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- [00:01]
A
Trump plunges the United States into a new regime change war in Venezuela to start off the new year. And I interview Pod Save the World co host Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes about the move. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to no Lie. Just days into 2026, Trump has engaged the United States into a brand new regime change war, exactly the kind of war that the quote, unquote, America first president promised his supporters he wouldn't do when he was running for office to get a second term. And certainly not that he would do a George W. Bush redux by launching a war express expressly for oil. And yet this was Trump in the immediate aftermath of his attack.
- [00:37]
B
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 company 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.
- [01:34]
A
In other words, it's for oil. That's it. Trump supporters thought they were getting an isolationist president. Instead, they got 2002 era neocon policies. Now, most of the commentary on the left has been around the fact that this was an illegal incursion into Venezuela. And to be clear, that's correct. The strike was unauthorized. It requires congressional approval. And that's a point, by the way, that Trump's own chief of staff, Susie herself conceded in the Vanity Fair piece just about a month ago. But from a political perspective, I actually think that we risk making a mistake if we make this about process. And this is what Democrats do. We think that we're in office to defend process as if all we want here is for Trump to have gotten like the requisite stamp of approval. And then after that, engaging in a foreign war to pilfer their oil for US Companies would have been totally fine. It is so like the Democrats to be, to be like, well, what did the parliamentarians say? Well, rule 10.2, subsection F says this. No, the argument here is not merely that we didn't follow proper process, that we didn't get requisite approvals from Congress. The argument here is that Trump vowed to focus on Americans. He vowed to make life more affordable. He vowed to finally pay attention to forgotten people. And, and yet here we are, not even a full year into his second term and he's presiding over a regime change war in Venezuela. Does that help anyone's rent, their mortgage, their groceries, their eggs? Does it lower the cost of clothing or cars or toys or electronics? No. But you know who it does help? Here's a hint. Last year, Trump told oil executives during the campaign that if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign, that they would get a quote, unquote deal because of the taxation and regulation that they would avoid, thanks to him. Well, here we are, a year later, and those oil executives were gifted the country of Venezuela, otherwise known as the quo, to his quid pro quo. So this is a gift to his wealthy pals who helped him win the election. That's who's being helped here. That's who's always being helped. It's never the little guy who wins out. In these instances, Trump's not looking to help regular people. If he was, he wouldn't have engaged in a trade war that sent the cost of everything surging. He wouldn't have gutted food assistance to the tune of $186 billion, wouldn't have stripped Medicaid away from 17 million Americans, wouldn't have sent ACA premiums for 24 million Americans, 2, 3, 4, 5 times higher this year. But he did all of that because it was never about delivering for working class Americans. It was about delivering for his donors, his friends, his family. And this is a continuation of that exact policy. Trump promised to be like a different kind of president. But in reality, he is all of the things Americans hate about politicians, standard politicians rolled up to one. He is corrupt, self serving, duplicitous and shameless, a con man to the highest order. So as the situation evolves and plays itself out, we're gonna hear a lot of reasons for why this is bad. And frankly, we're gonna hear a lot of reasons why this is good. But aside from the minutia of the day to day, it's already clear from a 30,000 foot view that Donald Trump is breaking his promise to usher in an America first agenda. This is not what America first looks like. This is what a kleptocracy looks like. This is what imperialism looks like. This is what Bush era neocon policies look like. And all the while, it's Americans who are left holding the bag. Americans who believed Trump only to watch him fail to lower prices, fail to tackle inflation, fail to protect earned benefits, fail to make IVF free, fail to end the Russia Ukraine war, fail to usher in a manufacturing renaissance, fail to preside over a job boom, and now fail to adhere to the America first agenda that he himself promised when he said no new wars on the campaign trail. Trump is clearly a salesman, but the product he sells best is the con of giving a shit about regular Americans. Next up are my interviews with Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vitor. No lie is brought to you by BetterHelp. I know I'm not alone in saying that the last year has been really tough, and with the New year comes a lot of introspection about what we'd like to see done differently. But I'm here to say that the New year doesn't require a new you, maybe just a less burdened you. And therapy can help more easily identify what weighs you down and holds you back by offering an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships, your motivations and your emotions. I am a big advocate for therapy and I'm a big advocate for BetterHelp. Here's why BetterHelp has quality therapists. Their therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. betterHelp's therapists match commitment. They do the initial matching work for you so that you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps you identify your needs and preferences and their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp's client reviews with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, Having served over 5 million people globally and it works with an average rate of 4.9 out of 5 stars for live sessions based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com Nolie that's betterhelp.com Nolie I'm joined now by the Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama and the co host of POD Save the World Ben Rhodes. Ben, thanks for joining me.
- [07:03]
C
Good to see you Brian.
