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Bannon`s War Room
Episode 5042: "We" Will Run Venezuela
Episode 5042: "We" Will Run Venezuela ...
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- [00:03]
A
Okay, welcome back. You're here for the second hour of the war room. We've got the slate up they've given us from Mar? A Lagos. That means momentarily, the commander in chief, President Trump, will step into the into the press briefing with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kaine, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, about the extraordinary events that's taken place over the last couple years of couple hours. We're going to try to get as much in as possible before the press briefing and then we'll be around afterwards. I just want to go back. Todd, you've done this before. Just rewind for a second because I'm sure we're going to get some details here in the press briefing. I want to set the framework for the audience. The complexity of trying to do this. This is just not a couple of gunships going in like we see the video. I think you see a couple of helicopters. Walk me through the complexity of this, sir.
- [00:56]
B
So what first will happen is any targets that need to be softened up, air defense or anything that could restrict the extraction or the hit, as you say, needs to be taken care of. So once that's done, you also have usually a Ranger force which is kind of tier 2 special operations assets. Take an airfield or somewhere where the up where the extraction can take place. And then you have the tier one assets like Delta or ST6 come in on rotary wing aircraft usually and hit the target and extract the precious cargo. So that's what happened. There's reports Trump said that one aircraft was hit. These helicopters are extremely vulnerable in this position, especially near the target. So you gotta have gunship cover overhead, probably AC130s in Somalia. Clinton did not allow that. And that's why Black Hawk down happened after the successful extraction of that warlord. Actually in it was the Ranger force that came under fire with no cover. So I'm very happy that Trump gave them everything they needed. And you know, I asked a question about this in the Pentagon press briefing a few weeks back. Is there direct action scheduled in Venezuela? Because we saw the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment in the area. And that's a huge tell, right? If they're practicing and they had to have practiced this probably on some type of constructed target that they could choreograph all of this with firepower, with search and rescue, with airstrikes, with command and control, with the shooters, any kind of airlift backup. As Trump mentioned himself that there was another wave scheduled in case something happened. So Extremely complicated. We used to call them continent seizure packages of aircraft because there were so many airplanes aircraft involved. And I'm sure this was the same way.
- [02:44]
A
You know, the Chinese were there yesterday and the Russians and the Chinese, they've been bragging about the air defense. And Maduro makes a big deal about the sophisticated air defense. In fact, when they were talking earlier about a potential invasion, one of the things people were talking about is knocking down the air defense, taking railroad logistics centers, communications centers. Did it look like, does it look like to you the Chinese air defense for the Venezuelans or the Russian air defense or some combo package ended up holding up against American might?
- [03:14]
B
Sir, it does not look that way. Obviously the fast movers probably came in and took out some of that infrastructure so that the gunships, which are slow, could come in. You saw COBRA gunships, likely AC130s overhead. Those can't operate in a threat environment. They have to be, you know, these air defense threats have to be taken out. So they likely were by fast movers or electronic warfare. And the aircraft that was hit that Trump said likely was probably by AAA or an rpg. I mean, you saw in Lone Survivor or in Black Hawk down. You know, these, an RPG can really impact a helicopter, especially if it's a tail rotor or anything like that or the transmission. So that's likely how that happened as some high caliber gun or an rpg. Trump said it was hit hard but flew out, which means, you know, could have, there could be injuries in that situation. I don't know. Obviously they've said there's no deaths, but again, that's all planned for. You have search and rescue, you have medical nearby, all of that, they took them to the ship. I landed on many ships in these type of operations in the Persian Gulf back in the day. And it's coordinated with the Navy assets, even space assets with intelligence and where the targets are and all of that. It's highly coordinated activity and really, really impressive. And yes, there's no one else that can do this at this scale for sure.
- [04:38]
A
How do you get through? I mean, knowing where he is because he's all these guys have high security in the many different places they hang out to get in there. As Mike Davis said, not saying that some of his security might been on the payroll, but it's, it's pretty shocking that there were a high number of casualties on their side at least has not been reported. I think they said there may be, but on our side, I mean, how do you think that went down?
- [05:02]
B
I'm sure there are casualties. You know, all of that will come out in time. But the fact that none of our guys were seriously hurt is fantastic because that's a huge risk and I'm glad that that did not happen. But I think we will find out that there are other casualties from the Venezuelan side, whether it's in the air, defense assets that were hit, command and control that was likely hit to, as Eric said, you know, make them so they can't communicate, so they can't find, you know, relay targets and that kind of thing from the, the target center to the actual forces in the field that can shoot at these aircraft, etc. So I, I think we'll find casualties in those areas.
- [05:45]
A
Todd, can you hang on? Because I do want to get your thoughts on this, on this press briefing. So hang on, I'll soon get a break. I'll talk to you, but just hang for right now. Captain Fennell, Madonna's wife, and he was sitting there, you saw the video, he's high fiving with the Chinese Communist Party. They're there. Yesterday, a military delegation, he's joking and laughing and, you know, saying he's a lion or a tiger or whatever. Today he's part of ship's company on the Iwo Jima. Talk a bit about the naval assets down there that made this possible. As President Trump said, we have a vast armada off the coast of Venezuela, sir.
- [06:22]
C
Well, Steve, yes, we do. The President's right. We have the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group with a half a dozen or more ships, warships, carrier Air Wing 8 with 50 plus strike aircraft and all the support aircraft that go with that, along with the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group embarked a Marine Expeditionary unit and their air wing. And as we've seen through the operation and we'll hear more details in this press conference, it's clear that we had special operation forces staging off of the flight decks of probably both carriers, the Iwo Jima and the Ford, in some form or fashion to support these operations. So as Todd said, you know, the strike aircraft from the carrier are providing close air support, air superiority to be able to suppress Venezuelan air defenses and allow those soft forces to get in and do the extraction. And just to put it in perspective, and I think Jack mentioned it earlier, the Ford's been underway since August of last year and or actually since May of last year and the Iwo Jima has been underway since August. So we have sailors on board those warships that have been underway for, you know, six months for the, the Ford and several months for the Iwo Jima. So this is the power of na. This is the importance and the value of naval power. Because this operation, if it wasn't done from the decks of those carriers and those floating ships out there, would have been much harder to stage from the United States, from Florida, from our special operations bases, for instance, at Hurlburt in Florida, we could have still done it, but it would have been much more difficult. Having the presence there on sustained presence for several, several weeks is very important, especially as the political situation changes. As we saw Maduro respond to the President's narco boat strikes on 2nd September, he started flying, you know, Venezuelan aircraft against the United States. And then what did you know? All of a sudden Maduro's in Beijing 8 through 14 September. He didn't go to the big parade on 3 September in Beijing, but he made sure he went there because he was very afraid that this day would come. And it's come for him. And this is the enduring power of the American military and our ability to sustain and project power like this. We did something like this back in 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom when the USS Kitty hawks for deployed to Japan went forward without its air wing to operate off of the shores of Iran for the operations. Enduring Freedom, where we took special operations forces from the Kitty Hawk that launched strikes into Afghanistan. So we've had this capability, we keep perfecting it, we keep doing better. But I would just advise we're doing it in a benign environment. Benign environment off the coast of Iran or a benign environment, relatively speaking, off the coast of Venezuela. We need to be concerned about what do we do if we have to operate and do operations. And in a hostile environment like we have with the prc, whether it's in the South China Sea right now or around Taiwan. These are the concerns that I have.
- [09:51]
A
Yeah, I want to go back just in the benign environment. I mean, the. When I went over for the hostage crisis, we were, I was in the workup to that before we, before we rotated out, but it was 24 hours a day. You talk about the practice. I mean, and that was one. And you can even tell at the time we had blue light. You didn't have socom. You didn't have special operators that worked together. We didn't have the helicopters or the assets like Todd Wood would fly later. It was really kind of slapped together. And I think there were a lot of lessons learned by that disaster in the desert. But just talk to people about the evolutions out there at sea. These sailors not simply the Ms. Thanksgiving and Christmas, but every day to pull off something like this. You are working on this non stop. I mean, these sailors and the Marines out there and the special operators have been in Air Force assets, they've been working on this. To have a flawless mission like you just had, the degree of attention to detail and the different aspects you have to bring together, as Todd woods said, is quite frankly breathtaking. I think that that is at least the initial part of this. Whatever happens, you know, in the country geopolitically, what happens with the civil war, all of that, you know, Lavrov just came out the hammer over there, you know, Putin's hammer, and said he had a conversation with the Venezuelan Vice President and they stand in solidarity with Venezuela. It's obviously a big ally of the Russians, as is a big ally of the mullahs and a bigger ally of, of the Chinese Communist Party. But just give me a minute or two about the degree of tempo of operations to be able to pull off something like this by our magnificent naval forces.
- [11:34]
D
Sir.
- [11:36]
C
Yeah, Steve, you make a great point, which is this kind of operation, whether you're the, the soft special operations package that's going in to do the extraction, flying helicopters or being the people that actually go down and actually have to grab the individual, or, or you're flying combat air patrol and an F A 18 Hornet or an F 35, or you're the sailor on lookout to make sure that your ship doesn't collide into another ship or while you're still looking for and doing operations to look for drug runners that are coming out of Venezuela, that operation is still ongoing. So the complexity of what's going on, the multitasking that's going on is incredible. And I would just say, you know, a lot of us had a lot of concerns about what happened to the, the Department of Defense, now the Department of War during the four years of the previous administration. And we were very concerned about the corrosive effect of DEI and wokeism in the military. And at least we can say today that there has been a demonstration that there may have been bad impacts at the top end with guys like Millie and things of that nature. But at least the structure of our military seems very, very sound. And the fact that they were able to that strikes in Iran last year and now this event, which is, as the President said, one of the most complex, if not ever in time, an operation with this many forces, with so many different things going on with strikes in the Pacific against narco boats that are going in The Pacific, along with those in the Caribbean and dealing with the Ghost Fleet that they're trying to embargo the oil from the Ghost Fleet. Oh, by the way, China is the largest importer of crude oil in the world. And Venezuela, as it was pointed out in your opening, is the largest reservoir of crude oil in the world. Now they have trouble getting it out right now because of 20 years of Chavez and Maduro's regimes. But the fact of the matter is China invested billions. Just in September they had a new contract for another billion dollars from a private company to pull oil out of Venezuela from China. So there's a big impact there in terms of the global alignment of oil. But the fact that our military forces had to pay attention to the Ghost Fleet, the narco terrorist boats that are coming out and then to do this special operation to extract Maduro and his wife, essentially, I would say the President said no American soldiers and sailors have been killed. And, and we probably have very, very few if any civilian casualties in this operation because it was focused, it was tailored, so the intelligence was precise. And oh, by the way, these floating platforms on These carriers and ARCs, they have vast amounts of communications capability. So they're able to. It's essentially they're as if they were in the Pentagon, but they have it floating at sea. So they can get all the intelligence that they need. They can go back and forth with experts at Defense Intelligence Agency, they can go back and forth with experts at Langley, they can talk to the Pentagon, they can talk to Southern Command, they can talk to Special Operations Command, jsoc. And so they have all this ability to communicate in real time with video and other things to be able to provide that real time intelligence to the forces afloat and, and the forces that are being integrated in from the United States as this operation unfolded. So it was a combination of everything very, very complex. And we just have to say, you know, God bless these folks for doing it. I mean it's just a flawless performance and we should be very, very proud of our, of our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines that were out there doing this. Really impressive.
