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- [00:05]
A
Good morning. It's Monday, December 22nd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, a major conservative organization picks its 2028 presidential candidate. Why? The latest Epstein release is more frustrating than revealing for some. And movie fans worldwide are ecstatic about A Blue Snake. But first, it was another weekend of dramatic escalation by the US Military in the Caribbean, the focus was on the seizure of oil tankers, which comes after President Trump said that he intended to crack down on sanctioned vessels that were involved in Venezuela's oil trade. The Wall Street Journal's Benoit Foucault told us that these new operations were aimed squarely at President Nicolas Maduro.
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B
The US Is ratcheting the pressure on Venezuela to come to an agreement with the US which everyone expect would include some kind of political transition and the departure of Maduro from power.
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A
Prior to this, there have been a series of strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean targeting what the administration claims are boats illegally smuggling drugs. Trump has said that he thinks Maduro's quote, days are numbered. And Falcon told us that disrupting these shipments could soon become a major problem for the Venezuelan government. The U.S. treasury Department has already sanctioned much of Venezuela's trade activity. The Journal reports that sanctioned tankers account for around 70% of Venezuela's oil exports. And analysts estimate that about half of the 75 tankers around their waters are on the Treasury's blacklist. A vessel that was seized on Saturday appeared to be heading to Asia, where Venezuela has its most important customer.
- [01:46]
B
These lack in Iran, very similar situation. Oil exports to China have been really what has been allowing the government to still function financially. It's been a key part of their, of the revenue and it's going to almost be a salvation.
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A
If shipments now fall, Venezuela could struggle to store its oil and be forced to slow production. Faucon told us that it seemed like the US Pressure campaign was already having an impact.
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B
It's clearly become much more difficult to leave Venezuelan waters. I mean, we've seen some example of movements where a vessel was coming, for instance, to load Venezuelan crude and didn't in the end effectively got intimidated by the presence of warships. So there's a lot of vessels right now that are basically stuck at Venezuelan ports that are not able or have decided at the moment not to start exporting that crude oil.
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A
Prices rose after Trump's blockade announcement last week, but Falcon said that suppressing Venezuelan trade alone was unlikely to cause major changes at the gas pump. Prices have fallen this year. And if anything, the challenge has been oversupply. Targeting this trade has geopolitical implications far beyond the Caribbean. The illicit so called shadow fleet carrying sanctioned oil around the world originally emerged out of Iran a decade ago and was then exploited by Russia after it invaded Ukraine. And Foucon thinks that the US Wants to hurt the wider group of countries that depend on it.
- [03:05]
B
The fact that a lot of these tankers were previously working with Iran oil and were sanctioned for that reason or with Russian oil. In addition, there's this other dimension of the support that Venezuela gives to other countries that are also American foes like Cuba that the US Wants to cut. So all this network of relationship of countries that are hostile to the U.S. effectively, that's what the U.S. is trying to cut for the oil blockade.
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A
Venezuela described the US Seizures as piracy and pledged to report the administration to the UN Security Council. The Justice Department released thousands of files related to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday after a successful bipartisan push to publicize more information about the deceased financier's crimes. The documents reveal some disturbing details of Epstein's demands to procure underage girls to prey upon and that one victim's sister reported Epstein's behavior to the FBI as far back as 1996. They also revealed his enormous network of celebrity and power with photos showing him alongside some of the world's most famous people. But these details don't dramatically change what we know already. And many were ultimately left dissatisfied with what they saw. The documents were heavily redacted in places, and the Justice Department said it was only a partial release, with more to come in the weeks ahead. The DOJ also received criticism for taking down a number of photos, including one featuring President Trump, which they put back up on Sunday. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Meet the Press that officials were carefully trying to protect the information of victims.
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C
There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday. That's because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we're putting up. And so when we hear concerns, whether it's photographs of women that we do not believe are victims or we didn't have information to show that they were victims, but we learned that there are concerns, of course we're taking that photograph down and we're going to address it.
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A number of Epstein's victims said that they were disappointed and frustrated by the heavy redactions in this release of documents. Marina Lacerda spoke with Ms. Now about her reaction.
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D
I think all of us, if I can say, we are infuriated with this, and I feel like it's another slap in our faces. We have now reached to the point where our emotions, the anxiety that we are having, it's just. It's running. It's running through my. It's running through our blood.
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We are.
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We are so upset about this.
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Republican Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Democrat Ro Khanna from California said that they were planning to attempt to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt for the incomplete release. Some of the frustrations on all sides speak to the desire for more answers in a case that has captivated the public. Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at the Atlantic and the host of the culture podcast Galaxy Brain. He was among the reporters trawling through the documents.
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E
I think that people were hoping that they were going to get this really panoramic view of Jeffrey Epstein's life. And what we got instead was a lot of photographs.
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Basically, some of those photos featured former President Bill Clinton. He's pictured on a plane, swimming in a pool and relaxing in water with individuals around him blocked out. Some administration officials seized upon these photos in social media posts. Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein's victims, and he has always denied knowing about his crimes.
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E
Bill Clinton seems to be the main character of this release. Right. The photos are very prominent. People found them almost immediately, whereas there was almost no information about Donald Trump.
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Deputy AG Blanche said that they were not redacting information about Trump, who, like Clinton, has not been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein. Trump has maintained that while he knew Epstein socially before a falling out, he did not know of his crimes. Warzel told us that as the reality of what had been released became clear, criticism online grew.