- [07:04]
A
Obviously with the whole situation unfolding right now in Venezuela, just a couple of questions on this. In particular, to what extent do you think that this whole intervention. This is a little bit of a political question. First and foremost, to what extent do you think all of this intervention, Trump going in, kidnapping Nicolas Maduro, bringing him back into the United States, was his effort to distract from this overarching issue that's been dragging his presidency down, which is the Epstein files?
- [07:30]
C
I don't think so. Because actually, if you look at Trump since he was elected, he's pretty consistently foreshadowed these types of military operations. Right. Right after the election, he was talking about taking back the Panama Canal, taking Greenland. The administration's national security strategy kind of talks about returning to Latin America being essentially a sphere of influence, the United States, where we pick and choose leaders. He intervened in Argentina with a $20 billion bailout for Javier Milei, who he likes. He's also buddied up to naive Bekele in El Salvador, sending people down to the gulag there. So, you know, he's clearly tried to pick winners down there. And look, we've been building up this in Venezuela. This took months to plan to assemble all the military resources there, the 15,000 US troops in the Caribbean. So I actually think it makes it worse because I actually think that this is here to stay, this kind of foreign policy where this might not be the last place in which he chooses to use the US Military for regime change purposes with no legal basis to kind of run this hemisphere like his own private empire.
- [08:34]
A
Well, how do you square that? And I asked you as if, you know, but channeling Trump's America first agenda, how is that squared with the fact that this guy ran on a platform of non interventionism, like his whole thing was that this is an escape from the neocons that had led the Republican Party for years and years and years prior to this.
- [08:52]
C
Yeah, no, it's a fascinating question. And look, I mean, we don't know what's in his head. I will say part of what we're learning is that that whole posture of being against forever wars, of being America first, was bogus. I mean, if you look in just the last year, in addition to the usual suspects, Trump has bombed Iran, Nigeria and now Venezuela. Those are three pretty big countries where the United States had never done that before. I think what we're looking at, Brian, what we have to learn from this first year, including the last couple days, is that Trump is motivated above all not by any MAGA ideology. Some people around him are certainly like Steven Miller. He's motivated by power and money. And both of those things intersect here in Venezuela. He gets more power, he gets to be the strongman, he gets to be the guy who's without Any legal basis, like deposing a leader now that a kind of de facto leader of Venezuela, and there's a lot of money involved. He was very clear today that what this was really about, it's not drugs, it was oil. And he talked a lot in his press conference about sending the US Oil companies down there. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves. So he sees money in this, too, for, you know, his cronies. And so this is something that gets him power and money. And if it's inconsistent with maga, if it's inconsistent with ending forever wars, and it's frankly not what the people who voted for him want, and this is a big political opening, I wish it didn't exist, but it does for Democrats. It's, you know, we're going to be spending money rebuilding Venezuela. We spent already probably billions of dollars on the military deployments to support this thing. And so this is running directly counter to what people want, including his own supporters.
- [10:27]
A
I mean, in theory, if he was, and this is all assuming, perhaps naively, that Trump is going to follow the regular course of order, but if he want money to rebuild Venezuela, doesn't that have to be allocated by Congress? And so isn't there some bulwark to his, to his, you know, wanting to do more nation building this time in South America?
- [10:46]
C
Yeah, I mean, there are places, there are ways in which Congress could assert itself if it chose to, but that would require the Republicans to get involved. Because what we've seen, Brian, is it will cost money. Look, he talked in the press conference, for instance, too, about having boots on the ground potentially in Venezuela. Raises the prospect of we might actually literally be looking at U.S. oil companies going down to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields with US Troops as their kind of protection. Now, normally you would need Congress to kick in some money for the kind of costs that would go along with the United States rebuilding Venezuelan oil infrastructure, like you talked about, certainly any troop deployments. But so far, what we've seen them do is take these giant pots of money that exist in places like the Pentagon and just pull out of one pot and put it in this pot in ways that normally would be illegal. Normally, Congress, appropriately, some money, it's meant to be spent on certain things. They've shown time and again that they're willing to ignore that. So the question going forward is, will Congress assert itself? He already basically went to war and removed a leader without seeking any authorization from Congress. This is already an unconstitutional action. The money question, I think, is going to present itself in the weeks ahead.
- [11:51]
A
So on that issue in particular, there have been a lot of Democrats rightfully decrying the illegality and the extrajudicial nature of what we've seen and the fact that Congress wasn't involved. And I think that Republicans are obviously the ones who've come out in support of it. There's this dichotomy here where Democrats, a lot of the elected officials seem to be disparaging the process, like the fact that Trump didn't go in and get approval from Congress, but not necessarily talking about the issue at hand. And so I'm just curious if you've seen that and what your reaction is to that. It's more focused for the left on the fact that not necessarily decrying what happened in Venezuela, but more the fact that it wasn't, you know, through the regular course of order.
