← Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media. I'm your host, Stacey Abrams. If you were shocked to learn that 2026 would start out with the US military sending 150 aircraft into Venezuela and a special forces team designed to seize President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, you wouldn't be alone. This brazen, extrajudicial act of regime change, or at least regime decapitation, has set a dangerous precedent and somehow made the world even more complicated than we left it in 2025. I use the word complicated because language matters. Parts of the year were horrifying, vile, cruel, or absurd. But other parts of 2025 revealed a depth of community, a generosity of spirit, and the constant potential for redemption. I've spent the past few days, though, thinking about how important our word choices are and not only setting the tone of discussion, but also in shaping minds and behaviors. Words matter. In 2018, I lost my bid for governor of Georgia. And in my speech, I very clearly acknowledged that I didn't win the seat, but I refused to use the commonly accepted term in politics concession. In fact, I explicitly rejected it as inappropriate and talked about it in my speech. Because, you see, as an advocate for voting rights, I could not in good conscience concede or vouch for a system or a victor that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of citizens. And a lot of folks were mad that I didn't do so. I didn't use the word concede because it wasn't right. And I continue to stand by my linguistic choice because words matter. That's why we have so many of them. We can find the proper term and convey the clear intent if we think about the words. And yet, throughout 2025, we seem to wrestle over language again and again. You see, under this administration, ice, a masked paramilitary force that operates as a secret police, snatched people off of the streets. Yet rather than calling it kidnapping, some tried to soften the harm by using the seemingly objective term detention. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh authorized racial profiling and what is now smugly termed Kavanaugh stops by Homeland Security. And then when hundreds of citizens and immigrants were shipped off to foreign prisons without due process, a brave few rightly named the action for what it rendition. But the misuse of language happens in domestic issues as well. For example, when Doge and OMB served as political fig leaves for stealing the private data of millions of Americans and slashing the social safety net, or the blatant corruption of Trump, his family and friends to the tune of billions of dollars, when that is dismissed as transactionalism rather than gross corruption. Words matter. And then, of course, over the weekend, the US Military, not law enforcement, invaded Venezuela and kidnapped the head of state and his wife. And yet American media has collectively decided to call it capture rather than risk using a more precise and accurate term. Now, the most credible excuse is that no court has opined on the legality of their action, and therefore, capture is a safe word. But like the other turns of phrase that seek to obscure harm, we have to know better. We have to do better. Just like we know that this Republican regime is operating in service of authoritarianism, in fealty to an autocrat who sees no constraints on executive power. Now, as in 2018, bad faith actors look for the language that we use and I know, for example, some will seize on what I've just said here as proof of partisanship. Or worse, they'll try to create some strained false equivalence with their most reprehensible behavior. Don't be surprised and don't fall for it, because it's that kind of verbal sleight of hand that turned the insurrection of January 6th into a rallying cry for MAGA. Because insurrection, like corruption, like theft, like kidnapping, these words mean something. Our job this year is to reclaim the language of accountability, the language of democracy, to understand that language, that words matter. And then our next step, we have to demand more and then do more. So welcome to 2026. Joining me this week to discuss the magnitude of regime change in Venezuela and what it will mean is Ricardo Zuniga, founding partner of dinamica Americas, a career member of the US Senior Foreign Service and former principal advisor for the Americas to President Obama. Ricardo, welcome to the show.
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Thank you very much, Stacey.
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Well, before we get into the raid, the strikes, and the US Government's actions, I'd like to start by giving our listeners background on Venezuela. One pertinent date that's floating out there is 1976, when then President Carlos Perez nationalized the oil industry. So how did we get from there to now?
