Trump Kidnaps Venezuelan President Maduro

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Trump Kidnaps Venezuelan President Maduro"

It Could Happen Here – Cool Zone Media | iHeartPodcasts
Air Date: January 7, 2026
Hosts: Robert Evans, James Stout, Mia Wong

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Episode Overview

This riveting episode unpacks the shocking news that the United States, under the Trump administration, executed a military operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The hosts trace the legal, political, and humanitarian ramifications, drawing parallels to American imperial history, and debate the potential consequences for Venezuela, US democracy, and the global order.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Operation: What Happened?

• [03:00] Robert Evans: Details the US-led raid: Delta Force and helicopters launched airstrikes in Caracas, killed Maduro’s security detail (including 32 Cuban advisors), and transported Maduro and his wife to New York for arraignment on drug and gun charges, some of which are legally dubious.
  • “They're charging him with a variety of drug and gun related crimes, including...possession of a machine gun under US Law...they’re arguing his control of the Venezuelan military counted as illegal possession...It’s weird.” [03:18]
• Legal and ethical questions quickly raised about the lack of US jurisdiction in Venezuela.

2. Legal and Constitutional Crisis

• The “justification” given by Secretary of State Marco Rubio invokes the Monroe Doctrine (19th-century claim over the Western Hemisphere) and asserts US law enforcement powers overseas.
• [05:14] James Stout: “...this implies that US law applies in Venezuela. Which it absolutely doesn't. That's literally the point. The point of a state is that your law applies inside of your borders.”
• [07:07] Mia Wong: Emphasizes the dictatorial overreach: “The American empire is just saying, we are an empire and we can do whatever we want… Does the President have the power to do this unilaterally? ...This is objectively an act of war.”

3. Historical Comparisons and Precedents

• The Noriega (Panama, 1989) and Aristide (Haiti, 2004) examples are discussed but deemed different in their political and military context.
• [08:01] James Stout: “That was a war...Noriega went to the Vatican embassy...negotiated his exit...that's a completely different thing to just bouncing into the residence of the president of another country at night.”

4. Mask-Off Imperialism

• [09:43] Robert Evans: "It's even more mask off now…they just don't give a shit anymore."
• The panel argues the Trump administration dropped any pretense of international law or moral justification, operating as "peer dictator shit."

5. Who Runs Venezuela Now?

• Following the kidnapping, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is sworn in as president ([19:07]). The US had previously rejected her offer to assume power with US backing—now appears to be working with her, but she is forced into an awkward public stance criticizing the US while cooperating with it.
  • [15:23] Robert Evans: “She has both made the statements publicly that this is illegal...but we'll work with them.”

6. The Oil Question

• Trump administration openly expresses interest in Venezuela's oil assets, though the hosts clarify that most Venezuelan oil is of poor quality and not easily monetized.
  • [22:34] James Stout: “There aren’t giant lakes of oil in Venezuela you can just slurp up and sell.”
  • [24:52] Mia Wong: “Taking control of this oil, you're not really making the money off of this oil. You're making the money off of the impact controlling this oil has on the rest of the oil you produce.”
• Cuban involvement explained: Venezuela’s oil is "existential" for Cuba, explaining Cuban casualties in the raid.

7. Impact on Venezuelan Civilians

• [29:54] James Stout: Cites hundreds of interviews with Venezuelan migrants: “Their lives are miserable, and this isn’t going to change that...they’re trying to get enough food to make it through the next couple weeks in case they have to hunker down in their homes.”
• The average Venezuelan is responding with fear, not celebration.

8. US Public Reaction & Motivation

• Polls show the US public overwhelmingly opposed to escalation in Venezuela (Reuters/Ipsos: 72% concerned, including majorities of Dems, independents, and even Republicans) [Timestamps: ~[34:00 - 36:00]].
• [35:54] Robert Evans: Argues Trump’s motivations are vanity—wanting to “do what Bush did, but better”, and to have a "big bad guy" military win like Obama with Bin Laden. “The primary reason Trump is doing this is that he wants...to show everybody, look, I did what Bush did but it worked…I think that's most of what's going on for him.”

9. International Fallout

• Dictators worldwide are alarmed—ex: Myanmar’s junta reportedly called emergency meetings.
• The operation may further incentivize nuclear proliferation as states see nuclear arms as their only real security.

10. Chilling Domestic Implications

• Concerns raised for Venezuelan nationals in the US: the DOJ seeks extensions under the Alien Enemies Act, risking deportations to a hostile and suspicious regime.
  • [43:52] James Stout: “The country that you came to be safe is now bombing the country that you came from…you are stuck in the middle of this game and all you wanted was a place to raise your kids…”

11. Broader Warnings and Parallels to Fascist History

• Discuss parallels to Nazi expansion—emphasizing the pattern of bold gambles until pushback finally occurs, at which point the system’s instability is laid bare ([45:00 - 47:00]).
• [47:08] Robert Evans: “...If this works...they'll try again and they'll try again. And the Nazis tried again and again until they started making checks that their asses couldn't cash. Right. And that is...relevant because that is something all fascists have in common…”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It's dictator shit, it’s fascist, it’s deeply wrong. It’s bad. Like, there's nothing else to say.”
  – Robert Evans, [11:51]

• “Trump is doing this, I think, primarily for vanity purposes. Right…he wants to show everybody, look, I did what Bush did, but it worked.”
  – Robert Evans, [35:54]

• “It is crass in the extreme to see that for the American politician [to call this ‘liberation’].”
  – James Stout, [30:55]