- [07:13]
E
I saw a lot of frustration from people who seemed very invested in this scandal on both sides of the political spectrum at the amount of redactions. Right. That the partial release and just excessive redactions inside this are actually proof of a bigger scandal. So in releasing the files the way that they have, I think they have actually fanned the flames. They have prolonged this story.
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As he puts it in the Atlantic, the files were too redacted to satisfy anyone. As President Trump nears the end of the first year of his second term in office, some conservative activists and Republicans are beginning to think about who the standard bearer for the party will be in 2028. There is already one obvious name gaining early momentum. President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self defeating purity tests. He says make America great again because every American is invited. That was Vice President JD Vance closing out an annual conference held by Turning Point USA in Phoenix, an event that also, by the way, featured a surprise appearance from the rapper Nicki Minaj. While Vance has not formally said that he is running for president, the leader of the organization issued an early endorsement of him on Friday. That leader is Erica Kirk, who took over when her husband Charlie was assassinated. She spoke to the 31,000 attendees at the conference about why she thought that Vance was the man for the job. We are going to get my husband's friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible. There were indications that even before Kirk was assassinated that his political outfit wanted to help elevate Vance as the heir to Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports, for example, that Turning Point has plans to get operatives on the ground throughout Iowa. That's a pivotal early state in the presidential nominating process. Jonathan Cooper is a national politics reporter with the Associated Press who spoke with us from the Turning Point conference.
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It's been sort of a mix of a tribute to Charlie Kirk and the conservative movement, the MAGA movement really trying to find its way forward in the post Trump era, in an era without Charlie Kirk, who was sort of a bridge builder holding together the disparate factions of the conservative coalition.
- [09:37]
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While he told us that many attendees are excited about the prospect of rallying behind Vance, there are still some who are waiting to see what a contested primary might bring.
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Even people who, like J.D. vance, don't want him to be coronated as the next nominee. Trump has said that Vance is well positioned to be the next nominee, but he has avoided throwing his endorsement firmly behind Vance or anybody else. And his word carries a lot of weight. So this is very much a movement that's trying to figure out what it's going to be when it is not the party of Donald Trump.
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And Cooper said there were moments when various speakers actually used time on stage to criticize one another.
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F
It started with Ben Shapiro going after Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, some of the biggest names in MAGA media. He said that the right wing media ecosystem has a problem with the truth in a lot of ways, with podcasters, influencers lying to their audience and manipulating them and urging conservatives to really be discerning in who they trust and who they listen to.
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Shapiro also took issue with an interview Carlson did with a white nationalist. Carlson responded in his own address that the idea of deplatforming speakers would be anathema to Kirk. Vance, the Journal notes, has largely dismissed the concerns about infighting within the party and the notion that anti Semitism is spreading within it. Should he pursue the nomination in 2028, like any other candidate, Vance would have to navigate holding this coalition together that propelled Trump to office. And finally, a few other stories were following as Washington state was inundated with record rainfall this month. Money that was allocated for flood mitigation was put on hold or cut by the Trump administration. NBC News reports that Washington secured tens of millions of dollars in federal grants for things like elevating homes, new levies and moving people away from areas that are prone to floods. About $182 million of FEMA grants were cut by Trump, leading to a court battle between the state and the federal government. Washington and other states that had sued won a summary judgment, but NBC reports that the money has not yet been delivered. Washington's hazard mitigation officer also says that 31 million more in grants is awaiting approval from the DHS Secretary, Kristi Noemi. Meanwhile, storms and flooding resulted in one death and at least 1,300 rescues and assisted evacuations. Officials in Washington did note that these dollars might not have made a difference this time, but could have a serious impact in future flooding events. A blackout in the Bay Area over the weekend caused Waymo, operators of driverless robo taxis to suspend services after the power outage caused many of their vehicles to behave strangely. In San Francisco, videos posted on social media showed several Waymo cars stalled on roads and causing big traffic jams as people behind the wheel of their cars navigated around them. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, did not give a specific reason for their cars stalling out, but TechCrunch reports one possible reason was that traffic lights in the city were down. Others speculated that a loss in cellular service and traffic data may have been at fault. About 130,000 homes and businesses were affected by the outage, which began on Saturday. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at times entire neighborhoods were totally dark. Most power had been restored by Sunday morning, but some residents still remained without electricity. And finally, it's one of the biggest movies of the year, due in large part to a talking pit viper. Snakes never hurt anyone. We aren't the bad guys.
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They are.
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That snake you just heard is named Gary. He's played by Ke Hui Quan, and he's a character in Zootopia 2, which if you have young children, you may already and if you don't, perhaps you will be asked to buy a ticket for them soon. The movie has been a smash hit, generating over a billion dollars worldwide, with a huge portion coming from China. There, the Washington Post reports that Gary has been a specific draw because it's the year of the snake in the Chinese lunar calendar. Plushes, handbags and other official merchandise from the movie have sold out almost as soon as they've been restocked, and there was even a brief craze of people buying actual venomous blue pit vipers. The Post reports that a lot of sites selling those animals have taken down some of the listings. After more scrutiny, the movie's success has been a relief to American studios and Chinese film regulators, perhaps a small price to pay for having a venomous snake in your home. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. If you're already listening to the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. Wired reports on Parkinson's disease. Despite the bulk of research dollars going to genetic ties to the condition, the cause of the vast majority of cases can't be explained by a patient's genes. That has led researchers looking for what else it could be. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.