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Well, it was a windy path, but certainly there was an enormous amount of political dysfunction that got us to this point inside of Venezuela. Venezuela in the 70s and the 80s was an enormously important regional actor. It was a very wealthy country because of oil wealth, which created the kinds of problems we've seen in other major oil producers, but also for a long time made Venezuela a very influential regional player. They were very involved in leading the peace process in Central America in the 1980s. They were present in the multilateral systems across the region. They were very important players. But there was a system in place that allowed that was essentially an alternation of power between two parties that increasingly began to be seen as corrupt actors. So that opened the space in the early 1990s for Hugo Chavez, then a military officer, to stage an attempted coup that failed. He was jailed, but he became a national hero and then later on was able to lead use that influence to win election as president of Venezuela. And since that date, he immediately began to dismantle the institutions of power in the country, which was quite popular at the time because the parties had been so discredited. He also distributed oil wealth in very significant ways. And he had a policy of anti imperialism and really aimed at the United States. He began to regionalize that he remained, through most of his life, a very popular politician in Venezuela. But he also began to take an increasingly authoritarian posture in terms of his internal politics and sought to extend his power over time. There was a coup attempt that actually succeeded in removing him briefly from power. And Cuba and Fidel Castro personally were very responsible for helping essentially turn the armed forces against the coup plotters at the time of that coup. And ever since that date, Cuba became much, much more involved in the internal affairs of Venezuela, which is why you saw over 30 Cubans among the victims of the US attack over the weekend. The Cubans became the personal guardians of first President Chavez and then President Maduro and were very involved in that period, in the many twists and turns. Hugo Chavez died of cancer and during the Obama administration, during President Obama's second term. And that was a landmark event in Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver, famously somebody who came up through the union system, did not have anything like the charisma of Hugo Chavez. But he stayed in power much longer than people anticipated. And he tried to use the same formulas as he basically rode on Hugo Chavez's coattails throughout his tenure. But that began to wear out over time as they became pretty terrible stewards of the Venezuelan economy and resuscitated a lot of the same anger, popular anger, that had once existed against the prior political parties started to turn against the ruling party in Venezuela. And so we saw that ultimately result in a series of elections, the last two of which were absolutely manipulated by the current ruling party, the Pesuv, led by Nicolas Maduro. And most recently in 2024, he. Nicolas Maduro lost resoundingly to the Democratic candidates by at least 70 to 30, according to external observers who were there. And they just used violence to repress the population and consolidate power. So they had lost a lot of popular will. It's a long, long story. In the meantime, I think the other really important piece is the Venezuelan oil economy. The source of revenue for the country really declined dramatically. They went from 3 million barrels a day of oil to under a million barrels a day. And it will take probably decades to rebuild the infrastructure that existed then. A lot more that we can say about the oil industry, but it's a central player in Venezuela and. And now is a central player in the relationship between President Trump and Venezuela and the new leadership.
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Well, I want to come back to the oil conversation, but before we do that, Maduro's tenure has, as you pointed out, it's been marked by economic collapse, by grotesque human rights violations, nearly 8 million people have fled the country, which has a population of I think currently 30 million people.
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B
That's right.
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A
And yet we've seen a range of reactions from Venezuelans protests in Caracas and celebrations in Florida. How do you explain for the observer why this wide ranging reaction has happened, particularly given the failures of the Maduro regime?
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So I would say that in Venezuela, there is a real, there is certainly a strong anti American element in the country. Even if they lost resoundingly, they do have sectors of influence. Some of that's ideological, some of that people who depend on government jobs and frankly, on the existence of the current system. But overwhelmingly, I think people were ready to see Maduro leave power one way or another in Venezuela and certainly outside where most of the people forced to leave Venezuela, most of whom did not come to the United States, most of whom were In Colombia, there's 3 million Venezuelans in Colombia alone. Most of them blamed Maduro and his leadership team for the terrible situation that exists in Venezuela today. So there was a lot of happiness overseas. I'm not sure how much Venezuelans overseas believe that conditions will get better as they were assured over the weekend, but I think that there was happiness at least that Maduro was no longer there. As you said, he was responsible for many significant human rights violations during his time in power. In Venezuela itself, it's more complicated. I think people were hopeful that Maduro's departure would open the path to a different kind of leadership. But now what we see is that the same people who are in power on Friday afternoon other than Maduro and the first lady, are still in power today in Venezuela. And I think that certainly is causing people to think about exactly what this means. This is a continuation of the current team, and that's led to a lot of uncertainty. I think there's a lot of questions more than anything else in Venezuela.
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B
That's a really good point. The short answer is we don't know. We don't know a lot of what's happening behind the scenes in the communication between the U.S. government and the current leadership in Venezuela. We don't know a lot about how we got here. There's a lot of intrigue. There's a lot of rumor and belief that Delsey Rodriguez, who had been very close to both Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, was somehow involved in a negotiated ouster of Maduro. She and the other parts of the Venezuelan government were actually in on the removal of Nicolas Maduro. So there's a lot of intrigue still to play out I think what we're seeing is that when President Trump announced that the United States was going to be in control of Venezuela's transition, even if she had been collaborating with the United States in Nicolas Meluda's ouster, politically that was poisonous to her. And she had to show that she, in fact, was going to somehow defend not just Venezuelan interests, but the interests of the ruling class, the ruling party, and the armed forces, which is the real big player in Venezuela. We're not clear yet on how this is going to go forward, but so far, she seems to. There certainly has not been any open opposition to her leadership. So. So this may be the rest of the regime beyond Nicolas Maduro, deciding that sacrificing him was worth remaining in power at least a little longer.