- [15:23]
A
Let me get hang there because I want to talk about the, the Caribbean in the Gulf of America as a Chinese Communist Party lake, what this means for that hemispheric defense and also the Chinese Communist Party. It shouldn't be losses, as Captain Finlay just said. Maduro was actually over there in mid September sending a signal to the United States and everyone about who their ally was. And they had a big military delegation there last Night with Maduro preening in front of them. So hang on for a second, Captain. For now also got Neil McCabe at the White House. But I want to go to our Latin American correspondent and the host of our show in Spanish language Javier Negre. Javier, what has been the response? I know that they're in the streets, I think in Caracas right now. I think there's a celebration, I understand in Chile where there, I think a million Venezuelans went to. They're in the streets there. I hear that Milei came and gave us an attaboy, that we're fighting for freedom. Also, Steve Cortez is down in Argentina. He told me today that the leadership down there couldn't be more excited. What's the general overall view coming out of Latin America on this dramatic extraction of one of the worst guys in the world to a court in the United States of America? Sir.
- [16:46]
E
Hello, Steve. It's amazing what we feel in the Spanish community with a great leader that we have, Donald Trump. President Trump is the best president that we can have. And right now in Argentina, right now in Spain, right now in Ecuador, right now in Bolivia, right now in Chile, right now in Mexico, you can find a lot of Venezuelan citizens and other people from Mexico, from Argentina, celebrating in the streets. And you have the governments that come from the for Sao Paulo, Brazil, President Lula, like Shane Bound, the narco president, told the world that Trump broke the international law. But this president, they didn't take care of the leaders of the opposition that Maduro took to the jail. The Spanish government, it's a socialist government. They are making a lot of business with Maduro. Some of the socialist leaders are in jail because business with Maduro and now they are telling my citizenship, my country, that Maduro, that Trump broke the international law. And that's not fair. It's one of my, the most happiest day in my Life. We have 9 million of Venezuelans all over the world. Most of them are in Spain. I have Venezuelan employees. I have a lot of friends from Venezuela. I used to go to Venezuela a lot. But when I became journalist, I started to tell the people that Maduro was a dictator. And the government of Maduro told me, hey, we don't let you in. And they attack me. They pay influencers, they pay media in my country to attack me and other colleagues in the media. It's very important because after Maduro, after Maduro falling, we can see other governments in risk. Today we saw how Trump changed his mind about the president Schengbaum. Trump was with her, talking to her apparently on good terms with Sheinbaum in the World cup last December in the draw. And he said that she was doing a great job. But I was talking with other guys in the White House and they were talking to me like other people in the administration wanted to talk to Trump because some drug dealers, some cartels were running states, were controlling power and Shane Bound was doing nothing. And today Trump said, like right now, Mexico is running by cartels and Shane Bang is not doing nothing. And he said that he's going to take part in the Mexican problem because you have auto Mexican having a lot of troubles of security, a lot of journalists being shot, politicians. It's very important. And right now you have in South America, in Spain, the governments like Argentina, like Bolivia, with like Ecuador celebrating the Trump movement operation, and in the other side, the first of Paulo.
- [19:55]
A
But you've got. Let me, let me just, Let me just, Let me just, Let me just. Lula, who President Trump's been kind of working with right over the last couple months, and Bolsonaro, as you know, we're huge supporters of Bolsonaro and the Bolsonaro movement. Let me just read to the audience. Lula just put out a statement on Maduro and I'm quoting here from Lula. The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line. These acts represent a grave affront to Venezuela's sovereignty and and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community. Attacking countries in flagrant violation of international law is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos and instability where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism. The condemnation of the use of force is consistent with the position that Brazil has always adopted in recent situations in other countries and regions. The actions recall the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America and, and the Caribbean and threatens the preservation of the region as a zone of peace. The international community, through the United Nations Organization, needs to respond vigorously to this episode. Brazil condemns these actions and remains available to promote a path of dialogue and cooperation. Javier For President Trump has put out an olive branch to Lula and tried to work with him. That's a pretty big slap in the face, is it not, sir?
- [21:28]
F
Of course.
- [21:28]
E
But Lula is with the cartels. Lula is with the narco state in Brazil. The cartels controls the country like Mexico, like other countries that are in the fall in Sao Paulo. And Lula da Silva has to be removed. And we have election this year and we have to support the Song of Bolsonaro, because he's going to take freedom and Trump is going to promote the right wing wave, as he did in Argentina, as he did in Honduras. But in Brazil, if you go to Rio, if you go to Sao Paulo, have a lot of friends from Brazil. They are having big problems of security. The narcos are on the street in Uruguay. The lefties are in the power right now. And right now Uruguay is having a lot of trouble with drugs. And Trump did the correct operation in two hours with that good movement because he's taking care of freedom, he's taking care of safety in United States. And we are very happy. I have some friends like Colmu today that they were really accepted, like telling me, like, hey, we don't believe in Trump. He's all the time like telling lies about Venezuela. He wants to protect the interests of some oil companies. And today they called me, hey, you were right, we have to vote Trump. So this movement with Venezuela, I think it's a really good movement for freedom and for the interests of America, because we have to win the midterms with the Hispanic voters. Because last month, with the misinformation of channels like Univision or Telemundo, with the ICE operation, like telling lies to Hispanic community, we lost New York, we lost Miami. And I think that Trump showed today to the Hispanic community that he's man of God. He's a peacemaker for all the Hispanic community and he wanted to promote all the countries like the freedom in Colombia. We have to take out Petro from the government. We have. Peru is very important where the socialists want to take the power in some months. And I'm pretty sure that Marco Rubio, that Christopher Landau, that people in the Trump administration, they want to take freedom all over the world. And it's very important that Venezuela regime was financing, was supporting with billions of dollars, the international terrorism, Ebola, Hamas. And now we are more free. Javier, we did a little show list another one.
- [24:00]
A
Javier, we didn't take out. We extracted Maduro because of an indictment in the southern district of New York to stand in front of justice in a New York City city courtroom, lower Manhattan. We didn't get the rest of the bad hombres. And he's got some very bad guys. You could actually argue a couple of his guys are even worse than Maduro. We didn't get that. But your, your anticipation of what's now people are taken to the streets. The last shots we saw in support of this, given your sense of how deep that regime is and the Cubans that are there and Hezbo, that's there and the Chinese Communist Party is there and, and the Russians that are there. I mean, this is kind of like Chechnya, right? Or it was like Fallujah in second Fallujah. You got every bad actor in the world has you has gone to Venezuela and kind of had the umbrella of, of Madura to protect him. What do you anticipate your, your best thoughts on what's going to happen from here?
- [25:03]
E
I think that after Venezuela, a lot of things are going to change because Cuba and Venezuela was in the center with China, with Russia, with Hamas, with Heba in all these outings of evil. And right now we have a man of God like Trump. And I love him because I'm very proud of him. Because like one week ago I was talking Mar a Lago with some of people from his team. I told them, hey, I have to go to Argentina to take my luggage to Washington D.C. do I have to be worried about if it's going to be any movement in the Venezuela operation? And they told me we don't think so. I think it's going to be like in some months we have to take care of some America first things related with American companies involved. We don't want to war. We try to make a deal with peace. And sadly today it was a big present for us. Like it was a secret operation and it's a secret operation against the bad Alice, the international Alice of terrorism, of anti Semitism, of the agenda woke. So we have to take care of President Trump. We have to vote him and we have to explain the Hispanic community with most of the people in the Hispanic community escape from countries like Cuba, like Venezuela, like Mexico. In Miami they vote for communists. In New York they vote for economists. So we have to make an effort in Rennie show in real America's voice on espanol every Sunday, 8pm Just playing the people that Trump is the president of law and order, is the president of freedom, no matter if they gave the Nobel Prize or not. And right now we have very beautiful situation in Venezuela to have a transitional government with Mareconimachado, with Edmundo Gonzalez. You have very incredible leaders in the opposition, outside the country, inside the country. You have a lot of people in jail, you have a lot of people that have been kidnapped. I have friends that they lost their parents, they lost their friends. They have a lot of money that was stolen by the Maduro regime. And in Spain we have journalists in the left side that receive a lot of money, billions of dollars, politicians to explain my audience, to explain the Spanish citizenship like that the Maduro wasn't a dictatorship and there is a problem very important right now, Maduro support by billions of dollars, fraud, elections in a lot of countries. So now we are to be happy because now the elections is going to be more clear, more TR frame.
