe hate, for immigrants.
And so I fit them all.
She knows that she can easily raise money and get support for her bigotry from her bigoted people who want to give money to her campaign.
But the reality is, in this country, the First Amendment does not only protect speech, it protects the right and liberty for anybody to practice their faith.
I do.
Practice the Muslim faith.
I am an immigrant.
I am proud of both of those things.
And I was, of course, born in Somalia, which the president likes to mention.
And I'm also proud of my Somali heritage.
And that is not something that they can take away from me.
And I just want to say, you know, one thing.
I'm sorry.
But, like, this is not acceptable.
And you can be proud all you want, and you should be proud, whatever.
But it's not acceptable in the United States of America to have this kind of level of fraud.
Okay.
And Alphonse, I want to get to your comment because you're making the point that she was actually worth, what'd you say, $65,000?
Oh, no, she was $65,000 in debt.
Okay.
Now she's worth like $30 million.
Come on.
And now they try and say, how dare you say this?
It's somehow this must be prejudice of you.
I mean, this is what Walls banked his entire freaking career that was very short-lived ultimately on.
Oh, they're just racist.
Well, that worked out well for you, right, Tampon Timmy?
Minnesota fraud scandal grows and grows and grows to the point where Timmy Wolves had to say he's no longer running for office.
He will no longer run to be governor of Minnesota because clearly he can't govern.
Clearly, here's President Trump talking about Timmy just moments ago.
Not even believable.
This very stupid low IQ guy.
He's a very stupid man because you know I had a campaign against him with JD.
And he's a stupid man.
And he's a corrupt politician.
And the Somalians are ripping off our country to the tune of, looks like, $19 billion.
But that's only what they can find.
So usually when you look at it, $19, that would mean it could be $50.
But the numbers are astronomical.
Think of it.
They have a dead country.
They don't have government.
They don't have anything.
They don't have a military.
shooting people and trying to capture ships.
You know, we don't let them take ships anymore.
You know why?
We use the same exact missile on them that we use on the drug carriers.
And it's very effective.
Do you notice there's nobody capturing ships anymore?
Because as they head out to go capture the ship, and the ship doesn't want to fire back because it's very flammable stuff in many cases.
And the insurance companies don't want because they build a billion-dollar ship.
And they don't want anybody firing rockets into the ship.
But we're hitting them so hard.
And it's very similar.
Same missile system.
It's called Deadly Accurate.
And do you notice that ships aren't being taken anymore?
The pirates are.
That's right.
I hadn't thought about it.
The pirates aren't.
No Somali pirates.
Pirates Held Accountable00:07:12
It's actually very easy.
They head out.
We say, guess what?
There's pirates.
That's the end of the pirates.
Yeah, he's not a big fan of.
Somalia.
But the Somalia pirates are a big problem.
I mean, he's not wrong.
And that's a big issue in the shipping industry.
And it's a big problem for the insurers.
And now here we're dealing with some version of Somalian pirates here in the US of A.
And so this is getting really ugly.
It's getting ugly for Waltz.
It's getting ugly for Omar.
And it's getting ugly for the attorney general of Minnesota, who was just caught on tape.
I told you this was a big show today.
I mean, this is what happens when I go on vacation for a little bit, right?
We come back, we've got a lot of news.
This guy, Keith Ellison, oh, he basically, Washington Free Beacon has a story, was that cop bragging about helping to indict fraudsters who stole $250 million from a federal child nutrition program.
No, no, he's been bragging about that, right?
He's like, oh, I did what I should do.
But it turns out there's newly uncovered audio which shows Ellison privately offering support to people tied to this scandal.
And I got the tape for you and we're going to watch it together because this is not looking good for Minnesota and its leadership.
Listen.
Feel free to call me directly.
And it is my goal to see prosperity among people who've been denied it.
You know, I think it's very kind and important for you to say that new American communities appreciate the sacrifices of people who come before, but we're all in this together.
Right?
You see what I'm saying?
I think it's kind of you to say it, and I appreciate it, but we don't recognize any differences between us.
We're one and we're going to stand up for each other and make sure that we get some things fixed.
Absolutely.
I do recognize there's a problem, but what I really need to move to be effective on your behalf is to get specific.
Absolutely.
And it's like, you know, this sister on this day is having this problem on this.
And then I can call up and be like, what is the problem?