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Well, the Trump administration has offered this justification for the invasion of Venezuela, taking Maduro, and prior to this, killing over 100 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean for months this fall and winter. Anyway, their justification is that Venezuela's role in the drug trade necessitated this behavior. And the indictments that were unsealed against Maduro and his wife basically accused them of narco terrorism. And I want to unpack that because, one, I would love for you to talk about the role that Venezuela actually plays in funneling drugs to the United States, and how does this stack up against other countries in Latin America or elsewhere regarding cartels and narco trafficking? And as a note, and I would love to have you wrap this in, how do you reconcile that with the recent pardoning of the former narco terrorist who was the president of Honduras?
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B
Well, I think that latter point is really important. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in Latin America right now that's being felt about the contrast between the treatment of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras, convicted for more than 40 years for his role in transporting over 60 tons of cocaine to the United States, and what happened now with Nicolas Maduro? That's certainly an issue. I would say that it's really important for everyone to understand. Venezuela does not produce or traffic fentanyl to the United States. And so the initial announcements by the United States that they were disrupting fentanyl shipments from Venezuela, just there was no factual basis for that. It's cocaine, and it's not cocaine that's produced in Venezuela. It's cocaine that's produced mainly in Colombia, but also in Peru and shipped from Venezuela to points north and east. A lot of the cocaine that comes through Venezuela goes through remote areas, sometimes goes through commercial ports, is often shipped in small loads and consolidated elsewhere in the Caribbean for shipment to Europe. We know that at least some of the shipments that have been intercepted by US Forces under this current policy were shipments that were headed not to the United States. In fact, most were not. There's no way for a fast boat to reach the United States from Venezuela. They're going to ports at points elsewhere in the Caribbean. The fact is Venezuela is a major transshipment point for cocaine. Traditionally it has gone from Venezuela to the Caribbean and to Central America, often by air, but sometimes by ship. And then some of it goes to the United States, some of it goes to Africa and to Europe. And there is a long history of that being the case. It's certainly not the only outlet by any stretch. Cocaine is booming. It's a booming economy. There's massive growth in demand in Asia and in Europe right now. And a lot of that is leaving from Pacific ports along South America's Pacific coast, from Ecuador, from Colombia itself, and from Peru. But in the case of Venezuela, the charges sort of linking this Cartel de los Soles, the Cartel of the Suns, is not a real thing in terms of it's not an organization. There is no Cartel of the Suns. It's a shorthand that US law enforcement and intelligence analysts used to describe the network of Venezuelan military and security officials that were looking the other way or that had relationships with major drug producing or major drug trafficking organizations and Colombian guerrilla groups that were financing themselves through the drug trade. Like the eln, very powerful Colombian rebel group that has a very significant presence in Venezuela, but also of course in Colombia, and is a major player in the international drug trade. And so those Venezuelan generals and colonels and other officers were involved in it. They're certainly not alone. There is a long history in Latin America of armed forces and security forces providing cover for narcotics trafficking organizations. And that was true in the case of Venezuela as well. The difference in Venezuela is that as time went on, the Chavez government and the Maduro successor government became more and more willing to allow illegal activity. Not just drug trafficking, gold smuggling, diamond and lumber smuggling. In fact, that is one of the booming areas of economic activity in Venezuela along the borders with other countries. And so there's. And the government role was very real. But there is plenty of same just simple criminal activity like we've seen across South America, Central America and Mexico. It's geography and markets determine where these organizations work. And they often find that working with corrupt officials is important. And that was also true in Venezuela.
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So if it's not about drugs it must be about oil. I said we would come back to this. Venezuela is believed to have the world's largest oil supply, about 17%. And we know that American economic and political interests have often collided with oil producing nations from Iraq to Libya to Kuwait. And current day you talked about it a little bit at the top, but I would love to spend a little more time on the history of Venezuela's oil and its intersection with American interest. And part of this is the narrative out there that this is an attempt by oil companies that were evicted from Venezuela in the late 70s trying to go back and get what was theirs. I would point out and would love to have you sort of explain the contractual relationships that existed and how nationalization was achieved, but would love to have you just talk a little bit more about Venezuela's oil production and what it has to do with American interests.