• “…if you're finding anyone getting caught…‘but Maduro did this’…that is either a person who is acting in bad faith or a person who has themselves been tricked. You don’t need to discuss any of that. None of that is relevant.”
  – Robert Evans, [11:33]

• “The comprehensive result of this is again, that the US has annexed, I guess, Venezuela, that Trump is claiming that he personally and his secretary of state…now control and run a country. This is so evil.”
  – James Stout, [12:01]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:00] – Detailed overview of the operation that captured Maduro
• [04:58] – Debating the US legal rationale: Monroe Doctrine, due process, violations
• [07:00] – Constitutionality and parallels to historic US interventions
• [11:51] – The irrelevance of Maduro’s crimes to justification for US intervention
• [15:23] – Shifting power in Venezuelan government; Rodriguez’s role
• [22:34] – The realities of Venezuela’s oil and US interests
• [29:54] – Lived experiences and current fears of Venezuelan civilians
• [35:54] – Trump’s motivations: vanity, legacy, and personal branding
• [39:04] – International consequences: escalation, nuclear proliferation
• [43:52] – Impact on Venezuelan migrants in the US
• [45:00] – Historical parallels to fascist expansionism

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Tone & Style

The episode is conversational, often sardonic, but underpinned by alarm and clear moral outrage. The hosts mix dark humor with deep policy analysis, grounding their points in both historical context and contemporary reporting.

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Key Takeaways

• The US kidnapping of a sitting world leader without international cover is a radical escalation of American imperialism.
• Legal justifications are spurious and mark a break from even the minimal pretense of respecting international law.
• The outcome for Venezuelans—and risk to regional stability—are dire, with average citizens facing immediate hardship.
• The operation’s drivers seem more about Trump’s image and legacy than legitimate US interests or humanitarian concern.
• The international community, and even America’s own public, are alarmed by this maneuver, which may herald increased instability and future imperial adventures until a crisis point is reached.
• The focus should remain on the illegality of the act itself, not the character or crimes of Maduro.

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Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[B]

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[A]

Cool Zone Media welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening well, in various places. And given the nature of our digital interconnected society, it is happening here all the time. But if you're even casually aware of what's going on in the world right now, it is particularly happening in Venezuela right now. And joining me to talk about the US led and executed kidnapping of a world leader is my two favorite kidnappers, Mia Wong and James Stout.

[C]

Glad to be here, Robert. Joining you to discuss kidnapping, one of my favorite topics.

[D]

Yeah, my lawyers have advised me not to respond to this statement.

[A]

Now, given all the people you've both kidnapped, how are you just rating this on a technical level, as kidnappings go? You know, on a level from let's say the. Well, if I remember the name of that guy with the plane, this would have been a funnier joke. I forgot his name, though. D.B.

[C]

Cooper.

[A]

No, no, no. He was on a plane. He didn't have a plane.

[D]

Yeah, that's a reverse kidnapping. He unkidnapped him.

[A]

He did unkidnap himself.

[D]

Everyone on the plane.

[A]

Kidnapped. Plane. I was talking about Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh. But the joke's over. So let's talk about the international crimes our government's doing. Did. Did and doing.

[C]

I'm drinking a White Claw, so I've got about the same legal jurisdiction as they have because there is no law when you're drinking White claws.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Which I think is their legal argument.

[A]

I mean. Yeah. So what happened is while most of us were asleep last Saturday night, the United States, using a mix of Special Forces, like Tier one operators, this was like a Delta Force operation, primarily. A whole bunch of helicopters that looked like a mix of Blackhawks and Chinooks carried out a series of airstrikes on Caracas and kidnapped the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, killing a significant chunk of their security detail, including 32 Cubans who are acting as essentially like, military advisors. Slash, security for Maduro.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

He has been taken back to the United States. He's been arraigned in New York. They're charging him with a variety of drug and gun related crimes, including some weird shit like possession of a machine gun under US Law, which is really weird. I guess they're arguing that his control of the Venezuelan military counted as illegal possession of an automatic weapon. Yeah, it's. It's weird.

[C]

Yeah. I'm guessing it involves using the machine gun in the furtherance of another crime because there are specific charges for, like, NFA violations related to drug things.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

But it still, still seems very weird to tag that on there. Like. Like when what you're doing is kidnapping a world leader, you can't just also be like, oh, and he's got a gun. Like when he commands the armed forces of a country. It's very strange.

[A]

Right?

[D]

Yeah. This also, I think, pins into what's really, really weird about this. There's two aspects of this that are just. What the fuck. One of them is that the legal justification this is given to Mike Lee from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was that the reason that there were airstrikes in the legal justification was protecting U.S.

[A]

Soldiers carrying out U.S. law enforcement. The military was needed to protect the DEA agents who are actually conducting the arrest.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Is the legal justification.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

The chances of some kind of due process violation are high. This all hinges on you thinking that the law is a fixed thing. Right. Not an instrument of the state and an instrument of power. And I think that a more plausible analysis here is that the law is not a fixed thing. But like, in this instance. Right. If we go with that line, like the DEA people were there to ensure due process and to make the arrest. Right. And in theory, I read that they literally had someone Mirandize him.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Yeah. Which I do want to point out something here, though, and this is something that cnn, like, when they were Reporting on this points out this is insane because this implies that U.S. law applies in Venezuela.

[A]

Right. Which it absolutely doesn't.

[D]

That's literally the point. The point of a state is that your law applies inside of your borders.