- [27:59]
A
Javier, just hang over a second. We're going to get back. You're going to be with us to watch the press conference. We're going to cut immediately to the press conference as soon as the commander in chief, the president United States comes out. It's in Mar a Lago. It's live. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kane is going to be there. Also Secretary War Hexseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hopefully going to get a lot of information about the raid itself and the implications of it. Neil McCabe, I think I've got Neil McCabe at the White House. Neil McCabe, now there's social media saying there's going they're trying to put together a big protest against this action at the White House today. Neil, can you give me an update on that? Yeah, I don't see any protests here, Steve. It's a lovely winter day in front of the White House. There's just tourists milling about. I haven't seen any Venezuelan flags, no pots and pans, no bullhorns. So I guess that social media reach wasn't what they hoped it would be because I think everybody's just sort of sleeping in today if there, if there was any talk of protesting this military police action. STEVE Neil, you've been in the Army Reserve, Navy, I think, in National Guard also. Just give me your overview. I mean, a day whatever folks are saying, the political implications of this are, in fact, even Nigel Farage came out a moment ago about international law. He did say he thought it put the Russians and the Chinese Communist Party on notice. But even some of our strongest allies are making observations about President Trump's action. Leaving that aside, just the troops themselves, an incredible operation and on top of the expeditionary operation we had in July to basically end the 12 day war and end the Iranians, the Persians, nuclear, you know, nuclear program. Today, just another one. Neil McCabe, well, it's a huge win for the US military, huge win for the Department of War and everything that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have been trying to do, not so much to turn the culture around at the Pentagon, but to sort of reach out and find those pockets of excellence, find those pockets of resistance. You know, the leftists have Basically been running the Pentagon since. Since Obama. The Pentagon really didn't join the first Trump administration. And it was horrible. It was a very horrible thing. And now Trump and Hegseth have got control. They're reaching out to those people who never gave up on running the military as a military. And really my first thought last night as I was, you know, figuring out what was going on, is it sort of balances out the stain of Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down. Black Hawk down was supposed to be a quick and dirty strike where they went in, they extracted the warlord, and then they went home, and it turned out to be a horrible disaster. And so now we see what happened here, that these guys absolutely executed flawlessly. It was absolutely flawless. And this is a huge signal to our allies that, like, hey, when you do business with the United States, this is what you can expect. If you're in trouble. And our enemies, hey, you don't want to do business with the United States, this is what you can expect. And I think it's also interesting that the Justice Department is fully integrated into this with the superseding indictment on Maduro and his wife. I am curious about what happened. There was a General Carvajal, who his nickname is El Polo. Is he offered to cooperate with the United States. There was sort of different factions inside the Justice Department. In the end, it was decided, hey, we're not going to cooperate with him. We're not going to cut him a deal. But he was being prosecuted. Carvajal was being prosecuted by the Southern District of New York. And so I'm guessing that Carvajal probably came to some kind of understanding with the Southern District of New York. And I imagine he also fed them some intel that was helpful to this operation. Steve, Neal, hang on. Neil's outside the White House. Come right back to you. They have Todd Woods. Hey, Todd, I want to go back to what Neil just said about, because you mentioned it briefly, but I want to make sure the audience understands this and why it's a new Pentagon and new leadership starting at the Commander in Chief down. Compare and contrast. Because you mentioned about the a. The A C130, I think, air cover that we had here, you know, gunships, but you didn't have in Black Hawk Down. Explain to the audience what the difference was and how that decision is made so far up the chain of command, but can have massive implications for the troops on the ground.
- [33:04]
B
Well, the preferred gunship for special operations is the AC130. It's an attack version of a utility aircraft you know, that hauls things around, but it's full of guns, it's got a howitzer on it, you know, Vulcan cannons, all kind of weapons that can be very precise and take out very precise targets because it literally circles overhead with sensors and can pick the targets out and take out individuals as they approach these special operators. So that is key to have that kind of support overhead because as I said, these helicopters, these rotary wing aircraft are extremely vulnerable to, you know, projectiles coming in, like an RPG or any kind of anti aircraft cannon. So what Clinton did in Mogadishu was he said, well, we, that, that's too much. We don't want the gunships there. We'll just let the soft guys go in and do what they need to do and get out without, we don't want to make a big splash. So no gunships. Even though nobody would have seen them, they operate, you know, a mile above them with, in a circle and nobody will, will be able to touch them or see them in that, in Somalia, for instance. So that decision had catastrophic consequences because as I said, the Delta guys came in and, and took out that warlord very precisely and extracted him. But it was the Ranger force, that was their backup force that was shot down in the first Blackhawk and then became bogged down in the city. And they had to go in with, you know, APCs, armored vehicles to try to pull these, you know, guys out. And so that's why it became such a disaster. And so yes, the decision to not have gunships in Black Hawk down was catastrophic. And I'm glad Trump just gave them carte blanche, whatever you need to get this done. And I, I did see some Cobra gunship fire, so that means Marines were involved hitting certain targets. And I'm sure that an AC130 was overhead as well. But again, they're, they can only operate in a threat environment where they can't be shot down. One was shot down in the Gulf War because it stayed too late over the target. And during the daytime, as dawn broke, it was shot down. And we lost, you know, 20 something guys in AFSOC. So it's, it's vulnerable too, but it operates in a certain threat environment and night is its friend. And the fact that, you know, they didn't have any more firepower against these helicopter rotary wing assets means that that threat was taken down. So I appreciate President Trump giving them what they needed to get it done.
- [35:31]
D
Two things.
- [35:31]
A
Number one, do we have any idea why would, why would Clinton not allow the gunships? I Mean, it's not like anybody. Was there some reason, specific reason that they said, because I remember later they had a board of inquiry on this, but nobody was really held accountable. Why did Clinton as commander in chief now not allow him to have all the assets that they obviously needed?
- [35:54]
B
Well, that he'll have to answer that to the big guy someday. But you know, he, I think it was because they didn't want. I mean, there's a trail with these type of aircraft, right? They have to be based, they have to, have to people to maintain them. There's a big logistics trail behind them because they're very sophisticated aircraft. But I think that Clinton just didn't, you know, didn't want the press headache of having those aircraft in theater. And you know, it's just horrible, horrible situation that these guys had to go through because of that. I can't answer for Bill Clinton.
- [36:32]
A
Let me ask you, I asked Captain Fennell when we did the, the workup for Desert One, right? And I was there for the workup and then we rotated out. It was every day. I mean it was 24 hours a day. And then you didn't have the right helicopters. It was all kind of mashed up together. We didn't have JSOC. We hadn't back in 1979, 1980. This was all a brave new world for everybody, right? In fact, the Asiatic Fleet, we didn't have an Asiatic Fleet anymore. We didn't have great, great charts for the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf. It was a new territory for the United States and even some of our allies. Talk to the audience about just the workup for this, the level of intensity that you have to practice to pull something off so flawlessly as clearly it was pulled off over the last couple hours.
- [37:23]
B
Well, you mentioned Desert One. My squadron commander at the 20th SOS was Rotor Rakeup. He was the only Air Force pilot on that mission. And those Marine pilots were fantastic helicopter pilots, but they didn't have the training or the equipment to do that mission. Long range insertion, extraction, bad weather, dust, high threat, you know, dark terrain was, was challenging in the desert. So after that debacle, the Air force and the US military took the 40 something Air Force helicopters that had long range refueling capability from Vietnam, going in to get pilots. And they kind of made them these Battlestar Galactica aircraft called the Pavlo. And they put train falling, radar forward looking, infrared satellite comms, weapons, a thing called gps, which we had that. No, we were the first ones to use it, nobody knew about it and made them that aircraft to do that mission. So I can tell you that they probably select. They put up a mock target somewhere, and they probably practiced this over and over and over with live weapons fire. You know, I remember flying into, you know, targets that were. That were not real, but there was rounds coming down from the AC130 howitzers on top of the target, like seconds before we landed with the shooters. So it's a highly complicated maneuver. And. And you have to practice that, right? You have to get used to the gunfire so it doesn't ex. Doesn't scare you. You have to get used to the flashes as you. Because you're flying on goggles at night, you got to realize this is on night vision goggles, very challenging. You don't have a lot of visibility. And when a. How it's around goes off in front of you, it can shut down your goggles for a few minutes or a few seconds. So it's. There's a lot of things you got to get used to and a lot of practice that goes into this. And I can tell you they likely rehearse this many times on a mock target somewhere.
- [39:11]
A
Todd, hang on for a second. Todd's going to stick with us through the press briefing, as is Javier and Captain Fennell. We got team. I want to bring in Frank Gaffney. Frank Gaffney joins us now. Frank, you know already Lula has come out and condemned this. I mean, in the most brutal sense possible. It's basically gunboat diplomacy. Okay, here we go. We're going to cut to mar a lot of.