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B
Sure. Well, look, I think you started in the right place. Nationalization was in the 1970s under a democratically elected Venezuelan president. And I think it's important for listeners to understand one, it's not our oil. The United States has had a presence in the Venezuelan oil economy for over a century. American firms were very important in developing. Venezuela's oil industry had a very strong presence there. Nationalization is something that oil companies have faced and faced to this day all over the world. And that's just international practice. Sovereign nations control the resources in those nations. And that has been a given that that oil companies work with the companies that saw their resources expropriated in Venezuela in the 1970s, went through a process to basically sue the governments where necessary. They either accepted compensation or they resolved their outstanding claims through dispute resolution processes or through the courts or through other solutions. And some never did. Some have. There've been continuing claims, but the vast majority were, I think, were able to find some sort of resolution or write off those losses that is common in a very high risk industry. I think that what we're seeing today is that some oil companies seem to have been, are prepared to kind of take the risk involved. Chevron never left, for instance. I mean, I'm quite sure that they're prepared. I'm seeing reports that they're prepared to raise another $2 billion to expand their operations in Venezuela. Operations, by the way, that were licensed not just by the Trump administration in this term and by the Biden administration during his presidency, but by the Trump administration in his first term. So companies have operated and continued to operate and ship oil to the United States from Venezuela throughout all this time. There's A reason for it. Venezuelan oil is very thick, high sulfur content, high metal content. And there's only a few processing plants in the world that are capable of processing that oil. A lot of them are on the US Gulf coast simply because that's the way the industry developed. And so there is a business logic for why Venezuelan oil has a connection to US producers and distributors and processors, refiners. And so that's a natural economic relationship. I don't think that a lot of oil companies though, are prepared at this point to take on the risk of diving right in, in what is going to be at least a $60 billion reconstruction effort. $60 billion just to bring it up to sort of an operational capacity that makes the, the oil makes economic sense, but it's to really repair the infrastructure that's been lost over now the last two decades is going to be a real challenge. And so companies need to think about whether they're prepared to make another long term commitment given the uncertainty around the Trump administration's policies in Venezuela and just.
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Given the scope and the scale of time it's going to take. I want to tie that back to the lessons we should understand from previous oil related foreign forays into regime change. When the US Goes into countries and attempts to alter the politics. What's our track record?
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B
Oh, it's not a good track record and I think companies are aware of that. And so I think there's a real reluctance to step away from sort of market entry, market based and economic entry, as opposed to having sort of political resolutions like this one or military solutions, kind of create space for companies to operate. I think there's a real reluctance to get involved because they understand there's significant risks. A lot of these are public companies, publicly traded companies that have exposure not just in the United States, but in Europe, in Asia, elsewhere. And they need to think about their supply chains. They also need to assume that especially where there are already contracts for production, even if those are Chinese companies that have those contracts, there will be international lawsuits involved. If, if there is another expropriation that, you know, to hand goods over our assets over to a US or other Western firm. I think that they all understand that there's also, there's some additional risk right now involved. It's not a great track record. And if you kind of go back over Latin American history, there's like the famously banana companies were involved in and helping support the coup against President Arbenz of Guatemala. There's a much, you know, there's a long history of US banks and US companies mobilizing the US military, particularly in the first half of the 20th century and especially in the Caribbean and in Central America where there was a lot of US Investment losers or not. You know, those are not favorable histories, not in the eyes of including of companies. I mean this is the times have changed. As much as the Trump administration consciously bases its policies in Latin America in the 19th century, companies operate in the 21st century with 21st century risks and concerns. So they're not companies I don't believe are prepared to go back to a past that has a has a bad record, a bad reputation.