And let me tell you, just being able to say, just getting the question, just getting the inquiry from the AG is sometimes enough.
To make people knock it off, you need a true and steadfast partner to fight for basic justice, and that is your MO.
Well, brother, let me just tell you this.
Of course, I'm here to help.
I mean, but let me be clear I'm not here because I think it's going to help my reelection.
I don't give a, I don't care about no reelection.
I voluntarily threw my congressional career away.
I'm like, I don't want to do it anymore.
It's boring to me.
So, to do this, to do what I'm doing now.
So, of course, I didn't leave that job to do nothing in this job.
I mean, is this?
Am I going to get more hits than I got by prosecuting a police officer and giving them life in prison?
Right, so we're gonna?
Yeah, so let's just go, just go fight these people wow okay, so that was leaked audio really discovered.
It seems that he's trying to play ball with them in a way, because you know well, we're all black right, we don't care.
If you just got here recently, you know we have our struggles, you're gonna have.
He's trying to like lump everyone together again in this division politics.
Don't forget he was out there really pushing for that Somalian vote.
The reality is, look, you're not going to win a state election in the state of Minnesota if you don't have Minneapolis.
And you're not going to win Minneapolis unless you have the Somalian population.
So he was acting in his own self-interest, possibly looking the other way when bad stuff was going on.
It is.
So can you tell us why the Somali communities are very important for the elections?
Well, the Somali community is critical.
In my own election, I wouldn't be in office without the help of the Somali community.
Somali voters came out in very large numbers and were able to register people to vote.
Very recently, I think there were several thousand Somalis who were just naturalized as U.S. citizens.
Somalis can make a huge impact on this election.
Oh, okay.
They were just naturalized.
So that's part of what Christy Nome's operation is actually investigating.
How are they naturalized?
Should they have been naturalized?
And can they be denaturalized?
Wow, I mean, this thing is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and it's going to bring down a lot of key people, not just Waltz, but Ilhan, Omar and Ellison as well.
And you know what?
I don't think people are going to rest until someone goes to jail.
I again repeat, i'm a little disappointed in Pambondi.
You should have seen my christmas eve show.
I mean, I i'm like i'm really disappointed in Pambondi, but I have faith in the Treasury Department, and they're going to find this money and they're going to find exactly where it goes back to.
And let me tell you, we're talking jail.
Okay.
And don't take my word for it.
I want to go to one of my former colleagues, a lovely woman on Fox, Dana Perino.
And Dana doesn't really go out there and hit hard on things all the time.
She kind of tries to be sort of neutral Switzerland.
But she's pretty much like at the point, much like me, where there's no coming back.
For walls or any of them.
Watch.
He might have been the first shoe to fall, but there's more coming.
Because Keith Ellison, who is the attorney general of Minnesota, former congressman, who is a member of Democratic leadership, he is on audio, leaked audio, talking to these people, telling them that he will cover up the investigation, so that they'll tell the investigators to back off.
So this resignation or decision not to run, not a resignation, but the decision not to run, is not the end of the story.
The fraud story doesn't end there.
To me, it's really just beginning.
And thankfully, there's a very good prosecutor in the state that is relentless.
So hopefully they'll get it cleaned up.
That's bad news for you, Timmy.
Bad news for you, Ilhan.
And bad news for you, Keith Ellison.
Because someone, even CNN admits, is going to jail.
That nothing is being done, that no one is being held accountable, that this was just let.
To run rampant is completely false.
Well, some people have been held accountable, but I think, in the opinion of most Republicans, not nearly enough.
And truthfully, until somebody in a position of power, until somebody in a position in Minnesota, elected position who was in charge of administering this or having some oversight over it, goes to jail, it's honestly never going to stop.
Look what's going on in blue states across the country $9 billion in Minnesota, $70 billion in fraud in California, cooking the crime stats in Washington, D.C. When is someone in a position of power going to go to jail for the randomness of the law?
What I am telling you, though, is in the case of these states and locales, this is public money, taxpayer money.
California Medicaid Corruption00:02:49
Sure.
People get elected.
They're supposed to run the government.
The DOJ is doing their job every single day.
About paywalls.
The Medicaid program is run by the state.
Is prosecuting brags about putting more money into this daycare system that is obviously rife with fraud.
Someone's going to go to jail.