- [12:37]
C
Yeah, I hear the same thing. And look, I'm sympathetic. They're in Congress, right? So they feel it. They feel ignored. They feel like their constitutional responsibility was taken away from them. They were not notified even before the operation went forward. That is incredibly unusual. That said, I think you're right. That's a bit of a rabbit hole here. Like the things that are dangerous about this and the things that are wrong about this. You know, number one, Americans don't want us to be doing this anymore. They want their politicians in Washington to be focused on affordability.
- [13:08]
A
Right.
- [13:08]
C
Not on conquering foreign countries or deposing foreign leaders, no matter how odious. And Maduro's not a good guy, I think. Number two, where is this all going, right? What's this going to cost in Venezuela? What happens if there's some kind of further conflict in Venezuela, which is quite likely. Or where else is Trump gonna do this? Are we looking at him going to Panama? Are we looking at him? He threatened Colombia today. Is the Greenland stuff gonna come back on the table? So it's that combination of Trump, he cares about his power and he cares about wealth. He does not care about you. Right. You, the American voter. I mean, that, to me, is the core point here. And you can add, the people like me are concerned about the danger of an autocratic leader turning to war, which we've seen. You know, Vladimir Putin did this in Ukraine. That's never a good situation. But I actually think, you know, there's just that simple point that Trump is not working for you. This is not what anyone elected, the US President to do.
- [14:03]
A
Is, is this a question of, you know, Republicans like Ted Cruz, for example, tried to make this very reductive and brought up this point when he was responding to Zoran Mamdani, who decried, you know, foreign interventionism into South America. He basically said, oh, you know, Zoran is aligning him with a fellow communist dictator, and birds of a communist feather flock together. And so he's basically trying to make it that if you are in any way against what's happening in Venezuela, then you are for the communist dictator. So can I have your reaction to that? Because that's a lot of what we're seeing from the right. If you're not cheering this on, then the de facto position that you have to take by, like, by transitive property is that you supported Maduro and that you want him to continue ruling over Venezuela.
- [14:52]
C
Yeah. And it's no surprise that they're doing this. But look, I mean, two things come to my mind. The first is we've seen this movie before, right? I mean, when for those of us who are old enough to remember the invasion of Iraq, for instance, a lot of the people who are raising questions about is this really a good idea? What the Republicans would just say is, oh, you're supporting Saddam Hussein. Right. And that's just not the case. There are other ways of supporting democratic change or civil society in other countries other than going to war on them. And the US Track record of regime change, wars, on behalf of removing autocratic leaders, it doesn't usually end better than it was at the beginning. I mean, we've got plenty of history to show us that. And so I feel like Democrats can't get defensive about this, because the other thing I'd also say is, look, I know Venezuelans who hate Maduro, who have friends and loved ones who are in prison down there, Right. And some of them are happy today. But the tragedy to me is that Trump doesn't give a shit about them.
- [15:46]
B
Right?
- [15:47]
C
Like, he's already dealing with the remnants of the Maduro regime. Like, he's already said he's not going to try to support putting the opposition in power now that, you know, not that that would be easy either, but he's making no pretense that this is about democracy or a better life for Venezuelans.
- [16:03]
A
It seems to me like the only, like, his only priority here was that Maduro was too much of a bulwark against him being able to consolidate natural resources. But then the next guy in line, who I think is his female vice president, if I'm not mistaken, she won't be as much of a barrier. And so, okay, she can stay because it was never to your point. About human rights or anything like that. It was just about who's gonna give him the clearest Runway into consolidating natural resources, which, of course, he and his cronies derive some financial benefit from.
- [16:34]
C
I think that's right. And I even take it a step further, Brian, and say, you know, maybe Maduro, because Maduro is widely disliked. He's widely seen as having thrown the last election. Maybe he was the convenient pretext for. Well, everybody can agree this is a bad guy, so this will be my way in to kind of get him out of there. But what I really want to do is get my claws on the oil. And again, if you think I sound like a lefty conspiracy theorist, that's what Trump said to me, right? Like, he was like, we need the oil back. It's our oil. They stole it. You know, and we'll deal with the vice president. And then he basically said, and if she doesn't deal with us in the way that we like, we'll cut after her too. Right. It's just about, you know, it's like we're going back to the early 1900s here. It's about finding any form of a vassal state government that will just kind of defer to Donald Trump and his administration and US Oil companies in terms of what they're doing. So it puts the lie to that argument from these Republicans that, oh, you know, you support Maduro. No, what we don't support is an illegal war that has nothing to do with democracy, that could lead to worse outcomes. We don't know how things are going to play out in Venezuela, but also can lead to a world. Brian, I think this is really important where there's just no rules anymore. What lesson does Vladimir Putin take from this about what he's allowed to do? What lesson does China take from this about what they might be allowed to do in Taiwan? And so there's just all these traps ahead. And so I think we can't. I hate it when there's so much throat clearing defensively about, well, it's good Maduro's gone, because you either think this is a good idea or a bad idea. And I think this is clearly a bad idea.
- [18:08]
A
I mean, does it seem like this could be the gateway into a second round of imperialism by. By big, you know, autocratic countries, of which I would include the United States under. Under Trump's administration?