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More from my conversation with Ricardo Zuniga after the break. This podcast is supported by the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. Across the country, immigrants are facing family separation, wrongful detention and deportation without due process or access to legal support. In 2024 alone, there were more than 2.5 million immigration court cases without legal representation. That means millions of people were denied the most basic protection we expect from our justice system, the right to a fair process. Powered by people like you. The Defending Our Neighbors Fund is providing access to life saving legal aid to families in crisis. But they urgently need your help. And to help meet unprecedented demand, the government is pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into enforcement while slashing funding for legal aid. That makes your support more urgent than ever. It's why I'm supporting Defending Our Neighbors Fund. So help defend your neighbors and keep families together. Donate now at defendingourneighbors.org fund as the daughter of immigrants, financial struggles were part of my everyday reality. In high school, I became homeless and had to live in a women's shelter. Thankfully, being an Apia McDonald Scholar enabled me to attend college and begin a new chapter in my life. And now my reality is filled with endless possibilities.
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McDonald's has awarded nearly $4 million through APIA scholars to support students. Learn more@apanext.com.
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A
So if we're looking forward, part of what is roiling some of the conversations about what has happened in terms of the decapitation of the regime, if not the removal, because as you pointed out, Vice President Rodriguez was very deeply embedded in both the Chavez and the Maduro administrations. And then you have Maria Corina Machado and the recent Nobel Prize winner who was fairly dismissed by Trump earlier this week when he talked about her and Rubio Secretary of State Rubio has really not sought to counter that dismissal of her. So how should we understand her role and posture in this current regime change? In particular, when we think about the recent election where Edmundo Gonzalez ran, which was, as you pointed out, we saw that it was globally recognized as a fraudulent, rigged election. How should we think about what it means for Venezuelans looking for leadership?
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B
Well, there's no question that Maria Corina Machado, who has been in Venezuelan politics for a long time, was the most popular politician in the most recent cycle. She knew that she couldn't run for president, but she helped select Edmundo Gonzalez, who was the candidate. And she was seen by many Venezuelans as a kind of a symbol of opposition to Misrule under Nicolas Maduro. And so, I mean, Venezuelan politics are very fractious. It's very fragmented, you know, parties. There are many, many parties. And so she wasn't universally supported by the opposition, some of whom had a longer record of engagement with the, with the Maduro government, with Chavismo in general. Again, it's a complicated space, but there was no real question that she was seen as a symbol of democratic return to or establishment of democratic rule in Venezuela. So having been dismissed by President Trump himself as a potential factor means that the United States has decided that the last election should not be the determining election for Venezuela, but that there must be some other election at a date to be determined in the future. President Trump was asked about this last night on Air Force One and said, essentially said, we'll get to it. We need to worry about the oil first. And I think in Venezuela, the engagement with Delsey Rodriguez, who again, is seen as somebody who is very close to the leadership of the Venezuelan government, is going to be seen with skepticism. It's going to be seen as a US Accommodation with a regime that is widely reviled inside of Venezuela while setting aside the duly elected leadership of Venezuela. It may be, as I said, I don't know what the nature is of the negotiations between the Trump administration and the Delsey Rodriguez government. It may be that they're trying to set up some sort of a transition. I think Secretary Rubio would definitely be much more comfortable with a situation where the United States was trying to seat the elected leaders who are, who have wide support in Florida because of the large Venezuelan American population and Venezuelan exile population in Florida. She is a hero there. She's an absolute hero there. And it was a factor in the last presidential election. And clearly the Republican members of Congress believe that the United States should be supporting, openly supporting Maria Corinne Machado and her allies to leave Venezuela. What is true also, and I think there's been a lot of analysis that I think is accurate, I think what is true is that the Trump administration determined that the conditions didn't exist for her to assume power when the Maduro regime held all the guns in the country that if there was an effort to seat Maria Corina Machado or an ally of hers, that they could be promptly removed by the people with guns.
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A
I mean, it's hard not to notice that this raid happened 36 years to the day of the US arrest of Panama's leader, Manuel Noriega. Can you talk about the parallels that you see? But also just given your experience, what can this tell us more broadly about our history of intervention in the region?
