Empire State of Mind

Summary

POD SAVE AMERICA

"Empire State of Mind"

January 6, 2026 – Crooked Media

Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor
Guest: Senator Mark Kelly

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on Donald Trump’s dramatic military intervention in Venezuela, framing it as an imperialistic campaign in the Western Hemisphere. The hosts break down the operation’s motives, legality, political fallout, and broader implications. They also touch on the fallout from a major Minnesota fraud scandal, the DOJ’s Epstein file release, social media discourse, and interview Arizona Senator Mark Kelly about the military, democratic norms, and Trump’s actions.

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Main Story: Trump’s Venezuelan Operation ("Blood for Oil")

[02:12 – 24:00]

Background & Operation

• Trump has launched a military assault on Venezuela, seizing dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, resulting in at least 80 deaths.
• Both were arraigned in Manhattan court on drug trafficking/narco-terrorism charges; the regime remains in place under VP Delsey Rodriguez in exchange for giving US oil companies access.
• Trump administration argument: this was a "law enforcement operation"—Rubio claims no congressional authorization was needed.

Key Quotes:

• Dan Pfeiffer [03:13]:
  "Trump has chosen to start with Venezuela, where he ordered the military to capture...Nicolas Maduro...along with his wife in a raid on Caracas...the US Government has decided to leave that regime in place...led by Maduro's vice president, Delsey Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump administration..."

• Tommy Vietor [07:17]:
  "Marco is trying to say it's just a simple law enforcement operation—one backstopped by 150 warplanes, 15,000 troops, a couple aircraft carriers...All you need to invade a country is a simple indictment of its leader, and then you can just invade."

Analysis

• The hosts call out the transparent self-interest behind the U.S. operation—Trump’s repeated desire to "take the oil."
• They note the U.S.-imposed regime keeps much of Maduro’s corrupt apparatus in place to avoid risking instability and to maintain the oil supply chain.
• They recall neocon and imperialist U.S. history in Latin America, but emphasize Trump is motivated by personal gain, egotism, and chaos, rather than coherent ideology.

Memorable Exchanges:

• Jon Lovett [11:39]:
  "This is like old school American imperialism in the Hemisphere run by a corrupt group of clods and buffoons."
• Dan Pfeiffer [12:21]:
  "The mask is very much off...now he's just like—oh, no, it is blood for oil."

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The Don Row Doctrine & Imperial Ambitions

[23:00 – 32:00]

• Trump openly discusses targeting more countries (Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Greenland), comparing himself to emperors; his allies meme him as the strongman of the Western Hemisphere.
• Stephen Miller’s public rhetoric praises colonialism and empire; the hosts skewer this shift toward explicit, unapologetic imperialism and racism.

Key Quotes

• Dan Pfeiffer [23:16]:
  "Trump seems like maybe he wants to conquer the entire Western hemisphere. Who doesn't? Here he is again on Air Force One, musing about other regimes he'd like to change and territories he'd like to take..."
• Tommy Vietor [26:48]:
  "It is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do."

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Geostrategic and Economic Realities

[14:38 – 19:53]

• Hosts discuss the dubious economics and logistics of reopening Venezuela’s oil industry—massive investment required, persistent corruption, and political uncertainty.
• U.S. oil companies and Trump cronies expected to benefit, not American consumers.
• The operation risks destabilizing Venezuela and the region, potentially causing mass migration and proxy conflicts.

Memorable Moment

• Jon Lovett [13:16]:
  "Just the fact that we live in a world where that is a possible thing to say...all of this is so, yeah, it's so brazen and despicable..."

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Host & Guest Panel on Political and Legal Fallout

Messaging and Dangers

• On MAGA messaging: Initial public support is low—with only 24% in favor of the US “taking control" of Venezuela (Reuters, Washington Post polling).
• Some right-wing figures (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens) break with Trump over the issue, but hosts predict most of the base will stay loyal if US casualties stay low.

Notable Quotes

• Tommy Vietor [40:53]:
  "If this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem. That’s already showing up in the polling. 70% of people are like, what do you mean run Venezuela, we don't want that."

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Broader Themes: U.S. Democratic Erosion and Foreign Policy

[33:00 – 36:52, 49:08 – 51:21]

• The hosts warn that Trump’s actions further erode the international rules-based order; cede ground to Russia and China; and destabilize global norms.
• Lack of a “positive vision” from pro-democracy/Democratic Party forces is contrasted with Trump’s nihilist, transactional approach.
• Skepticism toward U.S. military interventions: hosts cite Iraq, Libya, highlighting unpredictable, destabilizing effects of regime change.