[A]

The argument that they are making, cuz Trump directly and prior to this, had called into relevance the Monroe Doctrine. Right. Which is basically stating that everything happening in the Americas is the purview of the United States. This was initially. And they're still arguing that it is kind of what President Monroe was using as an excuse for intervening in situations where foreign colonizers were attempting to exert power and colonies they owned in the Americas or had owned in the Americas. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And the US Was basically saying, fuck you, this is our backyard. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think the argument. The argument that they're making now is that that's relevant because Iran and Russia and Cuba all have political and business interests in Venezuela, particularly Cuba.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But in a more broad sense, they're making the argument, and Stephen Miller has made this very directly, that the Americas are all kind of our property. Yeah. And we're perfectly justified in intervening to take resources that we want because we shouldn't have to just accept that a foreign country has different opinions on how those resources should be used than the United States and that we have no, like, moral responsibility to listen to what other people want in our hemisphere. It's our hemisphere, and we, meaning the Trump administration, should do whatever we want.

[D]

Yeah. And I think there's two kind of legal perspectives here, things that are important. One, I think there's that one which is.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

The American. The American empire is just saying, we are an empire and we can do whatever we want. But then there's also the. Does the President have the power to do this unilaterally piece of it? Which. No, he. No, like, just does not. Like, this is. This is. This is objectively an act of war.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And previously. Right. A lot of administrations have done things kind of like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Right. But like, everything has been under the fig leaf of the AUMF. Right. The 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force, which, if you go back and read the document, the actual, like, AUMF, it's very clear that it's anyone who's related to 9, 11.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

And so this has been used to do interventions in, like, places that. Things that have nothing to do with this.

[C]

Right.

[D]

But this is not even that. This is just the President claiming that he can do acts of war.

[C]

Yeah. And I guess the justification that they gave was the example they cited was NORIEGA.

[A]

Right.

[C]

In 89 in Panama. Right. But there was a. That was a war. That was operation like American soldiers died. Right. Noriega went to the Vatican embassy and eventually, I believe he surrendered him. They'd like, blasted U2 at him, which is obviously a war crime. And he eventually left the embassy. Right. And negotiated his exit, I guess. But that's a completely different thing to just bouncing into the residence of the president of another country at night, black baggage.

[A]

Like that's also debatably legal. But. Yes, it was a different situation.

[C]

Yeah, very, very, very much so. Yes. Yeah. No, it's also wrong, to be clear.

[A]

Like, we're not defending what. What was done there.

[D]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

Yeah. This is even more blatant, right. It's like, it's not defending what George W. Bush did in Iraq to be like, at least they bothered to pretend there was a justification. Like, they spent some time really cooking up a justification and some effort, and there's none of that here. They just don't give a shit anymore. Right. That's. That you're not being like. And that means it was okay what Bush did. You're just pointing out it's even more mask off now. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Well, and I think it is different in that, like, the invasion of Iraq involved Congress. This is just Trump going, I can do this.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And that's really fucking alarming.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

That he just is like, yeah, fuck it, I can just do a war now completely by myself. None of you have any fucking power over me. I can just declare war. A thing that is explicitly in the Constitution, like, supposed to be Congress's job. And I think that's really. That's another very alarming part of this, because this is, I think, by far the most just Trump peer dictator shit that we've seen so far. And it's not being treated like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Because a lot of sort of like, I don't know, like, there's a lot of people who wanted this, Something like this to happen, and so they're kind of just not looking at the fact that this is just. This is just pure dictatorship shit.

[C]

Yeah. I think a lot of people, because they didn't like Maduro, Right. They're willing to look aside from the. The means as long as they get the ends they want. But the means are extremely serious here.

[A]

Yeah. And I think we should stop for a second to talk about the Maduro of it all, because my stance is that his legitimacy as president, his personal legitimacy, whether or not he's committed crimes are all completely irrelevant. Right. I have not in any of my public facing statements, I've, in the past, years ago talked about how I wish the protests had worked to remove him from office within sort of like the context of Venezuelans actually having their way, kicking him out and replacing him with something better. But I have not brought up any of that in the context of what's happened recently, because it doesn't matter, Right? Like, fundamentally, it doesn't matter if Maduro is like, completely legitimately elected and the people's hero or a complete fraud and an authoritarian. That has nothing to do with whether or not the US has any legal or moral justification for coming in, arresting this guy, and then saying, we own the country and we don't. It's dictator shit, it's fascist, it's deeply wrong. It's bad. Like, there's nothing else to say. If you find anyone getting caught in starting to be like, well, but, you know, Maduro did this or Maduro did that, that is either a person who is acting in bad faith or a person who has themselves been tricked. Right. Because you don't need to discuss any of that. None of that is relevant to what we're talking about here, which is that the US like this is a violation of international law and all of the kinds of norms that we attempted to put in place after World War II to stop another catastrophe like that from happening. And it is only going to embolden the worst instincts of both the people running the United States right now. They will continue to try to do shit like this, and it's going to embolden the worst instincts of other leaders around the world. It is comprehensively bad for everyone.

[D]

The comprehensive result of this is again, that the US has annexed, I guess, Venezuela, that Trump is claiming that he personally and his secretary of state and his council of advisors are like, now control and run a country.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

This is so evil.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's very unclear who's going to be doing. Because Trump made those that statement. Rubio walked it back a little bit and said that, like, well, we'll be working with the administration in place, which is, by the way, just the same administration that existed before, merely with the vice president taking on the role of president.

[C]

Yeah, we should talk about that a little bit.