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B
So these are very different events. I think that's first. I think it's really important that one, there was a much clearer connection between Manuel Noriega and criminal organizations and drug trafficking than exists right now, or at least that they're going to be able to, I think, produce evidence for. In the case of Nicolas Maduro, who seemed had a certain he had layers between himself and drug traffickers, I think it was much more clear. It was also the case that the Panamanian government had essentially declared war in the United States at shot a US Serviceman and there was a US Military base at the time in Panama. And the effort there was not just to take out one person, it was to remove the entire regime in one go. It's still as much, I would say most Panamanians today are still shocked by the losses, the civilian losses at that time in that conflict. It was seen as very brief in the United States. It was a trauma in Panama. But Manuel Noriega's government had been a trauma. And most Panamanians, I believe now today would tell you that they are better off for Manuel Noriega's removal. That does not mean that they have positive views about the US invasion in 1989. So I think it's a very convoluted issue in Panama. Panamanians are very nationalistic and very proud of their nationhood. Not just the national, not just the ownership of the canal, but also their separation from Colombia, where the United States was also involved. It's a complicated history. But in Venezuela, Venezuela is a much larger country. I think the United States, I think military planners would have said there was absolutely no hope for trying to seize significant territory or take over the country militarily, and certainly not with the US Troop presence that was available. The armed forces in Panama were eliminated after the US Invasion Here, in the case of Venezuela, the armed forces are probably the single strongest remaining power center in Venezuela. It's a very powerful force and they were very aligned with the Maduro government, but they're a separate power entity and they are certainly going to defend their institutional interests in whatever happens next. They were very opposed, the armed forces were very opposed to Maria Corinna Machado. And I think that that's another factor that's present there. There was a lot of conversation, I know, about lessons from Iraq as well as from Panama, and one of those was about de Baathification. So there was, I think, much more consideration of trying to retain the Venezuelan armed forces as an actor in Venezuela and not carry out the kinds of activities we saw. That's not even a factor right now because the US Is not physically present in Venezuela and does not control Venezuela.
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A
Ricardo, can you talk just very briefly explain what de Ba' athification refers to.
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B
In the case of Iraq? And there was a party that was present in many countries in the Middle east from the beginning of the 20th century. From the middle of the 20th century forward, there was a the Ba'ath party was a major political actor in the Middle east. And Saddam Hussein came to power through the Ba'ath party in Iraq. And so when the US invaded in the Bush administration, the effort by the US administration in Iraq to change the changed politics in Iraq involved trying to eliminate the Baath Party's presence in the armed forces, which was really important, and the security forces in general. And a lot of people believe that that effort to purify the security forces led directly to the guerrilla campaign, the very powerful guerrilla campaign against US Forces that really began shortly after the US Invasion and after the US Took control, physical control of Iraq. And that's now seen as something that the United States should avoid in future conflicts. In other words, that it's unrealistic to try to completely transform very powerful political and military actors and that it's more important to find ways to co opt them or work with them. And in the case of Venezuela, that's a very clear lesson. You saw many references to not attempting de Baathification.
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A
Lots more when we come back from the break. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year doesn't require a new you. Maybe just the less burdened you, therapy can help more easily identify what weighs you down, holds you back, or keeps you stuck. By offering an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships, motivations and emotions. We all know that finding a therapist who's the right fit for you can sometimes be a challenge. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time. From their tailored recommendations, their client reviews are amazing. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms Having served over 5 million people globally and it works. I have friends I've recommended and they join folks with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1-point million client reviews. Better help makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist, so sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com Abrams that's better. H E L P.com Abrams Vrbo makes it easy to claim your dream summer spot with early booking deals from homes with pools to poolside loungers. When you book a vrbo, you don't have have to reserve any loungers. They're all yours. Get that early booking deal@vrbo.com typically we know that these forays into military and political regime change are justified in the United States as a way to spread democracy, and yet we currently sit with a president who is legitimately referred to as an authoritarian or authoritarian adjacent leader. In a moment where the United States has been downgraded from a democracy to an anocracy or competitive authoritarian country. What does it mean when the autocrat running the US Invades a left wing authoritarian nation? And how should we think about what that means for Americans as we navigate this conversation?