- [18:19]
C
It feels like we're already there, because it feels to me like Trump views the Western Hemisphere like Putin views the former Soviet Union. Yeah. Like China views, you know its neighborhood, the South China Sea in Taiwan. And he's comfortable in a world in which these big powers basically do whatever they want. And there's no more respect for sovereignty. There's no more respect for any rules. And, you know, unfortunately, that that usually ends poorly. You know, like, the reason we made all the rules against big countries doing that is that we went through two world wars. Now, I'm not suggesting we're, like, on the precipice of that yet, but it just. You, this is a dynamic that you don't want to play with here. And we'll see how they. If they can land the plane in Venezuela. There are a lot of questions about whether the remnants of the Maduro government will go along with this, what the Chinese and Russians will do in Venezuela, because they have a lot of people there themselves or a lot of influence there. You know, whether there'll be more violence, what the US Troops will be on the ground. But in any case, you just don't want to open up this Pandora's box of kind of returning to imperial, ruleless geopolitics.
- [19:27]
A
What about Maria Karina Machado, her decision to kind of heap praise onto Trump, to dedicate her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump? And the moment that there's an opening where she could rise up and presumably become the next leader of Venezuela as the opposition leader, Trump basically just swats her down and says that she doesn't command enough respect. She's not strong enough to be the leader. And so that's the end of that.
- [19:56]
C
I thought this was extraordinary. And you have to remember that Maria Machado, she was not allowed to run in the last election, but the candidate that she supported, by all independent monitor accounts, won the last election. So the point is, she does have support in Venezuela, but I think what she's learned is the same thing that everybody else has learned at some point who thought that the way to get Trump to do what you want was to suck up to him. She said all the right things about how wonderful Trump was, about how she wanted this to happen, but frankly, she's not relevant to Trump's plans down there. The plans are like, make a big show, get rid of Maduro, and get our hands on the oil. And when he says she's not someone who's supported or respected in the country, I think what he means is he's not supported or respected by kind of the power brokers, by the military. Of course she's not supported by the military. She's been in a political opposition to the kind of military regime that Maduro was leading. But he tossed her overboard right away. He didn't even make a pretense. I mean, I thought he would at least say, of course she's gonna be a part of Venezuela's future and we'll be talking to her. He just kind of dismissed her out of hand. So, again, spare me the rhetoric about caring about democracy and human rights. That's not what this is about.
- [21:05]
A
Pete Hegseth's comments. Right after Trump had announced what he'd done, they held this press conference. And he did this. The usual, like, chest beating, macho man, where he said that Maduro effed around and he found out just. I'm curious what your takeaway was from having watched Pete Hegseth do the usual bro routine.
- [21:29]
C
You know, on the one hand, you can roll your eyes and think about how juvenile this is. And, you know, you had Trump saying that Petro, the leader of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, should watch his ass. You had Rubio echoing the kind of. He, you know, he didn't say fuck around and find out, but he said mess around and find out or something. But it's like, okay, on the one hand, it's kind of juvenile. Like, we've never really had presidents and national security leaders talk like this. But then you think about it and you're like, well, it's actually more than that. It's scary because Pete Hexseth runs the United States military. You know, Donald Trump is the President, United States. Like, Marco Rubio is, by my account, the Secretary of State, the national security advisor, and the archivist. But put the archivist bit aside. Yeah, but I mean, at what point is the thing that we. This is always something interesting. With Brian. With Brian, with Trump, and because you've been covering this, at what point is he actually doing the thing that we were afraid he might do? Yeah, like if, if, if. Because he normalizes this stuff along the way. We're all like a frog bowling in water. If I had told you a year ago, hey, Trump's gonna, like, invade Venezuela, remove the leader and say he's running the country, you'd be like, holy shit, this is the worst case scenario.
- [22:41]
A
Right?
- [22:41]
C
This is like fascism come to America. But because there was this kind of ramp up to it, and they were blowing up the boats and he was making threats, now it just kind of feels like this thing that happened. And I think we have to start to take these guys seriously when they're threatening people and fuck around and find out like, that this is not just Juvenile. It's pretty frightening, actually.
- [23:00]
A
And so I guess the question here is, and this is like, you know, the million dollar question is if you have a lawless executive branch, if you have an impotent legislative branch and a judicial branch that's contracted all of its autonomy over, you know, to the administration and a White House that's just acting completely illegally, and you have the rest of the world that obviously isn't gonna, you know, stand up to. Unless they're willing to engage in war. I guess what happens at that point when, I mean, it doesn't feel like it's the same. I mean, this is a little bit going back to what we were talking about originally, but it doesn't feel like we're in the same world order than we were yesterday or 11 months ago.