[A]

Yeah. After that, backtracked a little bit, too, to try and be more in line with the boss. But it's very unclear what they actually intend and what they mean by saying we're running it. Because from what I've read it doesn't look like Rubio is actually going to be man, like, while he's been the guy taking point on justifying this, I don't think he's going to actually be managing any of this on a day to day basis. He's got a lot on his plate already. Stephen Miller seems to be the guy who is trying to position himself to actually be the, the Paul Bremer in this situation. Who was the guy that the Bush administration put in charge of, of dealing with, of like running Iraq after it was taken over.

[D]

Yeah, the Viceroy.

[A]

Yeah. And it's unclear. Is Miller going to get that job? Will Rubio wind up doing it? It's looking more like Miller right now. But also to what extent will that job actually be running things? And we'll talk about that in a little bit, I'm sure. But the kind of Cliff's notes of the situation is that there is evidence that came out right after the kidnapping that Maduro's vice president had reached out to the United States previously, like before the kidnapping, to talk about the possibility of taking over the country after giving Maduro up or him having a managed exile. All of that was discussed and at least per the reporting on it, she was turned down by the United States because they thought they had a better option. And that option seems to have fallen through largely because the quote unquote democratically elected opposition leader who won a Nobel Prize pissed off Trump. It's unclear how accurate that is that by, you know, by winning the prize, by accepting the Nobel Prize, did she get her kick herself out of the job? That's what some reporting has suggested. It's unclear to me how true that actually is. It seems possible, surely, but at the end of the day, there was this offer made by Maduro's VP that was turned down by the US and now it seems like, although we don't actually know what's happened in the background, it seems like she's who we're working with. So either they came back and said, you know what, we'll take the deal, or something else is going on. But she has both made the statements publicly that this is illegal, the United States is run by a group of criminals and extremists and also. But we'll work with them. So it does kind of seem to me like she may in fact be very much in bed with the Trump administration and just trying to like massage this for her public, you know, because there's only so much you can get away with. I don't know.

[C]

Yeah. Just to be Clear on the timeline, Robert.

[D]

Yeah, The.

[C]

The first reporting of that, like Rodriguez option. We want to call it that. They call it Madurismo is out. Maduro as well was in October. Yeah. That was out before the strike happened.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And at least in the Miami Herald story, they suggested that he had been part of that, so this could be a different thing. But he had offered to step down over years.

[A]

Right. Yeah. So I say it looked like there was a period of time where he was talking about, like, a managed exit. Yeah.

[C]

Going to Qatar or Turkey or somewhere like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Now, Rodriguez has, of course, denied that.

[A]

But what would you expect, Dulcie Rodriguez? And, yeah, it's unclear. Again, we don't really know. Did they just remove Maduro without having a plan and hadn't really finished talking with her or worked something out. It was the last thing she heard from them. Them saying, nah, we won't take option.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And material gets kidnapped. Did they work out a separate deal that just hasn't been reported on? We actually don't know. And I could totally see her being a stooge for US Action here because it keeps her in power and it keeps her safe because Trump very recently threatened her. Like, after she made statements calling his team a bunch of extremists, she backpedaled and said, actually, if we're willing to work with the US Because Trump said, I'll do something worse to you than I did to him. Like, we don't know if they actually ironed out a set of responsibilities and obligations in back channels or if we just remove Bajuro and are like, all right, well, if we have to kill her, we'll kill her, too. Like, it's unclear what actually happened there.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So we should also mention. So this is being recorded on the night of Monday, January 5th.

[A]

You're right.

[D]

Every kind of six or eight hours, new conflicting information from the Trump administration about what their plan is comes out.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Which. Which leads me to suspect they don't have a plan at all because it keeps changing every couple of hours. So I don't know. But. But in case by the time this comes out, there is some kind of public deal that's been worked out. That's what's going on. This is all changing extremely rapidly.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. And you know what else changes rapidly? The economics of podcasting.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Here's some of that.

[C]

This White Claw is fucking foul.

[A]

And we're back. James is drinking a bad White Claw, which is really, I think, the information our audience is most interested in. You know, Invasions of Venezuela come and go. The US kidnaps people all the time. But James, drinking a bad white claw. Let's actually really check it. James, what's the flavor you're experiencing right now?

[C]

Let me get an update to that. Robert, that is green apple.

[A]

Green apple.

[D]

Oh, boy.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. It's foul. I wouldn't recommend it. You're in the market.

[A]

Yeah, that sounds awful.

[C]

Don't do it to yourself.

[A]

Yeah, it's really the having Delta Force kidnap you from your house of beverages.

[C]

Beverages, yeah, absolutely. That's how they market, actually. It's weird. That's on the can.

[A]

Right, Right.

[C]

They must have got advanced warning like the Times and the. Yeah.

[A]

What did they know and when did they know it?

[C]

We'll never know.

[A]

So let's keep talking about Venezuela.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

We should talk about who Rodriguez is.

[C]

Yeah. So Delta Rodriguez was vice president and now she is president or will be sworn in as president. I believe he may have already been sworn in by the time you hear this.

[A]

She was sworn in, I think like a couple hours ago, per the last article I read.