- [39:33]
F
Thank you very much. This is big stuff and we appreciate you being here. Late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States Armed forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela, overwhelming American military power. Air, land and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II. It was a force against a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice. This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history. And if you think about it, we've done some other good ones, like the attack on Soleimani, the attack on Al Baghdadi, and the obliteration and decimation of the Iran nuclear sites just recently in an operation known as Midnight Hammer. All perfectly executed and done. No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday. Or frankly, in just a short period of time. All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered perilous as the men and women of our military, working with US Law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night. It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly. But captured. Along with his wife, Celia Flores, both of whom now face American justice, Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Jay Clayton. For their campaign of deadly narco terrorism against the United States and its citizens. I want to thank the men and women of our military who achieved such an extraordinary success overnight with breathtaking speed, power, precision and competence. You rarely see anything like it. You've seen some raids in this country that didn't go so well. They were an embarrassment. If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to the Jimmy Carter days, they were different days. We're a respected country again, like maybe like never before. These highly trained warriors operating in collaboration with US Law enforcement caught them in a very ready position. They were waiting for us. They knew we had many ships out in the sea just sort of waiting. They knew we were coming. So they were in a ready, what's called a ready position. But they were completely overwhelmed and very quickly incapacitated. If you would have seen what I saw last night, you would have been very impressed. I'm not sure that you'll ever get to see it, but it was an incredible thing to see. Not a single American service member was killed and not a single piece of American equipment was lost. We had many helicopters, many planes, many, many people involved in that fight. But think of that. Not one piece of military equipment was lost. Not one service member was, more importantly, killed. The United States military is the strongest and most fearsome military on the planet by far, with capabilities and skills our enemies can scarcely begin to imagine. We have the best equipment anywhere in the world. There's no equipment like what we have. And you see that even if you just look at the boats, you know we've knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by sea. 90%. Each boat kills 25, on average, 25,000 people. We knocked out 97%. And those drugs mostly come from a place called Venezuela. 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 are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. And it has to be judicious, because that's what we're all about. We want peace, liberty and justice for the great people of Venezuela. And that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country. It's their homeland. We can't take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn't have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. We've had decades of that. We're not going to let that happen. We're there now. And what people don't understand, but they understand as, as I say this, we're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place. So we're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it, essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place. As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust. For a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place. We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so. We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary, but now it's probably not. The first wave, if you'd like to call it that, the first attack was so successful, we probably don't have to do a second, but we're prepared to do a second wave, a much bigger wave. Actually, this was pinpoint, but we have a much bigger wave that probably won't have to do. This partnership of Venezuela with the United States of America, a country that everybody wants to be involved with because of what we were able to do and accomplish, will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe. And it will also make the many, many people from Venezuela that are living in the United States extremely happy. They suffered. They suffered. So much was taken from them. They're not going to suffer anymore. The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States, as alleged in the indictment. He personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de las Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison, responsible for the deaths of countless Americans, the many, many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years of Americans died because of him. Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil. Right now, there are on a ship, they'll be heading to ultimately New York, and then a decision will be made, I assume, between New York and Miami or Florida. But we have people where the overwhelming evidence of their crimes will be presented in a court of law. And I've seen it. I've seen what we have. It's. It's both horrible and breathtaking that something like this could have been allowed to take place. For many years after his term as president of Venezuela expired, Maduro remained in power and waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror and subversion against the United States of America, threatening not only our people, but the stability of the entire region. And you all saw it. In addition to trafficking gigantic amounts of illegal drugs that inflicted untold suffering and human destruction all over the country, all over, in particular the United States. Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang Tren de Aragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide. And he did indeed. They were in Colorado. They took over apartment complexes. They cut the fingers off people if they call police. They were brutal, but they're not so brutal now. And I just have to congratulate our military, Pete, and everybody, and our National Guard, because the job that they've done, whether it's in Washington, D.C. where we have a totally safe city, where it was one of the most unsafe cities in anywhere in the world, frankly, and now we have no crime in Washington, D.C. we haven't had a killing. We had the terrorist attack a few weeks ago, a little bit of a different kind of a threat, but we haven't had a killing in a long period of time. Six, seven months. We used to have two on average, two a week. In Washington, our Capitol, we don't have that anymore. The restaurants are opening. Everyone's happy. They're going. They're walking their daughters, they're walking their children, their wives. They walk to restaurants. Restaurants are opening all over Washington, D.C. so I want to thank the National Guard, I want to thank our military, and I want to thank law enforcement. Been amazing. And they should do it with more cities. We're doing it, as you know, and we're doing it in Memphis, Tennessee right now. And crime is down. We've just sort of started a few weeks ago, but crime is down now 77%. And the governor of Louisiana called, great person, and he wanted us to help him. As you know, in a certain very nice part of Louisiana. And we have done that. And it's a rough, it was a rough, rough section. And we have crime down. I understand it's down to almost nothing already after two and a half weeks. New Orleans, it's down to almost nothing. And we've only been there for two and a half weeks. Can't imagine why governors wouldn't want us to help. We also helped, as you know, in Chicago and crime went down a little bit there. We did a very small help because we had no, no, we had no working ability with the governor. The governor was a disaster and the mayor was a disaster, but it knocked down crime. But we're pulling out of there. When, when they need us, we'll know. You'll know, you'll be writing about it. And likewise Los Angeles, where we saved Los Angeles early on where the head of the police department made a statement that if the federal government didn't come in, we would have lost Los Angeles. That's after long after the fires. That's when they had the riots in Los Angeles. We did a great job, got no credit for it whatsoever. But that's okay, it doesn't matter. We don't need the credit. But we'll be pulling out. When they need us, they'll call or we'll go back. If we have to, we'll go back. But we did a great job in various cities. But the thing, the place that we're very proud of is Washington D.C. because it's our nation's capital. We took it from being a crime ridden mess to being one of the safest cities in the country. But the gangs that they sent raped, tortured and murdered American women and children. They were in all of the cities I mentioned Trend and they were sent by Maduro to terrorize our people. And now Maduro will never again be able to threaten an American citizen or anybody from Venezuela. There will no longer be threats. For years I've highlighted the stories of those innocent Americans whose lives were so heartlessly robbed by this Venezuelan terrorist organization. Really one of the worst. One of the worst, they say the worst Americans like 12 year old Jocelyn Nungare from Houston. Beautiful Jocelyn Nungarry. What happened to her? They, as you know, they kidnapped, assaulted and murdered by Trende Aragua animals. They murdered Jocelyn and left her dead under the bridge. It was a bridge, A bridge that will never be the same to so many people after seeing what happened. As I've said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent Monsters into the United States to steal American lives. And they came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They came from prisons and jails. The reason I say both, they sound similar, actually. Prisons a little bit more. A little bit more hostile, a little bit tougher. A mental institution isn't as tough as an insane asylum, but we got them both. They sent from their mental institutions, they sent from their jails, prisons. They were drug dealers, they were drug kingpins. They sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer. And we have now a border where nobody gets through. In addition, Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars. They did this a while ago, but we never had a president that did anything about it. They took all of our property. It was our property. We built it. And we never had a president that decided to do anything about it. Instead, they fought wars that were 10,000 miles away. We built Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive and skill. And the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country, considered the largest theft of property in the history of our country. Massive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies. And we didn't do anything about it. I would have done something about it. America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people of, drive us back into and out of our own hemisphere. That's what they did. Furthermore, under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten U.S. interests and lives. And they used those weapons last night. They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border. All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries, and not anymore. All the way back, it dated to the Monroe doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Don Row document. I don't know. It's Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don't forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won't happen. So just in concluding, for decades other administrations have neglected or even contributed to these growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region. And our home region is very different than it was just a short while ago. The future will be. And we did this in my first term. We had great dominance in my first term, and we have far greater dominance right now. Everyone's coming back to us. The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security. These are core to our national security, just like tariffs are. They've made our country rich, and they've made our national security strong, stronger than ever before. But these are the iron laws that have always determined global power, and we're going to keep it that way. We will secure our borders. We will stop the terrorists, we will crash the cartels, and we will defend our citizens against all threats, foreign and domestic. Other presidents may have lacked the courage or whatever to defend America, but I will never allow terrorists and criminals to operate with impunity against the United States. This extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives. Very importantly, the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect. The American armada remains poised in position, and the United States retains all military options until United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied. All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand what happened to Maduro can happen to them, and it will happen to them if they aren't just fair even to their people. The dictator and terrorist Maduro is finally gone in Venezuela. People are free. They're free again. It's been a long time for them, but they're free. America is a safer nation this morning. It's a prouder nation this morning because it didn't allow this horrible person and this country that was doing very bad things to us, it didn't allow it to happen. And the Western Hemisphere is right now a much safer place to be. So I want to thank everybody for being here. I want to thank General Raisin Cain. He's a fantastic man. I've worked with a lot of generals. I worked with some I didn't like. I worked with some I didn't respect. I worked with some, they just weren't good. But this guy is fantastic. I watched last night one of the most precise attacks on sovereignty. I mean, it was an attack for justice. And I'm very proud of him. And I'm very proud of our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who I'm going to ask to say a few words. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Can you explain how the U.S. will run Venezuela?
- [60:47]
A
Well, thank you, Mr. President. Finally a commander in chief the world respects and the American people deserve. And as the President said, words can barely capture the bravery and the power and the precision of this historic operation. A massive joint military and law enforcement raid, flawlessly executed by the greatest Americans our country has to offer. American warriors are second to none.
- [61:12]
D
The best in the world and the.
- [61:14]
A
Best of our country.
- [61:16]
D
What I.
- [61:16]
A
What all of us witnessed last night was sheer guts, grit, gallantry and glory.
- [61:23]
F
Of the American warrior.
- [61:25]
A
I'm simply humbled by such man, such men. And I tip my hat to our chairman, Dan Raisin Cain, and all those Americans who stood watch last night.
- [61:35]
D
Our warriors are the elite of America.
- [61:38]
A
And again, President Trump has your back. No other country on planet Earth, and it's not even close to could pull.
- [61:46]
D
This kind of operation off.
- [61:48]
A
And no other president has ever shown this kind of leadership, courage and resolve. The most powerful combination the world has ever seen. As the President said, our adversaries remain on notice. America can project our will anywhere, anytime. The coordination, the stealth, the lethality, the precision, the very long arm of American justice. All, all on full display. In the middle of the night, Nicolas Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance. Until they didn't. And until he didn't. He effed around and he found out. President Trump is deadly serious about stopping the flow of gangs and violence to our country. Deadly serious about stopping the flow of drugs and, and poison to our people. Deadly serious about getting back the oil that was stolen from us. And deadly serious about re establishing American deterrence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere. This is about the safety, security, freedom.
- [62:55]
D
And prosperity of the American people.
- [62:59]
A
This is America first. This is peace through strength. And the United States War Department is.
- [63:07]
D
Proud to help deliver it.
- [63:10]
A
Welcome to 2026 and under President Trump, America is back.
- [63:17]
D
I'd like to welcome now our chairman.
- [63:19]
A
Chairman Raisin Cain to give a few more details about the operation.
- [63:23]
E
Mr. Chairman.
