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- [00:03]
A
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News. Joining us now with her reaction live from Capitol Hill, an important voice when it comes to geopolitics, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is with us, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And Senator, it's great to see you. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. I hope the year is starting out well for you with regard to what the president is talking about here, what Marco Rubio is talking about. I know that you received a very important classified briefing earlier today from members of the administration. Were you satisfied with what you heard as a basis to justify these actions?
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B
Well, as your reporter pointed out, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. And as I understand, our ability to control that Venezuelan oil depends a lot on our the embargo and having our ships in the waters off the Venezuelan coast, our effort to seize ships. While I certainly think whatever we can do to shut down the shadow fleet that's allowing oil to continue to fuel Russia and China and their efforts is important, it does put at greater risk our men and women in the military. We now have 15,000 service members in the Caribbean area of operation, and it's not clear how long they're going to be there, how long this embargo is going to continue Venezuela and ultimately how we're going to see a transition to a democratic government there.
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C
Well, the U.S. energy Secretary, Christopher Wright, earlier today at an energy conference put a little bit more of a finer point on what you're talking about when it comes to this leverage and using the oil embargo. Take, take a listen to what he had to say earlier today.
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A
If we control the flow of oil, the sales of those oil and the flow of the cash that comes from those sales, we have large leverage.
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B
We need to have that leverage and.
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A
That control of those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela.
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C
There has been talk and reporting that the sale of Venezuelan oil could go on indefinitely. That's the word that we keep hearing being used. Are lawmakers prepared to monitor that revenue? Have there been any sorts of conversations on Capitol Hill about what that would look like in practice?
- [02:28]
B
No real specifics on that. And again, the challenge there is we can only continue to control the oil that's coming and going from Venezuela if we have 20% of our fleet off the coast of Venezuela, if we are able to interdict those ships that are coming and going that are part of the shadow fleet that we want to stop. And that's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to put service members continue to mean service members are going to stay in that Caribbean area of operation. And it means that the focus is going to be on that as opposed to on health care, the millions of people in this country who are losing their health insurance because those prices, premiums are going up without the, with the expiration of the tax credits. It means that the affordability of the cost of living that people are facing is not being addressed. And that's what I'm hearing from my constituents is a concern.
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A
Well, Senator, there's another matter that I know you were briefed on earlier this week, and that's the matter involving Greenland and the president's designs on taking it over, as he suggests. Stephen Miller, the president's adviser, has been saying that it is our right, it is our rightful place to, to occupy Greenland. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, from what we understand in his briefing with your committee with armed services, said that President Trump plans to buy Greenland. Is that how this ends?
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B
Well, I think that's a crazy idea. Greenland is an important place. And the fact is our ally Denmark has Greenland as a protectorate of Denmark. And Denmark has been very clear that they're willing to partner with us on anything we want to do in that area. So the fact that the president and his advisers would be talking about undermining the transatlantic alliance NATO over his notion that Greenland needs to be part of the United States makes no sense at all. It's a crazy notion and it needs to be stopped.
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A
Now, you're going to be meeting with the Danish ambassador tomorrow, Senator. What will be your message?
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B
It will be a bipartisan meeting. And I think we are going to try and reassure the Danish ambassador that we think this is a crazy notion, that it doesn't make any sense, and that we are very appreciative of the work that we have done with our ally Denmark. It's been one of historically one of our strongest allies. It's been a strong member of NATO. And it makes no sense for the president to alienate our ally Denmark as well as other allies in Europe, undermine NATO, the strongest security agreement in history, because he wants to be a strong man and thump his chest and talk about how he's going to take control of Greenland.
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C
Are there any active discussions about what a US Denmark bolstered alliance would look like? Are there talks about economic cooperation, deals, critical minerals? Maybe the US Moving more forces into the region in order to avoid the escalation that's been put on the table?
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B
Well, the Danish prime minister has suggested that Denmark is willing to work with the United States and Greenland are willing to work with the United States in a variety of areas that we may be interested in partnering with. So I think, yes, there, there is a willingness to do that. And what we've heard, we haven't heard anything from the White House in terms of their willingness to talk to our partner, Denmark, about how to move forward in a way that works cooperatively instead of trying to take over Green.
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A
Senator, we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you about domestic policy for a moment because there's an important vote in the House today on extending Obamacare subsidies. A floor vote following the procedural is set for tomorrow. And there are big questions about whether this is going anywhere in the United States Senate. The president said something pretty interesting here, asking Republicans yesterday for flexibility around Hyde. And I'm wondering what you're hearing from your Republican colleagues, if a deal might be at hand.
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B
Well, I think the president's comments on Hyde were helpful. What I hope is that the House is going to give a strong vote on those extension of the premium tax credits that will send the bill over to the Senate. A group, a bipartisan group, has been working on trying to come up with a compromise on addressing the extension of the premium tax credits. I think we've made a lot of progress. Hopefully, we'll get that House bill and have a vehicle that we can then pass out of the Senate and send it back to the House. And I hope that the president will finally get engaged on this issue in a way that will allow us to make progress and get this done, because we have thousands of people in my home state of New Hampshire that are going to lose their health insurance, that are already seeing their premiums spike in a way that they can't afford millions of people across the country.
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C
All right. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, thank you so much for joining us.