[C]

So her father was a Marxist guerrilla. Her father kidnapped an American businessman, was arrested and then murdered. Like tortured to death.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

As part of the quote, unquote investigation into that.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Her and her brother are kind of like a power block in Venezuelan politics. She has really become more relevant, I guess, nationally since Maduro. She did do some stuff with Chavez early on, but like clashed with him personally and I guess allegedly. I mean, I wasn't there. But Chavez didn't like that. She wasn't deferential to him and at one point sent her home from. I think they were in Russia and he sent her home from a sort of mission that they were doing, their diplomatic mission. Since then, she has assumed a number of roles in Venezuelan government from. Since 2013. Right. When Maduro came to power to include overseeing intelligence at some time. And she has now become obviously president. Right. She has previously worked with like the Venezuelan. I guess the analogy would be like Chamber of Commerce, which had previously been seen by like Chavez Moore as a cabour entity that is the enemy.

[D]

Right.

[C]

She has shown willingness to work with business. So I do wonder if that factors into the US Analysis. Like if she's willing to work with the. What looks like the oil companies that they want her to work with, then. Then they can overlook a whole lot of other stuff.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Which.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Has historically been how the US has approached places with oil. But yeah, in terms of this, I think that's probably the sort of tldr on her career. I think it is possible that she's willing to do some kind of chovismo, like, you know, whatever we're going to call this, and have us extractive capitalism exists so long as the regime continues to exist. But the way that would work is still something that, like, I can't really get my head around for a regime which has made so much of its rhetorical legitimacy for so long, attacking the United States.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's kind of. I mean, that seems to be the. The quandary Dulcie finds herself in is she both has to refer to what's happened accurately as kidnapping and the actions of an illegitimate and deeply corrupt regime. And also, she can't act that way if what we all think is accurate. She's basically acting as a negotiated puppet of the United States. She can only go so far. And I feel like she's trapped in kind of a doomed situation, which may be part of what our administration intends is for her to be fundamentally doomed and fail and get couped herself or, you know, we can replace her when there's protests against illegitimacy. Like, I don't know what exactly the game is here, but I think that may be something that was baked into the equation that, like, this is not a functional situation for her, and when she gets forced out, that's something we can take advantage of.

[C]

Yeah, it's a reasonable analysis, I think. I mean, we. Yeah, we should talk about the oil. Right. Because Trump has been talking about the oil.

[A]

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[C]

I know you said you wanted to mention stuff about, like, it's not what it might seem on the face of it.

[A]

Right.

[C]

There aren't giant lakes of oil in Venezuela you can just slurp up and sell.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So, okay. It's sort of difficult to explain this all without really getting into the weeds of, like, how oil production works. But there's different, like, qualities of crude oil, and most of the Venezuelan stuff is extremely sour. It's really, really shit. It's extremely low quality. And when you have oil that's this shit, you can't, like, refine it into being good. Right. Like, that. That's just, like, not how the process works. It just sucks, and so it burns badly. But there is a lot of it. And this also gets back to, okay, so the way that Trump thinks this is going to work is that a bunch of oil companies are going to come in, they're going to do a bunch of, like, infrastructure development or whatever. They're going to sell the oil and they're going to make $100 billion. That's not really how this works, as it is something that James is pointed out too, but like the actual value here is less from actually extracting the oil and more from, A, having all of these oil deposits on your balance sheet, and B, there's a lot of value in just having power over it.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So, okay, so oil prices are kind of. They're set by a few things. Like the price of oil is set by the bottom of the market. Right. Part of your profit comes from how much more cheaply can you refine and extract your oil relative to whoever's doing it the most expensively, like whoever's doing the shittiest job of it. But then a lot of it also is just power. That's what OPEC is. Right. And OPEC's ability to raise oil prices has to do with its ability to have all of their member states controlling their oil and controlling the sort of flow and distribution of it. Redistributing who is in power in OPEC is actually a massive deal. Even if the actual oil here isn't very good, the power over the oil is extremely important.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So this doesn't work in the way that Trump wants it to work, which is like, you know, you take the oil wells and you pump the oil out of the ground and suddenly you have money, but comma, it is good for the oil companies that would take over the oil.

[C]

Yeah. He consistently confuses stock price for like the economy slash business success slash other things. Right. Yeah.

[D]

I guess one way to think about it is that like, taking control of this oil, you're not really making the money off of this oil. You're making the money off of the impact controlling this oil has on the rest of the oil you produce.

[C]

Yeah. Maybe if you're someone who sees international relations in terms of great power competition, you're trying to put things in the Russia China bucket or the America bucket.

[A]

Yeah. And someone who sees trade is this like zero sum game where one person wins and another person loses.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

You know, as Trump does.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

And also it is worth mentioning that like, a lot of this oil goes to Cuba.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Which is really, really important for the Cuban economy, which sort of can't function without the stock of Venezuelan oil. Like, getting access to Venezuelan oil is one of the things that originally pulled Cuba out of the just hideous economic crisis they were in in the 90s after the Soviet Union collapsed.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's why 32 seems like a majority or at least half of the security forces who died fighting the US in this kidnapping attempt were Cuban. Because access to Venezuelan oil is an existential issue for the Cuban government. And it's also why Trump stated, unfortunately, probably accurately, that they're not looking at regime change in Cuba because they think that the regime is going to collapse on its own, which it might like. This is an existential problem for the Cuban regime for people who aren't aware.

[C]

I spent a good amount of time in Caracas when I was much younger, during my undergraduate years at university. And I remember the only medical professionals I ever saw because people had left right after Chavismo. The only medical professionals I ever saw were Cuban. And to be clear, Cuban doctors are.

[A]

All over the world.

[C]

One of Cuba's biggest exports is doctors. But, like, it was very clear at that time that the two states were intermeshed. Venezuela needs things that Cuba has, like those special military advisors and those doctors, and Cuba needs things in Venezuela to have that oil.