- [47:29]
B
Well, I think it's important to note that I think President Trump has made clear that democracy is not an important factor in this action, that oil is the most important element. From his perspective, he's been very clear about that. As you say, the United States for years has been, particularly since the 1980s in Latin America, has had a history of intervention in Latin America on behalf of or in support of right wing authoritarian governments during the Cold War. Since then, the United States has been a pretty significant actor in support of democratization in Latin America, believing that it was important to have strong democracies in the Western Hemisphere, that that reinforced U.S. security and helped us compete against external rivals and especially against things like organized crime and narcotics trafficking, and that you needed to have clean governments and governments that were responsible and democratic governments to help prevent the kinds of things that would destabilize the United States, like mass migration, uncontrolled mass migration, the growth of cartels, et CETERA we believe that democracy and strong rule of law were really important. That's really been set aside. The President's National Security Strategy explicitly describes Latin America as the zone of influence of the United States. I think readers, listeners, rather should understand that the National Security Strategy is a radical departure from the policies of the United States. From the end of the Second World War till now, we had an alliance based system where US Power was reinforced by alliances with like minded countries and especially with democratic countries. Everyone's heard of NATO, but we had these sorts of relationships all over the world, in Asia, in the Americas and elsewhere. And democracy was sort of the core defining, aligning factor. That's not true in this National Security strategy, which goes from an alliance based system to a spheres of influence system. It's not a very 19th century way of looking at the world that powers control what's around them and what's nearby. That's obviously how Russia looks at the world. That's obviously how China looks at the world. They don't have a global ambition. Their ambition is to control their neighborhood. And today the White House tweeted out an image of the President saying the Western hemisphere is ours. And they are citing the Monroe Doctrine, which is, which dates back to President Monroe to the beginning of the Republic, where the United States essentially declare that the Western hemisphere was our area of influence. And that was intended to keep out European imperial powers who could become competitors in the Americas. So France, England again and Spain. And over time that has been ebbed and flowed. But the iteration of the current administration is quite explicit and frankly much more along the imperial designs of the 19th century, where essentially it's a declaration that assets in the Western Hemisphere belong to the United States. Just as it's not a question of keeping out powers, it's a question of a declaration that what's yours is also mine. And I think that's how it's going to be interpreted in Latin America. So I think a lot of listeners should understand that we're being committed to a much more aggressive and a much more militarized policy in our immediate neighborhood than has been the case for the last 45 years.
- [51:13]
A
And one piece that I really want to hone in on very quickly is there's a tendency, I think, to be myopic in our focus on Trump as architect and executor. And I roundly and soundly dismiss that idea. I think he's an avatar and very important and very powerful one. But if we don't pay attention to those who surround him, we're going to miss not just the plot. We're gonna miss what's coming next. And in this case, I think the Monroe Doctrine and the National Security Strategy very much echo the intentions of Secretary of State Rubio, who has been pushing for this type of incursion in very interesting ways for years and would love for you to talk a little bit about why this is a moment not just to pay attention to Trump, but to pay attention to Marco Rubio and why this particular decision matters.
- [52:14]
B
So, Stacy, I think that's an important point. I would add one more player here, and that's Stephen Miller. And I think that he is an equally important player, if not more important, in what's happening in the region, because make no mistake, it is about oil, but it's also about US Domestic policy and it's about immigration and about the nature of the United States. Secretary Rubio comes from a much more orthodox background, a neocon background, a Republican background that aligns the United States with mostly with right wing governments in Latin America. But there also had been, for the most part, bipartisan support for transparency in government, for working peacefully with other governments in the region for free trade and putting free trade at the kind of the center of the relationship with the Americas. And Marco Rubio really came from that background with one important exception, which is that he is a Cuban American. And so Cuba was very much a focus for him, and Cuba is very much a focus for him in the current, with a set of current events in Venezuela. There's no question that he and many people, many Cuban Americans and others aligned with them or sympathetic to Cuban Americans who wanted to see regime change in Cuba, saw Venezuela as a stepping stone because Venezuela supplies and supplied for years cheap oil and subsidized oil to Cuba. They saw there's this belief that somehow the United States, by generating an economic crisis, an insurmountable economic crisis in Cuba, will be able to bring down the Castro regime and replace it with a democratic or other government more aligned with the United States. The fact that the United States doesn't really put democracy at the middle of its foreign policy efforts is a significant change and you're seeing it reflected. I will tell you that if you look at Marco Rubio must be having some fairly tense conversations with the Republican members of Congress who've been very supportive of Maria Corinna Machado and democratic forces in Venezuela, because democracy has really been liberty has been kind of the main calling card and the main reason that they've given for having a, you know, for opposition to governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and certainly in Cuba. Cuba is a very important factor for Marco Rubio. But I want to come back to Stephen Miller for a minute because he's the Deputy Chief of Staff. He's supposed to be very focused on domestic policy. And yet from the very beginning, Stephen Miller was active in the shootings against the fast boats in the Caribbean. And why is that? He's obviously focused on migration. Venezuela was cooperating with the United States States and accepting back deportees. But here's the issue Stephen Miller sees. He's always tried to frame migration as an invasion. And he was also behind the designation of cartels and criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. Because at all times his contention is that migration is somehow being directed by the enemies of the United States. And for him to be able to use all of the military assets that he has wanted to use for mass deportation, he's had to make the case that the United States is being invaded. And to do that, if you want to show, if you're saying that you're being invaded, then you want to be able to use military force. He selected the fast boats as the easiest targets for doing that. And so that's why you have this kind of, this belief. That's why Treinder Agua, which is it's a real criminal organization, but they don't traffic fentanyl and they don't have the reach that is claimed by the Trump administration at this time. But you need to create villains and you need to make those villains the worst possible people they are. So they are narco terrorists who are working with the enemies of the United States to send invaders. And migrants very often have to go through cartel controlled zones. And so very clearly what they're trying to do is establish that trafficking people and facilitating migration is an act of force against the United States also. That's why fentanyl is designated as a weapon of mass destruction. The whole point here is to conflate migration movement of refugees with criminal activity led by US Military adversaries against whom you use military force, so that you can then justify the use of military force against migrants in the United States and outside the United States. That's the through line here.