- [63:26]
D
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. President. And good morning. Last night, on the order of the President of the United States and in support of a request from the Department of Justice, as the President said, the United States military conducted an apprehension mission in Caracas, Venezuela, to bring to justice two indicted persons, Nicholas and Cecilia Maduro. This operation, known as Operation Absolute Resolve, was discreet, precise, and conducted during the darkest hours of January 2nd and was the culmination of. Of months of planning and rehearsal. An operation that, frankly, only the United States military could undertake. What I'd like to do this morning is talk to you through some of the preparation and the details without compromising any of our tactics, techniques and procedures. There is always a chance that we'll be tasked to do this type of mission again. Our interagency work began months ago and built on decades of experience of integrating complex air, ground, space and maritime operations. While the past two decades have honed the skills of our special operations forces, this particular mission required every component of our joint force. With soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and guardians. Working in unison with our intelligence agency partners and law enforcement teammates in an unprecedented operation, we leveraged our unmatched intelligence capabilities and our years of experience in hunting terrorists. And we could not have done this mission without the incredible work by various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, NSA and nga. We watched, we waited, we prepared, we remained patient and professional. This mission was meticulously planned, drawing lessons from decades of missions over the last many years. Decades of many missions over these last many years. This was an audacious operation that only the United States could do. It required the utmost of precision and integration within our Joint Force. And the word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission. An extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western hemisphere in close coordination. All coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose. To get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise. Failure of one component of this well oiled machine would have endangered the entire mission. And failure is never an option for America's Joint Force. Those in the air over Caracas last night were willing to give their lives for those on the ground and in the helicopters. Let me talk a little bit about the preparation. After months of work by our intelligence teammates to find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets. In early December, our force was set pending a series of aligned events. Key was choosing the right day to minimize the potential for civilian harm and maximize the element of surprise and minimize the harm to the indicted personnel. So as the President said, that could be brought to justice. And as the President said earlier today, weather in Venezuela is always a factor this time of the year. And over the weeks, through Christmas and New Year's, the men and women of the United States military sat ready patiently waiting for the right triggers to be met and the President to order us into action. Last night the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could maneuver through. Ocean, mountain, low clouds, ceilings. But when tasked with a mission, this organization does not quit. At 10:46pm Eastern time last night, the President ordered the United States military to move forward with this mission. He said to us, and we appreciate it, Mr. President, good luck and Godspeed. And those words were transmitted to the entire joint force. Over the course of the night, aircraft began launching from 20 different bases on land and sea across the Western hemisphere. In total, more than 150 aircraft, bombers, fighters, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, rotary wing were in the air. Last night. Thousands and thousands of hours of experience were airborne. Our youngest crew member was 20 and our oldest crew member was 49. And there's simply no match for American military might. As the night began, the helicopters took off with the extraction force, which included law enforcement officers and began their flight into Venezuela at 100ft above the water. As they approached Venezuelan shores, the United States began layering different effects provided by Spacecom, Cybercom and other members of the interagency to create a pathway overhead. Those forces were protected from aircraft, were protected by aircraft from the United States Marines, the United States Navy, the United States Air Force and the Air National Guard. The force included F22s, F35s, F18s, E, A18s, E2s, B1 bombers and other support aircraft, as well as numerous remotely piloted drones. As the force began to approach Caracas, the joint air component began dismantling and disabling the air defense systems in Venezuela, employing weapons to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area. The goal of our air component is was and always will be to protect the helicopters and the ground force and get them to the target and get them home. As the force crossed the last point of high terrain where they'd been hiding in the clutter, we assessed that we had maintained totally the element of surprise as the helicopter force ingressed towards the objective at low level. We arrived at Maduro's compound at 1:01am Eastern Standard Time or 2:01am Caracas local time. And the apprehension force descended into Maduro's compound and moved with speed, precision and discipline towards their objective and isolated the area to ensure the safety and security of the ground force while apprehending the indicted persons. On arrival into the target area, the helicopters came under fire and they replied with that fire with overwhelming force and self defense. One of our aircraft was hit but remained flyable and as the President said earlier today, all of our aircraft came home and that aircraft remained flyable during the rest of the mission. As the operation unfolded at the compound, our air and ground intelligence teams provided real time updates to the ground force, ensuring those forces could safely navigate the complex environment without unnecessary risk. The force remained protected by overhead tactical aviation. Maduro and his wife, both indicted, gave up and were taken into custody by the Department of Justice, assisted by our incredible US Military with professionalism and precision, with no loss of US Life. After securing the indicted persons, the force began to prep for departure. Helicopters were called in to exfiltrate the extraction force, while fighter aircraft and remotely piloted aircraft provided overhead coverage and suppressive fire. There were multiple self defense engagements as the force began to withdraw out of Venezuela. The force successfully exfiltrated and returned to their afloat launch bases. And the force was over the water at 3:29am Eastern Standard Time with indicted persons on board. And both Maduro and his wife were embarked aboard the USS Iwo Jima. In closing, what we've witnessed today is a powerful demonstration of America's joint force. We think we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again, not to get it right, but to ensure that we cannot get it wrong. Our jobs are to integrate combat power so when the order comes, we can deliver overwhelming force at the time and the place of our choosing against any foe, anywhere in the world. I am immensely proud today of our joint force and filled with gratitude to represent them here today. There is simply no mission too difficult for these incredible professionals and the families that stand by them and support them. As we stand here this morning, our forces remain in the region at a high state of readiness, prepared to project power, defend themselves and our interests in the region. This operation is a testament to the dedication and unwavering commitment to justice and our resolve to hold accountable those who threaten peace and stability. In closing, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the brave men and women who executed this mission. Their courage and tireless commitment to our nation are what makes us strong. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And thank you, Mr. President.
- [74:01]
G
Well, I don't have much to add to what you've heard now, other than the following points. Nicolas Maduro was indicted in 2020 in the United States. He is not the legitimate president of Venezuela. That's not just us saying it. The first Trump administration, the Biden administration, the second Trump administration, none of those three recognize them. He's not recognized by the European Union. In multiple countries around the world, he is a fugitive of American justice with a $50 million reward, which I guess we saved. $50 million and make sure. Yeah, exactly.
- [74:30]
F
But don't let anybody claim it. Nobody deserves it but us.
- [74:35]
G
But I want to be clear about One thing Nicholas Maduro had multiple opportunities to avoid this. He was provided multiple very, very, very generous offers and chose instead to act like a wild man. Chose instead to play around. And the result is what we saw tonight. The other message here is the. You have a guy, like many people around the world, they like to play games. You have a guy who decides he's going to invite Iran into his country, is going to, you know, do the confiscation of American oil companies, is going to flood our country with gang members, is going to take Americans prisoner and try to hold them for hostage and trade them like he was able to do with the Biden administration. Basically likes to play games all this time and thinks nothing's going to happen. And I hope a country people now understand is we have a President, the 47th President, United States is not a game player. When he tells you that he's going to do something, when he's tells you he's going to address a problem, he means it, he actions it. I can tell you, I've watched this process now for 14, 15 years, been around it, everybody talks. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that when I get there. We're going to do this, we're going to take. This is a president of action. Like, I don't understand yet how they haven't figured this out. And now if you don't know, now you know, because this is the way it's going to play out. And I think people need to understand that this is not a president that just talks and does letters and press conferences. And, you know, if he says he's serious about something, he means it. And this is something that was a direct threat to the national interest of the United States. And the President addressed it. There's a president of peace, by the way. I told you what I just said earlier. This guy had multiple opportunities to find his way somewhere else and figure out another. He could have been living somewhere else right now, very happy.
- [76:06]
F
But.
- [76:07]
G
But instead he wanted to play big boy. And so now, you know, he's got other sets of problems on his hands. But I think the message here should be for the world, look, the president doesn't go out looking for people to pick fights with. He's not generally wants to get along with everybody. Well, talk and meet with anybody, but don't play games. Don't play games with this president's in office because it's not going to turn out well. And so I hope that, you know, you know, I guess that lesson was learned last night and we hope it will be instructive moving forward.
- [76:36]
F
Is that the message for Cuba?
- [76:38]
A
Mr. President.
- [76:44]
F
You said that the US Is going to run Venezuela. So who's in power right now? Well, we're going to be running it with a group and we're going to make sure it's run properly. We're going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars. It will be paid for by the oil companies directly. They will be reimbursed for what they're doing, but it's going to be paid and we're going to get the oil flowing the way it should be. As you know, it was just a minor flow. It was actually a minor flow for what they have. But we're going to run it properly and we're going to make sure the people of Venezuela are taken care of. We're going to make sure the people that were forced out of Venezuela by this thug are also taken care of.
- [77:26]
A
Mr. President, does the U.S. running the.
- [77:28]
E
Country mean that U.S. troops will be on the ground?
- [77:30]
F
How will that work? Well, you know, they always say boots on the ground. Oh, so we're not afraid of boots on the ground. If we have to have we had boots on the ground last night at a very high level, actually, we're not afraid of it. We don't mind saying it, but we're going to make sure that that country is run properly. We're not doing this in vain. This is not. This is a very dangerous attack. This is an attack that could have gone very, very badly. Could have gone very badly. We could have lost a lot of people last night. We could have lost a lot of dignity. We could have lost a lot of equipment. The equipment is less important, but we could have lost a lot. And we're going to make sure that this is proper. We're there now. We're ready to go again if we have to. We're going to run the country, right? It's going to run very judiciously, very fairly, and it's going to make a lot of money. We're going to give money to the people. We're going to reimburse people that were taken advantage of. We're going to take care of everybody. It's very important. We couldn't let them get away with it. You know, they stole our oil. We built that whole industry there and they just took it over like we were nothing. And we had a president that decided not to do anything about it. So we did something about it. We're late, but we did Something about it? Yeah, please. What are you explaining the exact mechanism by which you're going to run the country? Are you going to designate a U.S. official? It's all being done right now. We're designating people, we're talking to people, we're designating various people, and we're going to let you know who those people are that would run Venezuela. Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time. The people that are standing right behind me, we're going to be running it, we're going to be bringing it back. It's a. It's a dead. You know, I talk about a dead country. A year and a half ago, we were a dead country. Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're a country doing better than any country anywhere in the world. And it required leadership. Venezuela has a lot of bad people in there, a lot of bad people that shouldn't be leading. We're not going to take a chance at one of those people. Take over for Maduro so you can look at. And others. We have fantastic people, including people in the military. So we're going to have a group of people running it until such time as it can be put back on track. Make a lot of money for the people and give people a great way of life. And also reimbursement for people in our country that were forced out of Venezuela would be. You said earlier today that you weren't going to back Machado to come back and be the opposition later in your Fox and Friends interview. And then you also mentioned the vice president of Venezuela. Are you going to work with the vice president of Venezuela or how do.
- [80:10]
D
You foresee the relationship?
- [80:12]
F
She was just sworn in, but she was, as you know, picked by Maduro. So Marco is working on that directly. Just had a conversation with her and she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple, Mr. President.