There will be a head on a platter.
And, you know, if Pam can't get it done, I'm pretty sure Besant can.
Because they're going to be following all that money.
And you wonder why they're all freaking out.
Elon was fought on.
He told us why.
You know who complains the loudest and with the most amount of fake, righteous indignation?
The fraudsters.
That's it's a tell.
You're listening?
Minnesota.
Yeah, serious major, major fraudsters.
So there's going to be a lot more on that.
But this fraud is so widespread.
I mean, California, it's not looking good in California.
They're talking about missing $70 billion.
I'm going to get to that story in just a moment.
But first, a shout out to one of our great sponsors here on the Trish Regan Show.
He almost lost me for a second.
That wouldn't be good.
And that's Balance of Nature, our wonderful friends over Balance of Nature.
They have a wonderful deal right now because they have something called the whole health system and it's It's a great discount.
Actually, you can lock it in at $79.99 right now if you go to balancenature.com and use code word Trish.
A terrific variety of whole food ingredients, 31 different fruits and vegetables.
The supplements are very versatile.
The fiber and spice supplement, for example, mixes easily into your drinks.
You can open your fruits and veggie supplements and mix the powder into a smoothie or sprinkle it onto your food.
Balance of Nature's whole health system supplements feature ingredients like flaxseed, cinnamon, turmeric, mango.
Pineapple, wild blueberries, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, kale, wow, cayenne pepper, and many, many more.
Forgive me, I think I said 31 different fruits and vegetables.
That's the fruits and veggies that I take.
In the whole health system, Balance of Nature's whole health system, the supplements include 47 ingredients of 100% real whole foods, fruits, vegetables, spices, and fibers.
And it's perfect for your daily routine.
So I encourage you to take this.
You know, you got to prioritize numero uno.
And your health is a big part of that.
So, Get your exercise, drink lots of water, and take your balance in nature.
Go check it out right now.
Use code RETRISH for 50% off.
And I want to just mention that new and existing customers can lock in the whole health system at $79.99 per order for life.
If you cancel in the future, you lose that price, but $79.99.
BalanceOfNature.com.
Oh, we got some more fraud to talk about in California.
I mean, it's not just Minnesota.
We're talking California as well.
Fake Daycare Scams00:04:46
And the president is livid.
It gets too crazy.
California is more corrupt than any place.
California is more corrupt than Minnesota.
And I won Minnesota.
Well, Tom's going, I think so.
Well, it's close.
It can't be proportionately, probably nothing's more corrupt.
Well, his point is they get real issues in California.
The homeless funding program alone apparently cost them something like $2.3 billion.
News Nation doing a story on this the other night.
$2.3 billion sent to LA County over four years is completely unaccounted for.
Woo!
Okay.
So the president writes there is more fraud in California.
than there is in Minnesota, if that's even possible.
When you add in what he believes to be election fraud, then they become first.
You got two crooked governors, you got two crooked states, and he's not having it.
He's just not having it.
You know, it's amazing.
You look at just this one YouTuber, right, who went out and like started a firestorm because now YouTubers are going around looking at these daycare centers everywhere.
There was one I just saw in California.
I wasn't able to actually verify it.
And, you know, I like to verify things before I bring them to you.
But he found a guy who's running an Iranian daycare, a guy at like 40 some odd million that he got, and there were no kids there.
So he's like, what's going on?
So that was something to see.
Again, I want to just track it down and make sure it's all, in fact, totally 100% real.
But this kid, Nick Shirley, 23 years old, he's absolutely real.
And he is onto something, starting a trend here where people are finding out that these daycares actually don't even exist.
Fraud is taking place within the government.
And the Somali population.
Here, this building alone, Quality Learning Center, is a daycare, yet they spelt learning wrong and they said leering.
This daycare alone in 2025 has received $1.9 million from the government.
The strange things about these childcare centers is there's no one here right now.
It's midday on a weekday.
If you were to try to go inside, it's completely closed and the windows are all blacked out.
No one's working midday, children should be in here, and this place is licensed for 99 children.
And this is the outside, there's no windows, no nothing.
And like I said, they literally spelled the word wrong on their sign.
This is open and blatant fraud taking place here inside of Minnesota.
The government is complicit with this.
So it's fantastic, like, he did this awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome report, and all he did was take the addresses and compare it with, you know.