[D]

Yeah. And breaking that, the way people normally see oil is oil is just like liquid cash. And that's not true. It matters. The actual materiality of the oil and how it works in the extraction process and what kind of oil it is matters a lot. And this is a scenario where where the oil is going and who has control over it matters more than who's able to sell it, which is very weird, but is how this works. And Trump doesn't understand any of this. Maybe some of the people around him understand this, but Trump really just is in pure empire brain. They stole our stuff. Which I assume someone who, like, wanted this told him, oh, yeah, they stole a bunch of American oil and land and now he's in just full empire mode.

[C]

Yeah. Seem like someone has told him at some point they stole our stuff right now.

[A]

Well, yeah. And this is after the revolution. A bunch of what was like the property of U.S. and foreign oil companies was nationalized, Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Because these companies had made deals with the corrupt previous regime and it was not really benefiting Venezuelans. Now, obviously that oil money has gone on to benefit the current corrupt regime and still not benefited Venezuelans much. But there was a period of time under Chavez in which, like, there were actual social benefits and a powerful state was providing people with things, which is not to say it didn't have its flaws, but, like, there was a period of time in which there was a benefit to the average Venezuelan from the fact that their country was so oil rich. And nothing about the current situation is going to change positively for the average Venezuelan. The profits are going to go from being siphoned from one group to another, but neither of those groups are regular Venezuelans.

[C]

Yeah, I think sometimes I'll hear this. I have conservatively interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of Venezuelan people in the last three or four years at the border, in the Darien Gap, in the US Remotely, via telephone, et cetera. And sometimes you'll hear that Chavez was trying to do something good and it went bad. Bad. Or that, like, it was okay for a bit on the Javas, and then the. The corruption got out of control, or even it was okay until my daughter took power and then it was bad. Doesn't matter. Right. It's bad now. But, like, the things that. The poverty I hear about from Venezuelan people is grinding and it is so upsetting. Like, I have a great fondness for Venezuelan people. I've made a whole podcast thing about this. And. But the, the difficulty they encounter in every aspect of their lives because of sanctions, because of corruption, because of hyperinflation, because of the low oil price. Like, a lot of things. Right. Their lives are miserable, and this isn't going to change that. They're scared. Right. When I speak to people in Venezuela or people with family in Venezuela this week since this happened, what are they doing? They are not, contrary to what an AI video might have made you believe, out in the streets celebrating.

[A]

No.

[C]

They're trying to get enough food to make it through the next couple of weeks in case they have to hunker down in their homes.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And it is hard to get enough food at the best of times for.

[A]

These people, case they're bombed, in case the roads are bombed, in case they're occupied. Like. Like they're. They're making preparations for being in a situation like Gossens have been in for much of the last several years. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's not an unreasonable. Like, who knows what will happen. I hope it's not that, but that's not an unreasonable thing to prepare for.

[C]

No, it's not. Our friends, when Myanmar, and Robert and I have interviewed people in Myanmar, that's what they said they did after the coup as well, because they didn't know what was going to happen and they figured they needed to be able to sit somewhere safe and stay there. And so, yeah, this is not a liberation, like a sort of Jared Polis of all people, being like, oh, yeah, liberation. Using the word liberation generally. Simon Bolivar, who's like the sort of founding hero of Venezuela, is referred to as the liberator. So using that phrase about the extrajudicial kidnapping of the head of state.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You don't understand the resonance of that word in Spanish. That's fine, you don't speak Spanish, don't fucking use it. But if you're going to use it, especially in this context, it is crass in the extreme to see that for the American politician.

[D]

So the other I think, aspect of this is that if you look at this on a historical scale, the reason Bolivar succeeded was that the Haitian Republic gave a whole bunch of people a whole bunch of weapons to go liberate Latin America from the Spanish empire. And then, you know, if you look at what, like, what is the US's relation to the closest thing I've been able to. So I've been like racking my brain trying to find anything in history that looks like this, that the US has done. And we've done a lot of bad things, but the closest thing I can find to just we sent the army in to kidnap a guy and deposed him was what we did to Aristide, who was the former leftist president. Now former leftist president of Haiti, who we did in fact send in special forces with Canada to just sort of force onto a plane at gunpoint and remove from power. Yeah, but also that situation was a little different in that at that point most of the country of Haiti was under the control of a bunch of like death squad rebel groups, which was the US's justification. And this is just, we just ran into a country and took them. But I don't know, the historical resonances of that are bleak.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And Jesus Christ, don't call it the liberation. Good Lord.

[C]

Talking of liberation.

[A]

Yeah. Let's liberate our audience from having money that they can spend on these products.

[E]

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[A]