- [80:30]
B
So Colombian President Gustavo Petro, you know.
- [80:33]
F
A couple weeks ago you said he's got to watch his ass.
- [80:36]
B
And today he said he's not concerned.
- [80:37]
F
About anything happening to him in the.
- [80:39]
H
Aftermath of this operation. So just what your message is about that?
- [80:42]
F
Well, he has cocaine mills. He has factories where he makes cocaine. And, yeah, I think I stick by my first statement. He's making cocaine, they're sending it into the United States. So he does have to watch his ass. Did you notify any members of Congress in advance? Marco, do you want to talk about that? Because you were involved. Sure.
- [81:02]
G
We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on. It was a trigger based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. We watched and monitored that for a number of days. So it's just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days, but it's largely a law enforcement function. Remember at the end of the day, at its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice. And the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job. Now, there are broader policy implications here, but it's just not the kind of mission that you can pre notify because it endangers the mission.
- [81:38]
F
Plus, if I could add one thing to that, watch this line. Congress has a tendency to leak. This would not be good if they leaked. General. I think it would have been maybe a very different result. But I have to say they knew we were coming at some point. You know, a lot of ships out there, they sort of knew we were coming, we weren't. But, but Congress, Congress will leak and we don't want leakers. President, you were one of the only people to watch this all play out live. What was Maduro doing when the US forces entered what I assume would be his home? And also, was there any point where the US was considering if Maduro pushed back or was resisted killing Maduro? It could have happened. It could have happened. He was trying to get into a safe place. You know what a safe place is, all steel. And he wasn't able to make it to the door because our guys were so fast. They went through the opposition so fast and there was a lot of opposition. You know, people were wondering, do we get him by surprise? Sort of surprise. But they were waiting for something. It was a lot of opposition. There was a lot of gunfire. You saw some of it today. But he was trying to get to his safe place, which wasn't safe because we would have had the door blown up in about 47, I think. 47 seconds, they say on average, regardless of how thick the seal was, it was a very thick door, it was a very heavy door. But he was unable to get to that door. He made it to the door. He was unable to close it. Where is Maduro going to be in the time being right now? Do you know his exact. Well, eventually, ultimately, in the near future, he's going to be brought to New York. And where is he going to be? Where is he going to be held in New York. That's going to be up to the officials that do these things.
- [83:18]
C
Mr. President.
- [83:19]
A
Mr. President.
- [83:20]
D
Mr. President.
- [83:21]
A
The U.S. has something of a mixed track record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes after.
- [83:27]
F
Did that weigh on your decision? We had different presidents, but with me, that's not true. With me, we've had a perfect track record of winning. We win a lot and we win. If you look at Soleimani, you look at Al Baghdadi, you look at the Midnight Hammer. Midnight Hammer was incredible. Right now. You wouldn't have peace in the Middle east, essentially peace in the Middle east because of that. If you didn't. If we weren't successful with Midnight Hammer, you wouldn't have peace in the Middle East. So with me, you've had a lot of. A lot of victory. You've had only victories. You've had no losses.
- [84:01]
B
Yeah.
- [84:01]
D
Mr. President, can you.
- [84:03]
F
How long do you expect the US.
- [84:04]
D
To run Venezuela and how soon do.
- [84:06]
F
You want Venezuelan people to hold elections? So I'd like to do it quickly, but it takes a period of time. You know, we're rebuilding. We have to rebuild their whole infrastructure. The infrastructure is rotted. It's actually very dangerous. It's, you know, blow up territory. Oil is very dangerous. It's a very dangerous thing to take out of the ground. Can kill a lot of people. It has killed a lot of people doing just that. The infrastructure is old, it's rotted. Much of it is stuff that we put there 25 years ago, and we're going to be replacing it and we're going to take a lot of money out so that we can take care of the country. Are you saying that Rubio in.
- [84:45]
E
Mr. President, China, Russia and Iran have interests in Venezuela. How does this operation affect your relationships.
- [84:52]
F
With them when it comes to the China and Russia? Well, Russia, when we get things straightened out. But in terms of other countries that want oil, we're in the oil business. We're going to sell it to them. We're not going to say we're not going to get. In other words, we'll be selling oil probably in much larger doses because they couldn't produce very much because their infrastructure was so bad. So we'll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries, many of whom are using it now, but I would say many more will come.
- [85:23]
B
Are you saying.
- [85:23]
F
Mr. President.
- [85:25]
A
Are you saying that, Mr. President?
- [85:27]
D
Are you saying that, Mr. President?
- [85:29]
A
Thank you.
- [85:29]
D
What is your message to the people of Venezuela today? Of course, the civilian population specifically, they have a lot of questions.
- [85:36]
F
What is your message to the people of Venezuela? You're going to have peace, justice. You're going to have some of the riches that you should have had for a long period of time. It was stolen from you. But you're going to have peace and you're going to have safety, you're going to have justice, you're going to have a country, you're going to have a real country. You're going to have potentially a great country. You know, if you go back 20 years, maybe even a little longer ago, that was a great country and they destroyed it. Remember, I said that if we lose this election, the United States will be Venezuela on steroids. That's what would have happened had we lost the election, the 2024 election. We suffered so badly. When you look at the border from 2020, what, what they did, what Joe Biden administration did to our country should never be forgotten. But if we had to go through another year of that, we wouldn't have. We would be exactly where Venezuela was in terms I used to say, if they win, we're going to be Venezuela on steroids. And that's what would have happened. President thank you. Are you saying that Secretary Hegseth in Rich Rubio are going to be running Venezuela and will you be sending in US Military troops that's working with the people of Venezuela to make sure that we have Venezuela? Right? Because for us to just leave, who's going to take over? I mean, there is nobody to take over. You have a vice president who's been appointed by Maduro, and right now she's the vice president and she's, I guess, the president. She was sworn as president just a little while ago. She had a long conversation with Marco and she said, we'll do whatever you need. I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice. We're going to have this done, right? We're not going to just do this with Maduro, then leave like everybody else. Leave and say, you know, let it go to hell. If we just left, it has zero chance of ever coming back. We'll run it properly, we'll run it professionally. We'll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take out money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela. And also, I can't stress this strongly enough, the people that got thrown out of Venezuela that are now in the United States, and frankly, some want to stay and Some probably want to go back. Yeah, to protect Americans in the country.
- [87:54]
A
And were any of the detained Americans?
- [87:56]
F
Well, right now they're very protected because nobody's going to mess with us. They're very protected. The people of. And we let them know that you better not touch one of them.
- [88:05]
A
Are you concerned that bad elements of.
- [88:07]
F
The Maduro regime will remain in place? Well, we know who they are. We're on them. And they're acting much differently now than they would have acted two days ago. Okay, wait behind you, please. Mr. President, why is running a country.
- [88:20]
A
In South America, America first?
- [88:23]
F
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. Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
- [88:43]
D
Is there a message here for Cuba and Diaz Canel?
- [88:46]
F
Well, Cuba is an interesting case. Cuba, as you know, not doing very well right now. That system has not been a very good one for Cuba. The people there have suffered for many, many years. And I think Cuba is going to be something we'll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation right now. Very badly. Failing nation. And we want to help the people. It's very similar in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we want to also help the people that were forced out of Cuba and living in this country. Do you want to say something about that, Marco, please.
- [89:16]
G
Well, I mean, I just gave you a statement a few minutes ago about, you know, when the president speaks, you should take him seriously. Suffice it to say, you know, Cuba is a disaster. It's. It's run by incompetent, senile men, and in some cases, not senile, but incompetent nonetheless. It has no economy. It's in total collapse. And by the way, you know, they were, you know, all of the guards that helped protect Maduro. This is well known, their whole spy agency, all that were full of Cubans. I mean, they basically. It's amazing. This poor island took over Venezuela in some cases. One of the biggest problems that Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba. They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So, yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least a little bit.
- [89:57]
F
Turning off the oil flow to Cuba from Venezuela.
- [90:00]
G
Well, the president already announced a week ago that anything that's sanctioned, it's sanctioned oil, it's not going to be allowed to get there. So that's a pre. Existing.
- [90:08]
A
Mr. President.
- [90:12]
F
The answer is. The answer is yes. Yes. Aware of the location of opposition leader Machado and have you been in contact with her? No, we haven't really.
- [90:27]
D
On Monday.
- [90:28]
F
I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect of.
- [90:36]
B
Mr. President.
- [90:37]
F
The US ends up administrating Venezuela for years, you know. Well, you know, it won't cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial. So it's not going to cost us anything. We will. Well, we want safety there. We want to be surrounded by countries that aren't housing all of our enemies all over the world. That's what was happening and you don't want to have that. But we're going to be rebuilding and we're not spending money. The oil companies are going to go in, they're going to spend money, they're going to. We're going to take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We're going to get reimbursed for all of that. We're going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend. So it's going to be. It's going to be a very important. It's going to be a very important. This is a very big evening that took place last night. We have to be surrounded by safe, secure countries and we also have to have energy. Very important. We have to have energy that's real energy, not where they're getting 4% and 5% of the energy out of the ground. You take a look. It was such a disaster. So what's going to happen with Venezuela, I think over the next period of a year is going to be a great thing and the people of Venezuela will be the biggest beneficiaries.
- [91:56]
B
Military.
- [91:57]
F
Mr. President, thank you. What did you last speak to Maduro.
- [92:00]
C
About when you spoke and is the.
- [92:01]
F
Well, I don't want to get into the conversations, but I did have conversations with him and I said, you got to surrender. And I actually thought he was pretty close to doing so, but now he wished he did. Yeah. You said that Maduro is responsible for drug trafficking.
- [92:21]
D
You recently pardoned the former president of.
- [92:23]
F
Honduras who was convicted for many drug trafficking. Can you Explain how these two situations.
- [92:27]
B
Are going to be.