- [23:42]
C
That's how it feels to me. It feels like we're in dangerous new terrain. And the question is, how far does this go? Right. Does it go to other countries? Like, what does it mean to run Venezuela? What do the Russians and Chinese do? And I think to try to be constructive about this, but Congress has chosen not to assert itself to date. It's going to take political pushback. It's gonna take a change in the political dynamic. And what I mean by that is actually, if you look at the fractures in MAGA on these issues, like, that's an opening, because if Trump starts to lose support broadly among the American people and there's a mobilized and activated kind of Democratic base, their independents are unhappy with what he's doing. But then there also start to be some cracks inside of that Republican coalition because their voters are like, you know, even if today all the Republican congressmen are putting out statements about how tough Trump is, you know, their constituents are like, what are we doing down in Venezuela?
- [24:36]
A
Right.
- [24:37]
C
Why is this guy always hanging out with, like, foreigners and billionaires? I actually think there needs to be a decisive political turn against Trump so that then you can try to get the pushback from Congress. Then it starts to feel like he has less room for maneuver because right now, like, you know, he's. I mean, to go all the way back to your distraction point, you know, he may. I don't think this is a distraction. Cause I think this is something that they wanted to do. But he's once again trying to drive the conversation, drive events and make everybody react to him. And there needs to just be more pushback when he goes to do that.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah. And frankly, in terms of him engineering a situation where, you know, he's basically, I don't know how else you would broadcast to the American people that you are not interested in the very thing that they put you into office to do. I mean, from, from stripping away healthcare, from gutting food assistance, from making everything more expensive by engaging in these trade wars that everybody said was gonna raise the prices of everything. Then to encrusting the Oval Office in gold, buying Gulfstream jets, you know, hosting a let them eat cake party at Mar a Lago. I mean, every single day we see something that again, is scientifically engineered to broadcast to Americans that he does not give a flying fuck about you. And engaging in a regime change war in Venezuela is just the cherry on the cake.
- [25:57]
C
Yes. He can't even pretend to be interested in issues of affordability. Like, he likes this part of the job. Yeah, he likes where he has the power. He likes hanging out with rich oligarchs, he likes having foreign leaders be scared of him. But look, none of this is what anybody here is interested in the United States. And that's his vulnerability. And that's why to your earlier point, the argument should not just be about, oh, he didn't get Congress's authorization. The argument should be like, what the hell is he doing? He doesn't care about you, he cares about the oil companies. Like he just launched this war and said it was for the American oil companies. Right. I mean, to your point, that was designed in a lab to be a message that Democrats should be able to prosecute a case against Trump on.
- [26:42]
A
Right. Well, look, you know, as everybody who watches my show knows, I generally stay with domestic politics and so highly recommend for everybody who's watching right now, if you're looking for excellent, excellent, excellent coverage of international affairs, POD Save the World is my go to source with Ben and Tommy. So I'm gonna put the link to POD Save the World right here on the screen. And also in the post description of this video, if you're not yet subscribed, please go ahead and subscribe. Ben, thanks so much for the time.
- [27:08]
C
Thanks. Great talking to you. Appreciate what you're doing out there too.
- [27:14]
A
I'm joined now by co hosts of Pod Save America and POD Save the World, Tommy Vitor. Tommy, thanks for joining me.
- [27:18]
D
Brad, good to see you.
- [27:20]
A
Obviously, some major news as it relates to Venezuela. First and foremost, I have to ask, why is this happening? Why is Donald Trump engaging in operation where he's taken the President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela into custody, into the U.S.
- [27:33]
D
Well, I mean, we've heard like three different explanations. I mean, for a while they were saying that these airstrikes off the coast of Venezuela were about drugs, particularly fentanyl. But everyone who studies this issue knows that fentanyl doesn't get traffic through Venezuela, so that can't be the case. Now, it seems like Trump is just overtly saying that he thinks that Venezuela stole U.S. energy assets, specifically oil fields and oil infrastructure, and now he wants to take it back. So he launched this regime change operation to send a bunch of Delta Force guys in, along with the FBI, to arrest Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who's a bad guy, who stole the 2024 election. Like, insert all the caveats here about how he's a tyrant and a dictator, but for some reason, we have now chosen that tyrant and that dictator to be the one that the US Deposes with a bunch of Special Forces service members.
- [28:25]
A
Okay, so a few questions here. First and foremost, this was Trump's response when asked who would run the country.
- [28:31]
B
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.
- [29:00]
A
So that was obviously Trump saying that the US that he would be running Venezuela. Can I get your reaction to that idea that the President of the United States is going to run not only this country, but a foreign country as well?