All right, we're back. I guess there's a couple of things I wanted to talk about. One of them is I'm seeing a lot of people respond to this by pointing out folks like Matt Walsh or other guys on the right who made Statements about Trump being a candidate for peace and all these military interventions. We're getting into being bad and are now celebrating what we're doing and openly celebrating colonialism as a good thing. And I'm seeing a lot of folks trying to dunk on these people for being inconsistent. And I can't imagine a bigger waste of your time. None of these people, you have to get it out from the habit of thinking that truth matters. All that matters to these people is power, and they have it and they have the guns. And you pointing out that they lied to get there and that they're not honest, they don't care, they're rich and they're getting richer and they're powerful and they're getting more power. None of this is about principles. It's about winning. And you just have to understand that if you want to have any hope of beating them, because pretending that they're playing any other game than the one that they're playing is really dangerous. I don't think there's any profit in debating these people directly or confronting them directly about the inconsistencies of their belief system. I do think it's deeply profitable to talk about the fact that they lied and are liars and are dragging us into another war to regular Americans. And the evidence suggests that this is incredibly unpopular in a way that the Iraq war wasn't. People talk a lot about how massive the anti war protests were and how much anti war sentiment there was, but a majority of Americans were broadly supportive of what the Bush administration did in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time that they started doing it. Right. That doesn't mean that the protests weren't real. It doesn't mean that it's not significant that those massive protests happened. But most Americans were broadly supportive of what the government was doing. That's not the case with what we're seeing in regards to public opinion over what's happening in Venezuela. There was a two day Reuters Ipsos survey that concluded Monday, basically immediately after it was announced, what, you know, we did in Venezuela. And 72% of Americans who responded said they are concerned that the US might get too involved in Venezuela. Only 25% said that they don't share that concern. 90% of Democrats shared that concern, as well as 74% of independents, even 54% of Republicans. Only 45% of Republicans said that they were not worried about the US getting overly involved, and only 19% of other voters. So this is really unpopular, historically unpopular for a military intervention. And the entire bet that the Trump administration is making. Is that because they're not doing what Bush did in Iraq, they're not knocking out the whole government and de baathifying it. They're just kicking out one guy and basically keeping his regime intact. They're just making that regime swear fealty to the United States. And their bet is that this will work. Right? That the Venezuelan regime will continue to keep the country functioning as well as it was functioning before, which is not great, but was not total collapse, and they can start extracting value. And honestly, I feel like that is. That's a major motivation for a lot of people supporting Trump, for a lot of people in his administration who have financial interests, for, obviously, the oil and gas companies, he's trying to get on board. But I don't think money is even Trump's prior. And this is maybe an unpopular opinion. I think the primary reason Trump is doing this is that he wants, number one, to show everybody, look, I did what Bush did, but it worked. I did it better. And number two, he wants to show everybody, look, I did what Obama did and took out a big bad guy. Right? That's where they're trying to craft. Maduro is this major enemy of the United States, this architect of the opiate crisis, this guy who's worse than bin Laden in a lot of ways, because Trump is still jealous of the fact that Obama got to take out bin Laden, right, as he sees it, and he wants his own version of that. Trump is doing this, I think, primarily for vanity purposes. Right. I know that seems shallow and silly, but I really think that's most of what's going on for him. And I think if the end result of this is that things in Venezuela more or less continue the way they were before, he will call it a win, and a lot of people might believe him. And I don't know, it doesn't even necessarily matter if any money actually comes into the United States over this, they'll just lie about it. You know, some individual Americans will make money, and I think that'll probably be enough for Trump to feel like he got a win and for his PR apparatus to notch this up as a win. And I think that's all he really cares about. And so I do think it's worth really hitting how criminal this is and how harmful this is. But ultimately, what's going to determine whether or not Americans see this as a calamity or not is how well this all works out in the long run. And that's a really tough thing to even think about, because you don't want it to work well because it will embolden Trump to keep doing this and the global harm will be greater. On the other hand, I don't want civil life in Venezuela to collapse. Right. So it's tough.

[C]

Right? Yeah. I don't want people to suffer anymore. And just around the world, too. When, like, I heard Min Aung Hwang called a meeting in Myanmar when he heard about this because he was worried, like, the paranoia of dictators is about to go through the ceiling and that's going to result in people being tortured and killed.

[A]

It's going to result in people tortured and it's going to result in more countries seeking to get nuclear weapons because they will accurately recognize that that is the only security anyone has. It is understated how much more dangerous. What Bush did in Iraq made the world because of how it's made different leaders around the world think about the possession of nuclear weapons. Right. Iran is fundamentally right in its calculus that getting a nuke will make the regime safer because it might be the only thing that can protect them. Now, things in Iran are not looking very stable right now either. Again, this is another situation where just decades of protest and the weakness of the regime might wind up working in Trump's favor because things are looking pretty gnarly for the Iranian regime right now. And maybe Trump. Trump has made some statements since kidnapping Maduro about going into Iran. They very well may do that, but they also may not need to.

[C]

Yeah. There's some Osints suggesting that they at least have preparations in place for doing something in Iran.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Which may be all they need to do. Right. To obviously move things to point towards Iran.

[A]

Right.

[C]

That is an action in itself.

[A]

Yeah. That really. I mean, there's a lot that worries me there, but I think they're going to keep fucking around like this as long as they feel like it will benefit them. And right now this feels like a win to them.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is going to function like a drug. They're going to start looking for another hit as soon as the high from this fades.

[C]

Yeah. And as soon as they need a domestic distraction.

[A]

Right. A lot of this stuff and the evidence we have so far suggests that people fucking hate this and will probably keep hating this, but it depends on whether or not this all fades out. And if the news is coverage is actually maybe it worked. Right. Which will probably be based on really dogshit journalism.

[C]

The Washington Post did a preferential op ed already, I think.

[A]

Oh, good. Yeah. I'm glad they're helping out Dem. Our Democracy die in darkness. They're going to keep chasing this high and it will wind up collapsing on them eventually. The question is how many countries will have to pay the price beforehand and how much worse will things get in the United States, obviously.

[C]

Yeah. And what will the price be? Right when they lose an entire SF team or a bunch of cash prize?