Public documents showing how much money had gone to these things and when knocking on doors, and it turns out there's no kids, there's like nothing there.
I mean, heck, they can't even spell the word learning right at the Quality Learning Center.
It's unbelievable.
So that's happening there in Minnesota, and then you've got people finding it in Ohio too, nonetheless.
Another one?
Check this one out.
Today I'm showing you 161 Child Care in Columbus, Ohio.
And as you can see, it does not look like a child care center at all.
It is locked, says it's open.
There's a little desk right there, but The ceilings all falling out and stuff like that.
And if you come around back, you can see that this place is just a total dump.
This is unbelievable.
Literal just debris everywhere.
This is your taxpayer dollars.
Good question.
How do you enroll?
How do you enroll your children here?
You can't do that?
No kids?
So, how can I enroll my children?
It says you get public money through Ohio.
You get money through the state of Ohio.
This is why I keep saying you cannot give government too much money.
What government has, government spends, and quite often it winds up possibly going to fraud.
So, that's Ohio.
If you go over to Washington, you get a bunch of places, some of which don't even actually have. addresses on them and they're all belonging to naturalized Somalian American citizens.
So there's kind of a theme going on with the Somali daycare centers that's kind of a problem, don't you think?
I mean, this is our taxpayer dollar money.
And what's incredible about all this, I just want to point this out, is that this is being discovered by YouTubers.
This is not being discovered by the mainstream media.
YouTubers Expose Truth00:02:11
Again, you know, hey, CBS News.
Where are you?
60 minutes, isn't this?
You know?
I remember the days when Mike Wallace would go chasing.
This would be perfect for him.
He'd be chasing down the, the daycare owners.
So somehow the media has lost its way if it ever had its way to begin with.
But the reality is there's power that's been given to the citizen journalists because of what we're doing right here.
So you know, we don't, we don't have to deliver status Cool.
I've never felt so free in my life.
My gosh, I get to say whatever I want.
I don't have to have any scripts.
I don't have to have any approved my scripts.
It's just you and me, baby, right?
And that is certainly gratifying for me as a journalist, as a commentator, but it's got to be gratifying for you too, right?
Because there's like nothing in between us.
We've got like kind of a thing going on, shall we say?
It's like I've never felt so connected to my audience.
And I get to See what you guys are thinking in real time.
By the way, I'm going to go out to some of your comments right now.
And that's a whole different experience than anything I've ever had in my career.
And it's a wonderful one.
So, you know, we, the media is changing in real time.
The mainstream media doesn't really know how to handle it.
I mean, they've got an FCC investigation going on, for goodness sakes, over at ABC News.
And I think The View is on its last legs and they're all fighting with each other and they get mutiny over there.
And for goodness sakes, Ann and Vara has a different point of view than Whoopi Goldberg.
Sonny Hassan apparently are not allowed to do that.
And then you got Marjorie Taylor Greene angling for her job at The View.
I mean, the whole place is coming apart.
You got Georgie Pooh, who's already been fined 16 million, or his network rather, who doesn't seem very happy to be there, nor happy that the Trump administration is running the show.
And then instead of asking like really interesting questions, you've got the media on these weekend shows like basically trying to say, how do you have this legal George?
I mean, there's so many fascinating questions that you could be and should be asking about Venezuela right now.
Historic Moment of Pride00:01:15
I mean, this is a moment, a historic moment that, frankly, as a nation, we should all be proud of.
I mean, most people are.
The CNN survey showed you that one.
I see a fellow New Hampshireite here in the mix.
A good old 603er, Michael Smith, welcome.
Good to have you here.
Yeah, the view, I don't know what happened to the view, superstar bad.
The view kind of went right off the cliff.
And peace in my mind, we are over a million subscribers and still climbing.
We're going to get to 1.2.
I think we're almost at 1.2 right now.
So do me a favor, share the show, tell people I'm here.
And it's a fun time.
It's a fun time.
And you know, I'm always, I try to be here no matter what.
I was even with you right off the coast of Cuba over the weekend as I was vacationing with my family, but still working, always working.
I can't stop working.
It's just kind of who I am and what I love to do.
And I love you guys for being here.
So I will see you back here live on the Trish Regan Show once again tomorrow.
Oh, if you haven't gone to Spotify and subscribed to my show there, please do that as well.