- [29:12]
D
Brian, it was like the craziest thing I've heard in this whole 90 minute press conference today, or however long it was. I mean, look, I've been watching this build up in the Caribbean for a long time. I mean, Donald Trump sent something like 15,000 U.S. service members to the Caribbean area, to the Venezuela region. There were a couple aircraft carriers in there. It was clear to me that the United States was planning some sort of military action in Venezuela and it might be a regime change operation. I was surprised that they chose this super risky option of this extraction of Maduro and taking him to New York. But this announcement that the dudes behind Trump were now going to be running the country is the craziest thing I have ever heard. I mean, it sounds like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller are now going to be overseeing the management of a foreign country. We have no idea how that is going to work in practice. Trump seemed to suggest in his press conference that the former vice president, now president of Venezuela, was on board with this plan, but then she just gave a speech denouncing the invasion, calling it regime change, saying Maduro is the rightful president. So we just don't know what's going to happen.
- [30:22]
A
Well, what about Maria Machado, who, by the way, was given the Nobel Peace Prize, dedicated it to Trump, and then Trump, of course, comes in and says that she's not strong enough to lead the country. So, by the way, just as a caveat for any other world leaders looking to throw themselves at the feet of Donald Trump, you gain nothing by doing that. We watched her debase herself and try to. Try to give this, you know, to dedicate this award, the Nobel Peace Prize, to Donald Trump. Look at what that's gotten her. But what about this idea that instead of offering this up, if we're gonna do regime change from the United States into Venezuela, instead of offering this up to the person who would presumably be the rightful heir to this seat, the opposition leader, he's instead decided that she's not worthy of this spot, and that instead should be, you know, Pete Hegseth.
- [31:05]
B
And.
- [31:08]
A
The rest of the U.S. delegation.
- [31:10]
D
Yeah. So Maria Machado is seen as the leader of the Venezuelan opposition. She was not allowed to run in the 2024 election. So this guy named Edmundo Gonz ran in her stead. He is widely believed by all international observers to have won that election and to have won with 70% of the vote. So it wasn't close. But then Maduro stole the election. Now, as you mentioned, she is incredibly brave. She has fought against the Maduro regime at great personal risk to herself. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She actually snuck out of the country, did this daring ocean escape of the country to try to get to the ceremony in time, and then dedicated the Peace Prize to Trump. But in his remarks today, Trump sounds like he is eager to just hand leadership over to Maduro's handpicked vice president. And the kind of current leadership of the country, whether it's political or military. And what I think that tells us is that he doesn't give a shit about human rights. He doesn't care about the opposition. He doesn't care about the Venezuelan people. He cares about the fact that Venezuela has something like 17% of the world's known oil reserves, and he thinks he can make a lot of money by taking control of those. And that is exactly what it sounds like he is now doing.
- [32:26]
A
In other words, it's that Maduro was a bulwark against his efforts to basically nationalize Venezuela's oil assets, but that the vice president won't necessarily be as big a barrier as Maduro was.
- [32:39]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, Maduro had two things kind of going against him. One, I mean, he was sitting on a lot of energy resources, and two, he's a leftist. And the only criminals that Trump likes in Latin America are the right wing ones like Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who was put in jail for trafficking like 400 tons of cocaine to the US and then pardoned by Trump. So what it sounds like Trump is doing here, I mean, look, we're learning about this in real time. Trump himself said that Maduro wanted to negotiate. Maduro did interviews right before he was picked up by the US Suggesting that he would cut basically any deal Trump wanted. But Trump seemingly just wanted to take the guy out and work with the people around him. And so there's some reporting maybe that the CIA had penetrated Maduro's inner circle and that there was someone on the inside kind of working to make this outcome happen. We don't know, we're kind of still learning. But yeah, I mean, Trump, again, he doesn't care about human rights. He doesn't care about who won the election. What he cares about in the near term is getting that oil flowing and making his friends a lot of money off it.
- [33:43]
A
I want to throw to a clip of Trump being asked about the hypocrisy of pardoning the former president of Honduras. And yet, you know, running this whole operation under the pretext that he was doing it to hold anarcho terrorist to account.
- [33:57]
C
You said that Maduro is responsible for drug trafficking. You recently pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted for many drug trafficking. Can you explain how these two situations are?
- [34:07]
B
Well, the pardon Maduro, 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.
- [35:10]
A
So obviously that did not answ the question. It was kind of this freewheeling response where he delved into some rationale for his distorted rationale for pardoning the former president of Honduras, but didn't explain the hypocrisy here. If you claim to want to stand against narco trafficking of drugs, then that doesn't explain why you would pardon somebody, but then run an entire operation, kidnapping operation, to take this president out. Can I just have your reaction to that answer that Trump gave?
- [35:40]
D
Yeah, I mean, you're right, Brian. Nothing about this is coherent. Juan Orlando Hernandez is a actual real deal, like, right wing political leader connected to a drug kingpin. But the difference is he was right wing and Trump was left wing. And Juan Orlando Hernandez could hire people like Roger Stone to help facilitate a pardon. And that's seemingly what he did here. I mean, none of this policy makes any sense. Like, if you are worried about fentanyl. Fentanyl is made in Mexico from chemicals that get shipped in from China. So that's not coming out of Venezuela. There is, I think, between 8 and 11% of the world's cocaine is trafficked through Venezuela, which is significant, but the majority of it is going through Ecuador and Colombia and is produced or grown in Colombia. So again, if you were kind of looking at the challenge of drug trafficking to the United States, the idea that your first move would be to depose Nicolas Maduro and then let this corrupt monster, Juan Orlando Hernandez, out of prison in the United States makes absolutely no sense.