[A]

When Delta Force gets wiped out, when we have a bunch of helicopters down, a bunch of Americans capturing. What is Trump do then? Do we get a panicked. This is kind of where I see, like, the potential, the scary potential for something like a nuclear January six, where, like, do we get a panic response that leads to a horrific loss of life? Because, yeah, Trump is. Sees himself as being embarrassed. Oh, my God, they killed a whole team. Like, I have no option but to kill a shitload of people to distract from the fact that I failed here. Right. Yeah, that. That does really concern me, too.

[C]

Yeah. If that happens, you know the response, even if it's not nuclear. Right. Even it's just conventional weapons on cities.

[A]

Right, right, right. And, yeah, I shouldn't even bring up the nuclear thing, but, like, it does concern me as a nuclear football.

[C]

Right. That he's the one who gets the choice.

[A]

Right. This is going to just get more. This is going to become integral to his sense of, like, self worth. That, like, no, I did this and.

[C]

It worked in the concrete era.

[A]

And if all his guys get wiped out, failing at one of these things, that's not going to go well for anybody.

[C]

No, it's not.

[A]

We'll have a fun couple of hours on Twitter, but it's going to be really bad, really fast.

[C]

Yeah. I'm going to talk very briefly about a couple of implications domestically.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

The main one is that the DOJ has already filed for an extension in the case which Judge Boasberg is overseeing regarding the Alien Enemies Act.

[A]

Right. Yeah.

[C]

What this will mean for Venezuelan nationals in the United States. It is unlikely that this will mean something good. Right. It is unlikely that they will have a country that they would want to return to. And it is possible that it's going to be used to force them to return to it anyway. To a country which is extremely paranoid about US Spies because someone in Maduro's very close entourage leaked the entire plan that Trump. Many presidents would not have said this to the press, but Trump did. Right. That they had the entire plan for his house and that they built a replica of it to include. They knew he had a safe room. They knew it was steel and they knew they could cut into it. With cutting torches. Someone leaked that information. That means that people coming back from the United States are going to be under scrutiny. Right. And that is not good for them. And I don't see this regime stopping sending people back because they're not an alien enemy anymore. I don't see that. And I can see the regime, if it does manage to install Rodriguez as something of a puppet, leaning on Rodriguez to accept people removed from the United States. Right. So that is extremely concerning. And it's not being reported on. Right. Because migrants are not front and center where a lot of American newspapers think about things. But I think for those people this is petrifying.

[A]

Right.

[C]

The country that you came to to be safe is now bombing the country that you came from. It's also trying to kick you out. Like you are stuck in the middle of this game and all you wanted was a place to raise your kids where they might have a fair crack at a decent life. It's. It's heartbreaking for those people. Yeah.

[A]

And I think that's probably all we've got to say for now. I mean, I guess I'll address briefly because people have asked, do you see this as like an Anschluss, you know, the annexation of Austria or of Czechoslovakia of that kind of moment, or is this more like the invasion of Poland? And I guess my answer is it's its own thing. It doesn't directly graph on any of those other than that where it does very directly graph. And what is relevant in comparing it to is what happened to the Nazis and to Hitler personally. As they started seeing success taking things militarily, they made some big gambles that were not known. One thing that gets under discussed when talking about what Germany was doing in that period of time is how many military leaders within Germany thought that the annexation of particularly Czechoslovakia was a horrible idea because in a head to head fight, it was not clear whatsoever that the Wehrmacht could defeat the Czech military and their defenses. That was very much in debate. And a lot of Hitler's advisors thought it was a terrible idea because they didn't think they could win. And it wound up not really being a factor because everyone caved and nobody wanted to fight. Which is the problem that we're having right now. Right. Is that nobody actually wants to confront these people. The Democrats are hemming and a hawing about whether or not they'll try for impeachment again or, you know, there's this fear of actually directly confronting these people that is part of what's emboldening them to keep trying Shit like this, and what's very relevant to the Nazis is that if this works, and we're talking if this works not in the long run, cuz they're not gonna wait 20 years to see if this was a good idea. They're gonna wait a couple of weeks, you know, maybe a few months. And if it seems like, hey, it worked, the Venezuela's not falling apart, you know, we've got, we actually got what we think is good PR out of it, they'll try again and they'll try again. And the Nazis tried again and again until they started making checks that their asses couldn't cash. Right. And that is the thing that's relevant because that is something all fascists have in common, is this confidence that gets them very far in a lot of ways. Because if they're willing to gamble and the other people aren't willing to confront them or fight or gamble themselves, then they'll win by default. But when that stops and people start confronting them, the shortcomings of the state that they've built and of the militaries that they built become increasingly evident. And I do think that's the road that we're on. I don't know where it'll end. I don't know if, you know, Trump could die of a heart attack tomorrow and maybe whoever takes over will be more cautious. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that we've started down that road.

[C]

Yeah. And that's not a good thing.

[A]

Nope.

[C]

I guess we should just say, because people will be incredibly annoying on the Internet. Like saying that it is illegal and wrong to kidnap Maduro does not mean that we think Maduro is great. Just in the same way that saying the Iraq war is wrong doesn't mean we love Saddam Hussein. Like, no two things can be bad. People who tell you otherwise, you grow up.

[A]

Like I said at the start, I don't think you have to. I don't think anyone owes you. And if someone is saying like, hey, you have to answer for these bad things Maduro did when critiquing the US for this, I think that's bullshit and I think you should tell him to fuck off. Right.

[C]

It's not the issue at stake here.

[A]

Maduro's personal qualities are irrelevant, as is always the case with this. What we're doing is illegal and bad.

[D]

It could happen.

[F]

Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from coolzone Media, visit our website website coolzonemedia. Com or check us out on the IHEARTRADIO app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[A]

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