- [57:19]
A
On that very helpful note, Ricardo, thank you so much, because I appreciate how we're connecting those pieces. And I'm going to add just the third layer to that, which is that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reiterated that tps, or the Temporary Protected status for Venezuelans, remains revoked. And so you have an entire administration, not just a president but you have very specific people who are leveraging this moment to continue to deconstruct American democracy. And with your insight, I am going to ask you a question we put to all of our guests here on Assembly Required, which is what can we do? We'd love any guidance that you have for how listeners can take action. What can Americans do to make a difference in this moment?
- [58:14]
B
Look particularly in this with regard to what's happening in Venezuela. The first thing I would say is look at your sources of information and understand, get as much factual information in what you share. Also, there's an enormous amount of disinformation about what's happening that I've seen in a lot of different directions. It's a complicated issue. But please read trusted sources and listen to trusted sources to understand what's actually happening there. I think I would also say please also read and understand what's happening in national security policy. It is a reflection of the United States. The dismantling of US Alliances has a devastating effect on the ability of the United States to protect itself for decades to come. So please learn what you can and understand that foreign policy is domestic policy. It is not remote. And so I would say those two things. Please track this and think of it as something that's going to matter in your life going forward. So that would be it.
- [59:15]
A
Ricardo Zanilla, thank you for being a trusted voice and joining us here today on Assembly Required.
- [59:21]
B
Thank you.
- [59:30]
A
As always, on Assembly Required. We're here to give you real, actionable tools to face today's biggest challenges. So first, be curious. Make sure to seek out trusted sources of information both for international and domestic policy, and be wary of rampant misinformation and disinformation online. To learn more about modern authoritarianism, for example, and the fight for democracy, pick up a copy of the excellent book the Dictator's Learning Curve Inside the Global Battle for Democracy by William Dobson. Number two, solve problems. Look, this issue is closer to home than many of your friends and loved ones may think. So talk to them about why this matters and start rallying your community to protest the administration's actions. Even if we agree that Maduro was wrong, we cannot agree that what we did was right. So call your member of Congress and demand that they take action. And three, do good. Venezuelan refugees have settled in many parts of the United States and the same same administration that just invaded their home country has also terminated their Temporary Protected Status, or tps. This will affect their ability to work or seek shelter, as nearly 600,000 are now subject to deportation. If you'd like to help, visit www.immigrationadvocates.org and identify services and volunteer opportunities in your area. Assembly Required continues to grow its audience, but we need your help. We reach more people when you tell others about us, when you add us to your feed and share your favorite episode. So make sure you actually subscribe on all your favorite platforms, not just one, and then boost our visibility by rating the show and leaving a comment. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. And please also check out my substack Assembly Notes, where we dive deep and where I share more of my thoughts on how we understand and then fight back against this authoritarian regime. Okay, well, that wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Do good out there and I'll meet you here next week. Assembly Required is a crooked media production. Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farah Safari. Kiril Palaviv is our video producer. This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Our theme song is by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Thank you to Matt De Groat, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Mantha for production support. Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams. As the daughter of immigrants, financial struggles were part of my everyday reality. In high school, I became homeless and had to live in a women's shelter. Thankfully, being an Apia McDonald Scholar enabled me to attend college and begin a new chapter in my life. And now my reality is filled with endless possibilities.
- [63:13]
B
McDonald's has awarded nearly $4 million through APIA scholars to support students. Learn more@apanext.com.