- [36:41]
A
Tommy, what about this posture from the American delegation, including Pete Hegseth, that suggested that this may not be the last, you know, the last incursion at the hands of the United States, that Mexico should be on guard? Just your reaction to that?
- [36:56]
D
That. Yeah. I mean, Trump pretty overtly threatened both Cuba and the Colombian government in his remarks, as did Marco Rubio. That's pretty ominous. I mean, we know from a lot of reporting that Marco Rubio has been driving this regime change policy in Venezuela in part because he has family ties to Cuba, his family left, and they hate the, the regime that's there in place, the left wing communist regime. And they think that taking out Maduro was the key to toppling the Cubans. And it's another new domino theory thing. But, yeah, my fear with this, Brian, is Donald Trump is going to look at what just happened in Venezuela. He's going to look at the Iran strikes and the adulation he got for both from around the world in this sense, that it was kind of cost free for him. And what if he decides, I don't know, he's just the emperor of the Western Hemisphere now and he's gonna depose whatever leaders he wants? I mean, this is pretty ominous stuff.
- [37:57]
A
Not to bury the lead here, but what about the fact that he ran an entire campaign literally called America first, and now he's engaging in regime change wars a la George W. Bush? I mean, is the hypocrisy not lost on anybody? That the exact thing that he decried as he was running for office, this idea that we're too focused on, you know, American imperialism and getting engaged in these endless foreign wars, that's exactly what he does not a year into his second term.
- [38:25]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, there was some polling done before this all went down. This was, I think, in December. I think they found like, 65% of voters opposed a regime change operation in Venezuela, 25% were pro it. I think there will probably be a lot of MAGA voters who are waking up today thinking, this is not what I voted for. I didn't vote to send Delta Force troops into Venezuela. No, we're still learning. Trump made it sound. This was totally cost free. There's now some reporting that some guys maybe have suffered bullet injuries or shrapnel wounds. We just don't know what happened yet. And there is this question of, okay, he said at this press conference that Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and Rubio are now going to run Venezuela. How? They're sitting in Washington or Mar a Lago. Are we going to send U.S. troops to the ground there? Venezuela is a huge country. It's the size of France and Germany combined. How are we going to run this place from Washington if people on the ground aren't on board with this plan? And the current president doesn't sound like she is. We don't know where the military is. We don't know where their security state is. So Trump in this speech was like, oh, well, we had one wave planned of airstrikes. There was another wave we could have done, but we didn't. That would have been bigger. Well, what happens if things go south? Are we going to send troops there to occupy parts of the country? Are we going to send U.S. troops there to occupy this, this oil and gas infrastructure that Trump says we are now going to take back that was stolen from us? None of the questions that matter have been answered here. Remember, regime change operations look great on day one. It's like day 106 months a year. You have to wonder, and I say this with total humility, having worked in the Obama administration during the Libya operation when NATO forces took out Gaddafi and it led to a disaster that was not just a disaster for people in Libya, but all throughout the Middle east and North Africa. So it's going to take a long time for this to play out.
- [40:20]
A
In the immediate aftermath of this morning's attack, Mayor Mamdani in New York issued a statement condemning basically an American incursion into a sovereign country, as Venezuela is. And Ted Cruz came online afterwards and basically saw his. Saw his statement and condemned it by saying, you know, like birds of a communist feather flock together in so many words. I'm paraphrasing.
- [40:42]
D
Cool.
- [40:43]
A
Just this, just your reaction here to the idea that. I mean, it does seem like the Republicans are gonna rally around this idea, the United States getting engaged in a regime change war. And so just kind of your reaction to what we're seeing from Ted Cruz here?
- [40:59]
D
I mean, look, Ted Cruz put his balls in a purse and handed to Donald Trump sometime around 2016 and has never gotten him back. So I'm not really surprised by it. I think that what I want to see from Democrats is statements like Mamdani's or Tim Kaine's like, this isn't a legal war. None of us know how this is going to play out. Maybe it will lead to peace throughout Venezuela, free and fair elections, oil flowing, all the best things. We don't know the outcome.
- [41:28]
C
Right.
- [41:28]
D
And I'm saying this with humility. I have no idea how this is going to go. But there was no congressional authorization, there was no legal basis to invade Venezuela. And we know that senior levels of the Trump administration thinks there needs to be some sort of congressional authorization because remember that disastrous interview or series of interviews with Susie Wiles, Trump's Chief of staff?
- [41:48]
A
Yeah.