- [92:27]
F
Well, the. I endorsed, as you know, the winning president, the man who won in Honduras. I endorsed the man who won in Chile. I endorsed the man who won in Argentina. And we are doing very well with that whole group. What the man that I pardoned was, if you could equate it to us, he was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump. That didn't work out too well for them. This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly. He was the head of the country. He was persecuted very unfairly. And there are a number of them. And we felt that it was a very unfair situation that happened to him. He's also a party member of the man who won. So obviously the people liked what I did. And one of the reasons that was done is because of the fact that the party in power felt very strongly that that man was treated very badly. I studied it very quickly and then I studied it in great detail. I went to a lot of the people standing behind me and they felt that that man was persecuted and treated very badly. That's why I gave him a pardon.
- [93:32]
A
You referenced boots on the ground earlier. Can you just sort of button this up? Do you envision the US Military having a presence in Venezuela as the US Runs that?
- [93:41]
F
Well, no, we're going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil because, because we have to have. We're sending our expertise in. So you may need something. Not very much, but no, we're going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela. And it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country. So I want to thank you all very much. Thank you. Do you have one? Yes, please. You were so nice before. I'm going to give you the final question.
- [94:16]
E
Thank you.
- [94:16]
F
Mr. Unless it's a bad question, in which case I'll go one word.
- [94:20]
A
So it's about Putin, if you want.
- [94:23]
F
You had a phone, you had a phone call with him on Monday. Did he talk at all about Maduro? Did you all talk about this? No, we didn't. We never spoke about Maduro. Are you mad at him right now? I mean, there's this. I'm not thrilled with Putin. I'm not thrilled with Putin. He's killing too many people. I thought that would be. So I settled 8 1/4 war. You know what the one quarter was Thailand and Cambodia. I did it again. They were. They broke out. And I did it in about five hours. And I settled it. I'm giving myself one quarter. So I'm up to now eight and one quarter. In other words, I settled the war. But then they broke out. They had a pretty bad breakout over the last four days. I got them to go back to peace. So I only give one quarter. I thought the easiest one would be. One of the easier ones would be Russia, Ukraine. It's not. And they both have done some pretty bad things. And look, that's Biden's war. That's not my war. But I want to stop the lives. Did you see where last month, 30,000. This last. It was 27. 27,000. The month before, 30,000 mostly soldiers were killed. This last month, 30,000. I want to stop that. You know, I got naito to pay 5% instead of the 2% that they weren't paying. They weren't paying 2, now they pay 5. And we send them a lot of munitions, we send them a lot of things, missiles and various other things. A lot, and they pay. The United States is not losing money. We're probably making money on that. It's the last thing I care about. I just want to stop all those people. We're losing 25, 30,000 human beings that come from two places that are very far away. But if I can stop, because it's something I've been pretty good at, doing deals, I guess it's all a deal. Life is a big deal. But if I can stop that war and stop 30,000 young people, in addition to the fact that that people are being killed in Kiev, people are being killed in other cities throughout, you know, a much smaller number, but they're being killed, viciously killed. So I'm not happy about it. I thought that would be something that would get solved. We have Mr. Witkoff here. I think that we're making progress. But that's a war that should have never happened. If I were president, it would have never happened. Putin says it. Everybody says it. If I were president, that would have never happened. But I inherited that war. That was Joe Biden, Zelensky, and Putin. I came into the situation, and it's a mess. And I will say this. I watched an operation last night that was so precise, that was so brilliant. I mean, it was incredible. If we had our people like this general and our people involved that war, that war would not have gone on very long, that I can tell you.
- [97:18]
B
That.
- [97:18]
F
War, to use an old term, that war has become a bloodbath and we want it to get stopped. Thank you very much.
- [97:33]
A
Okay, from Mar a Lago Live, a historic press conference given the military activity last night and of course a bombshell that we are quote, quote, going to run the country and didn't put a lot of flesh on that bone. But I'm sure we're going to get some details on that this afternoon. It looked like Marco Rubio would impede Hex if would be in charge of somehow. But no commitment of American boots on the ground. Let's go. I want to go to the military part of this first. Todd woods, what did you hear from General Kane about the operation itself?
- [98:09]
B
Well, you know, I mentioned there were hundreds of aircraft. He said there were over 150, which kind of matches. He also said there were President said there were a lot of troops on the ground. I'm probably three to 500 soldiers. And that means a lot of airlift to get these guys in there. There's Chinooks which can carry, you know, 40 fully loaded guys approximately. And the other thing that interested me was the aircraft that got shot up on the way in and it kept flying. You know, we used to practice. If you get the golden BB through your dash and your electronics go out or whatever, you just slide, especially if you're in the flight lead, you slide back and you follow the rest of the flight. And that's literally, I think what happened in a helicopter. You're worried about the transmission, the hydraulics, the rotors. As long as those are functional, you can keep flying, but you may not know where you're going. So you have to follow somebody else, especially if they hit the navigation equipment and the comms equipment. So that's what I took that, you know, obviously one of the helicopters took fire. I imagine I, I read somewhere that there were a couple injuries. Probably, you know, guy, you know, guys take rounds through legs, through arms or whatever, even with the armored plating that they have on these aircraft. But that's what I took out of it. Steve.
- [99:25]
A
What, what about the actual extraction himself? It sounded like Maduro security forces. I mean, were, had they flipped or didn't sound like a big. They said we knew exactly where he was, exactly what his habits were. It was 2 o' clock in the morning, 2am but it didn't sound like his internal security forces around him were either on, were either on the job or were looking the other way because there wasn't a number of casualties.
- [99:54]
B
Well, Trump said there was A lot of gunfire. So I took that to mean that, well, first of all, he said that some of their military was helping us. So I think we had people inside that were feeding intelligence and likely backed away when the force arrived. But he said there was a lot of gunfire, so that means there was some opposition. And he said a lot of opposition once they got inside the target area, inside the hit. So, you know, there's likely a lot of casualties on their side. These guys are the shooters that, you know, tier one shooters are. They can shoot with their eyes closed and take out targets. I mean, they're extremely good, extremely accurate, extremely efficient on rounds used. And so I think these guys probably didn't know what hit them. They moved like a knife through butter, directed Maduro and got him before he got in the safe room. That's what I took out of that.
- [100:48]
A
Okay, hang over a second time. We have Mike Davis by phone. Mike, I don't know if you saw. Did you get a chance to actually see the press conference or hear.
- [100:56]
H
I did, I did, yes.
- [100:59]
A
So, Mike, so we have the indictment, we have the extraction of Maduro and his wife to stand, you know, to face justice in the United States. But President Trump didn't kind of dropped a bombshell that we're going to remain there may be boots on the ground, and we're going to, we're going to quote, unquote, and these are his words, we're going to run Venezuela until we can do a safe transition for those folks. Can you help me think that through? Because as you can imagine, there are a number of MAGA people that are going, what's going on here?
- [101:31]
H
I remember since President Obama let Chavez and Maduro destroy Venezuela, we've had 8 million Venezuelan refugees around the world. And Venezuela was not sending their best to America. They were sending trend Aragua terrorist to America. They were sending their drug dealers, their fentanyl that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. And so I think the president's right, you have to stabilize the country. We had a lot of money, American money spent in Venezuela to build the oil infrastructure. And Chavez and Maduro just took that from us. And so, you know, I think it's very responsible for the President to say that we're going to, we're going to keep the country stabilized until the Venezuelans can figure out who they want as their next leader. And we're not going to let another Marxist take over the country that's going to threaten the United States again and kill Americans with their fentanyl.
- [102:43]
A
In that he up front, he says, hey, we didn't brief Congress. I didn't want leaks. In fact, my understanding is that only certain members of the administration knew this. This is a very close run thing, as the British say. He's already being hit by, you know, Lavrov. Even, even our ally, Nigel Farage said this was counter to international law. How do you walk through this stabilization? We're going to, quote, unquote, run the country until it's stabilized. Given the fact that we predicated on the, we predicated this on extracting a bad guy, not the people around him, to go face an execution of an indictment from the Southern District of New York.
- [103:25]
H
Well, it's similar to what we did in Panama. I mean, when you, when you indict the leader of a country and arrest him, you have to have, you have to have a plan in place to run the country until they can come up with their next leader. I mean, that just makes sense. We're not going to just let Venezuela go into total chaos because we indicted and arrested the leader of Venezuela. And I would say this. The president has a great deal of power as the commander in Chief under Article 2. He has a great deal of power as the chief magistrate to execute the laws. He was executing an arrest warrant issued by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York after a grand jury, a federal grand jury indicted Maduro and his wife on these very serious drug and weapon charges. Again, this is absolutely in our national security interest in America. Maduro was killing Americans. He was killing a lot of Americans with this drug trade, with this fentanyl.
- [104:35]
A
No, And Marco Rubio said that a couple of times. This is in. I don't think you would find an argument the difference in Ukraine or the difference in the Middle east is that this is, you know, Monroe Doctrine 2.0, the Trump Corollary. This is hemispheric defense. This is in the vital national interests of the United States. That being said, how do you envision, you know, we call you the viceroy, right? But how do you envision. I think he said Marco and Pete. So it looks like Secretary of War Hegseth and Marco Rubio, at least at first, will they go in with some mandate? I mean, how do you actually make them essentially viceroys of this until you've got, you know, we had the disaster with Bremer in the, with the provisional authority there in Iraq. As you remember, you were part of the Bush guys. That turned out to be a disaster. How do you empower Marco or Pete Hegseth to actually have a better grip on this.
- [105:27]
H
Well, I mean, I don't think this is going to be a long term government by the United States. I think it's in our interest to get in there, get the country stabilized, let the Venezuelans have a free election and elect their next leader. Presumably if they have a free election, the Venezuelans are going to elect a leader that shares American values and then we can get the hell out of there. We have to make sure that we're protecting our interests. We want to make sure we. Look, we've already had 8 million Venezuelans lead a country, 20% of the population. We can't have a situation where millions or even tens of millions more Venezuelans are fleeing Venezuela. That will be a disaster for America. It will be a disaster for the Western Hemisphere. The difference between Ukraine and these other Middle Eastern countries is the Venezuelans will come to America where these, you know, they can't come to America from Ukraine and the Middle east unless we fly them in. And Venezuela, they can just come up through Mexico and try to come into our country. I mean, so it's absolutely in our interest to stabilize this country to make sure that there's a free and fair election and they elect the next leader who's aligned with America.
- [106:51]
A
Mike Davis Social media I know people are going to be all over it this weekend until we come back on Monday. Where do people get you?