- [41:48]
D
She said in that interview that if there were airstrikes on land in Venezuela, they would need to go to Congress first. They did not. They didn't do that. They didn't even brief Congress ahead of these strikes because Marco Rubio was like, oh, this is, you know, this is a, like an ongoing operation. Congress might leak it, etc, and then Trump jumps in and was like, yeah, I Mean, they kind of knew it was coming anyway. But you know, we don't want it to leak because Congress leaked. So like Congress needs to reassert its role. Like, they are the ones that declare if we go to war. And again, I realize my hypocrisy as an Obama official and drone strikes and that history. What I'm trying to like, say to people is let's learn from those mistakes and realize that like the United States military can win any battle you ever put them up against. The problem comes when we ask the US Military to solve other countries political problems. And that is what there was on the ground in Venezuela. You had a corrupt dictator who stole an election and didn't have broad popular support and was running the country into the ground. But that doesn't mean we should fly 150 aircraft into their airspace and kill a bunch of people. Like, that's crazy.
- [42:51]
A
Last question here, Tommy. The idea of doing this because we want to seize control of their oil assets, does that go to the United States or does it go to the oil companies, which may not even necessarily bring oil into the United States because like Exxon Mobil, for example, a great American oil company, sells to the rest of the world. Like, it's not like any oil that they're refining, any oil that they're dealing with just goes right back into the United States. Otherwise, we have the cheapest oil in the world. Oftentimes that oil is then sent overseas, even though it's being refined at the hands of an American company, doesn't necessarily mean it's just coming back into the United States. Those companies might find it more profitable to export that oil. And so they do. And so isn't that this just helping? Not even the United States oil prices per se, but just the companies that emanate out of the United States, whose bottom line depends on, yes, the American consumers, but the rest of the world as well.
- [43:47]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, we should just be clear at the front end. We have no idea how any of this is going to work. It sounded like Trump was suggesting that US Taxpayers might have to foot the bill on the front end to get the infrastructure, the energy infrastructure rebuilt or like more modern, and then they'll get reimbursed by the oil companies. Again, we heard a similar kind of promise that the oil would pay for the whole operation itself with the Iraq war. Right, so set that one aside. To your broader point though, yes, these global energy markets are fungible. It's a global market. If there's more supply sent to the United States and the price goes down, that means that international shipments to the US Will go someplace else. None of this, none of this makes sense. Trump, I don't think there's any way for him to promise that there will be some direct pipeline from Venezuela only to the us, Only to US Consumers. And even if there was, what would that mean for domestic production? So, yes, it's just a facile, stupid way to view the world. And it just seems like they're kind of making this policy on the fly. They don't really know how the country is going to be governed. They don't know what's going to happen with the oil assets and they're just like making it up as they go along. But you know what's new, right?
- [45:06]
A
One political question here. What does it say to Trump voters who thought that they were voting for lower grocery prices, housing prices, rent prices? Finally, we have a president who will focus on such granular affordability issues that he was touting the price of eggs on the campaign trail and now you've got somebody who is just installing his own cronies to run foreign countries. And that's where his focus is. Even, even as prices are rising, even as food stamps are getting gutted, even as Medicaid and ACA coverage is also getting gutted, that this is where their priority is.
- [45:37]
D
Yeah, I mean like the price of healthcare premiums for 20 some odd million people are about to double and he's focused on deposing Nicolas Maduro. That seems crazy to me. I think that President Trump has figured out that dealing with inflation is really hard, Getting prices down is really hard. Getting people healthcare is really hard. So he's going to focus on things that feel easier to him. And in his book, Toppling some sort of two bit dictator, that is easier. And that is where he's going to focus. Or demanding credit for the Nobel Peace Prize as he invades another country. That is going to be his focus. So I think you're starting to hear from a lot of Trump voters that they're like, this isn't actually what we voted for. We wanted the border hardened, we wanted the economy better, we wanted prices down. We're just not getting all the things we wanted. We're seeing ice rampaging through the streets of major cities, we're seeing prices go up, we're seeing healthcare prices about to skyrocket. I don't think any of these guys voted for regime change in Venezuela. And you also have to worry, look, if Trump likes the press coverage he gets from this he likes all the praise he's getting. He's going to look to see which country is next. Or maybe we'll be back in Iran. Right? So this is pretty ominous stuff.
- [46:53]
A
Well, obviously we haven't seen the last of whatever international incursions Trump is engaged in. So highly recommend for everybody who's watching right now. If you want to learn more about what's happening in the international space, subscribe to Pod Save the World. I'm going to put the link to that channel right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. If you're listening on the podcast, I'm going to put the link to Pod Save the World's podcast in the show notes as well. Tommy, as always, thanks so much for the time.
- [47:17]
D
Thanks buddy. Great to see you.
- [47:19]
A
Thanks again to Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vitor. A quick reminder to everybody listening right now. I'll be doing two episodes per week, so check out Wednesday's episode in the same feed. Thanks everybody. You've been listening to no Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graeber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me ryantellercohen on all of my other channels. Or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.