- [106:58]
H
Article3project.org Article number 3project.org Follow us on Social media donate and then the war room posse Superpowers. Action. Action, Action. And thank you Steve.
- [107:11]
A
Thank you sir.
- [107:12]
D
Appreciate you.
- [107:12]
A
Do I have Javier up? Javier, your thoughts? You heard Lula throw down hard. This was violating international law, all of that. You heard the president say we're going to run Venezuela at least for some time. What's your response and how is folks in Latin America taking this?
- [107:30]
E
God bless him, I love him. Trump press conference was impressive for me. I have never seen a president anywhere in the world with such determination. He has shown that he's a president of action, a man of peace because he defeated Maduro. He arrests Maduro without a single death and that he's going to take control of Venezuela so it can be become a great country. You know, again, I have a strong relationship with American companies so he believes in America. First he sent a message to Colombian President Petro like watch your ass because you are making cocaine. So this military intervention is justified because he was a dictator like, I mean like Maduro and within his downfall one of the sources of funding for international tourism and the woke agenda will be eliminated with the fall of the Venezuelan regime. We will learn which other players are involved in drug trafficking, international tourism, business. I think left wing governments like those in Cuba, Colombia, Brazil or in Spain with Pedro Sanchez or with Zapatero, they're making business with dictatorship like Venezuelan regime and they have people in jail for corruption. So it's a really big, big battle against for Sao Paulo. Trump won this battle and I think that after we can see peace and freedom in countries like Cuba, like Brazil, like Colombia. I think with this press conference and with this operation, Trump is going to win a lot of votes in the Spanish community because he deserve it, because he's promising peace, justice, security and he's going to make Venezuela and other countries like Honduras, like Argentina with Melee, like Salvador, with Bukele great again. So God bless him. In the Spanish community a lot of people that they don't believe in Trump now. They love him.
- [109:27]
A
Javier, where do people go to get you for your new show? What's your social media?
- [109:32]
E
Yeah, you can follow me on right new show in all the social media platform Fabianegre on X on Instagram and tomorrow we're gonna have a special show, right new show at 8pm Miami time, Eastern time. So we are gonna tell Hispanic community how brands like Telemundo, Mubicion is telling lines about the ICE operation, about the Maduro regime and we are in battle, we're fighting against misinformation and we want to avoid like cities like Miami or New York that now are in the hands of communists do the same. So we have to do the battle in the media, in the Spanish media because we have to win the election. We have to support Trump because he's the best president ever for South America, for the Hispanic community because he brings freedom and he supports presidents like Milei Casin, Chile, Honduras with it's really important. We feel proud of him.
- [110:31]
F
Yeah.
- [110:32]
A
Javier, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. You're going to do a special on this. Look forward to seeing it from live from Miami. Oscar Blue Ramirez. You were just down in Venezuela. Your thoughts today, particularly from the deck place the working people in Venezuela. When the president says we're going to run Venezuela for for a while that shocks people. Your thoughts?
- [110:53]
I
Well, a lot of the people, the American people do not know that the Venezuelan country was run by American countries, companies and it was particularly run by the American people. And then socialism came over and completely destroyed that country. Now this is an enormous accomplishment, Steve. This is a historical accomplishment. I have suffered a lot of the consequences with these people. We have seen them die in the middle of the jungle. We have seen them drown in the middle of the jungle running away from a regime and a dictator and a narco terrorist. That is Nicolas Maduro. This is historic. Never and history has ever happened like something like this. Donald Trump has accomplished something that it will mark history for the rest of time in Latin America. And it is a complete change. Now. They need to go after, and this is one of the most important things they need to go after the Osdado Cabello and also Padrino Lopez that they're in charge of the defense of justice in the part of Venezuela. Those are the ones that also they're running this regime that they're part of Cartel de los Olas, that they're part of, of the fractions of dangers, of trend. And I said to you, Steve, when it was last week, when I was there in the borders of Venezuela, I said, there's high tensions on these borders. There's a huge deployment of the National Guard of Venezuela through these particular borders. There's high tension between the people. They are basically telling the citizens of Venezuela, if you have something in your phone that is against Nicolas Maduro, you will be charged with terrorism and traitors to your country up to 30 years in prison. So a lot of the people knew that something was going to happen. And guess what? This is what just, you know, the capture of Nicolas Maduro was just a historical event.
- [112:33]
E
Steve.
- [112:36]
A
Where can people get you over the weekend? We got a punch here at the top of the hour. Where do people go and get you over the weekend? Oscar, we're heading back on Monday.
- [112:44]
I
Oscar Blue Ramirez. All around, sir. Real America's Voice news and also just wanted to plug in real quick. Informative reports coming in from inside of Venezuela. Our contacts are saying that a huge deployment to every border, huge tanks, military tanks to every border are being deployed right now on the ground. There's high tensions and there is a lot of uncertainty on what can happen inside of Venezuela, sir.
- [113:06]
A
Well, isn't that the issue when you say, I mean, how does it, how do you interpret that for President Trump saying we're going to put people in and run the country? Are Maduro's guys prepared to sit there and work with the Americans?
- [113:18]
I
That's one of the things. That's what I'm saying. They need to capture the other two. That they're basically destabilizing and they are, you know, the accomplices of Nicolas Maduro. That that is Yozalo Cabello and Padrino Lopez. Those are the two individuals and the two fractions that they are part also of del Cartel de los Olles and also Trender Agua. These people are not they're already threatening the population. They're already telling them if you go against and if you celebrate the capture of Nicolas Maduro, you will be charged with terrorism. And so they already terrorizing the population to not celebrate, to not go out, to not try to protest, to not try to rise. So it's going to be a battle and it is going to be also an enormous strategy by the Trump administration to go in there and to try to remove these two individuals that they have control of the justice system and also part of the executive power that they have control also. So it's going to be a battle. It's going to be, you know, a lot of strategies that they're going to do, Steve, to basically remove these two individuals so they can go over there and have control of what they're trying to do.
- [114:16]
A
Oscar, one more time, where do people get you over the weekend? Because I'm sure people are going to want to know more about this as things develop.
- [114:25]
I
Oscar Blue Ramirez and I get her, sir. Oscar Blue, Oscar Ramirez, TJ on X. You can find me there. And also Real America's voice user will be possibly, possibly heading back towards the borders down south, sir, so we can give an informative report in a more amplified information, seeing things on the ground, sir, over there in the borders with Venezuela.
- [114:48]
A
Look forward to talking to you after the show. Thank you, Oscar. Frank Gaffney, isn't this the, the devil's in the details here? You had this magnificent extraction. You've got Maduro now in the Iwo Jima. He's going to face he's just been open. They've unsealed the indictment. But you hear from Oscar right there, a very uncertain situation inside the country. And a lot of the bad hombres that ran the country with Maduro are still looks like in charge or in control. The president says we're going to step in with Marco Ribio and it looks like Pete Hegseth and somehow stabilize the country. Is this hearkened back to our fiasco in Iraq under Bush, sir?
- [115:29]
C
Well, it could be in a way worse, Steve, in the sense that what you're dealing with really is an existing array of very bad actors. Oscar's just mentioned a couple of them. In addition to them, you've got the Chinese and the Cubans and the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah and the, you know, Cartel de los Olas, which is actually what many people think is running Venezuela these days. All of that is in place. All of that is operating with a single individual and his wife, now removed. And I, I must say I'm. I'm a little troubled by the President's comment that this gal, Delse Rodriguez, who was the vice president under Maduro and has now been sworn in as the new president. Well, she's up to her eyeballs in all of this as well. You know, she's been sanctioned by the U.S. treasury Department since 2018 and is widely thought to be implicated, as he was in this, this cartel. So, and, and saying that the gal who, you know, won the Nobel Peace Prize for being a, an opposition figure that is widely believed to have actually won the last election doesn't have popular support, but Delsey does. I, I have the feeling some of this is just a function of, you know, suddenly we're in the midst of a successful operation.
- [117:18]
A
Yeah.
- [117:18]
C
And the rest of it has been.
- [117:21]
D
Thought as carefully as it needs to be. We.
- [117:25]
A
That's what I'm saying. We have to bounce. We're going to punch at one o'. Clock. I'm going to be up on social media. You are Captain Fennell or Captain Fennell gives his thoughts over American greatness just real quickly, because there's a lot of confusion out there. People saying, well, President Trump says he's not afraid of putting boots on the ground. If you had one recommendation for the President, the Commander in chief, right now, given this enormously successful extraction of Maduro, which nobody in a million years could think have happened so perfectly. We got about a minute. What would you recommend to the President, Marco Ruby and Pete Hegseth right now?
- [118:01]
C
Well, I personally would recommend that they go with the team that won the election that represents the people of Venezuela and that is not going to be implicated with most of the mad, very, very odious activities of the previous regime, there's going to need to be a house cleaning and, you know, short of American occupation forces, and I don't think anybody has that in mind. The people of Venezuela are our best hope. We need people power to demonstrate against these cartels and the foreign enemies of the United States and all the rest of that's the way forward, I believe, and I hope that that's what we're going to wind up supporting intensively as a country.
- [118:47]
A
Frank, what's your social media? You're going to be with me in Texas this week. We're going to take on this ismailization of Texas. Real quickly, what's your social media?
- [118:55]
C
I'm at Frank gaffney on x usfuture.org for the Institute for the American Future and securingamerica.substack.com.
- [119:05]
A
We'Ll see you on Monday, sir. Thank you very much. By the way, if Grace and Mo can put up there's still we're going to expand out. I think we've sold 600 tickets. Look to maybe sell another hundred if we get more room. I'll put it up all weekend. Want to thank real America's voice. Historic couple of hours, a lot of uncertainty. President Trump is correct. We can't have the vital national security and interests of the United States are the borders and the sovereignty of the United States. Venezuela has been a big problem, but man, oh, man, is this complicated. Gonna be quite complicated. Not a lot of people are shocked by that. We're gonna be in charge for a while, but we'll work it all out. Want to thank captain for now, everybody, Erik Prince, Real America's voice, all of it. See you back here Monday, 10:00am Eastern Standard Time, when you will be back in the war room.