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Other Key Segments

1. Minnesota Fraud Scandal

[55:40 – 68:24]

• Democratic Gov. Tim Walz steps down over a major pandemic-era child services fraud case, which MAGA world used to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment.
• Most indicted are Somali Americans; Elon Musk, far-right leaders called for broad deportation and even jail for Walz/Ilhan Omar.
• Hosts emphasize:
  • Fraud should be prosecuted
  • MAGA outrage is racist, manipulative
  • There was rampant pandemic fraud everywhere (PPP etc), but this is being weaponized for racist, anti-government purposes.

2. Epstein Files Released

[69:12 – 73:38]

• DOJ releases a major batch of Jeffrey Epstein documents; hosts highlight Trump flew on Epstein’s jet at least 8 times (despite previous denials).
• The hosts criticize the historic failures of FBI/DOJ in investigating Epstein and the ongoing attempts at coverups or PR minimization.

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Senator Mark Kelly Interview

[87:34 – 109:12] (Main content [88:02 – 108:40])

Major Topics

1. Pentagon Censure and Attacks on Dissent

• Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, described as Trump’s “minion” and “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever had,” has censured Kelly, threatening demotion and the loss of pay for a video calling on troops to refuse illegal orders.
• Kelly slams this as “a bunch of bullshit … stifling the First Amendment rights of all Americans, especially retired people like me.” [88:02]
• Kelly vows to fight back, warning that the move will intimidate military and civilian dissenters.

2. On Lawfulness of Orders & Presidential Authority

• Kelly reiterates: service members must refuse unlawful orders, regardless of who gives them.
  • “What we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the uniform code of military justice. It is the law..." [94:27]
  • Cites Trump’s history of calling for war crimes and crushing domestic dissent.
• Kelly distinguishes between the constitutional debate over presidential war powers and the obligation to refuse specific illegal orders.

3. U.S. Intervention in Venezuela

• Kelly is sharply critical of the Venezuelan operation’s planning, motives, and lack of congressional authorization:

  • “He extracted Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy ... we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country. What precedent does that set?” [98:04]
  • Warns of the risk of civil war, prolonged occupation, and lessons from the Iraq War.

• On Stephen Miller running Venezuela:
  “That guy's a moron. I mean, you talk about you want to ruin that country, you want to set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interests, put him in charge.” [102:10]

4. Lack of American Moral/Strategic Leadership

• Kelly: US needs a vision for hemispheric policy rooted in diplomacy, long-term interests, and shared prosperity, not brute force or Machiavellian realpolitik.

5. GOP and Congressional War Powers

• Kelly expresses doubt about getting enough Republican support to reassert congressional authority, but remains hopeful.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Main story / Venezuela intervention: [02:12 – 24:00]
• Don Row Doctrine and Empire rhetoric: [23:00 – 32:00]
• Discussion of oil economics: [14:38 – 19:53]
• Minnesota fraud, anti-immigrant backlash: [55:40 – 68:24]
• Epstein records & Trump: [69:12 – 73:38]
• Senator Mark Kelly interview: [87:34 – 109:12]

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Notable Quotes

• Jon Lovett [11:39]:
  "Old school American imperialism in the Hemisphere run by a corrupt group of clods and buffoons."
• Dan Pfeiffer [12:21]:
  "No, it is blood for oil...we didn't spill any of our blood this time, but, you know, it's definitely for the oil."
• Tommy Vietor [26:48]:
  "It is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do."
• Senator Mark Kelly [88:02]:
  “That’s a bunch of bullshit. The entire thing – it’s ridiculous. And it is, you know, stifling the First Amendment rights of all Americans...”
• Senator Mark Kelly [102:10]:
  “Stephen Miller running Venezuela, that guy’s a moron… you want to ruin that country, you want to set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interest, put him in charge.”

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Noteworthy Social Discourse & Pop Culture Segments

• Right-wing online drama: The hosts riff about the “Don Row doctrine," social media staffers spinning memes, the return of phrenology via “looksmaxxing,” and in-jokes about "Globo Homo" and online conservative weirdness.
• Audience references: They poke fun at the absurd news cycles, meme culture, and the surreality of modern U.S. politics.

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Final Thoughts

“Empire State of Mind” is a deeply critical and darkly humorous episode that dismantles Trump’s militaristic ambitions, questions American exceptionalism, and calls out both right-wing hypocrisy and the Democratic Party’s struggles to offer a bold, credible alternative. The hosts balance rigorous policy critique with comic asides, timely polling, and an urgent call for democratic renewal.

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For listeners:
This episode is essential to understanding the unprecedented U.S. action in Venezuela, the shifting conservative embrace of empire, and the challenges facing American democracy in 2026. The Senator Mark Kelly interview offers an insider’s view on the costs of dissent, the fight for military normativity, and the stakes for the Western Hemisphere—and for democracy itself.

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Transcript

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[Jon Lovett]

I'm Jon Levitt.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tom Mihetor.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Welcome back, guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

Happy New Year, guys.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Happy New Year.

[Jon Lovett]

Great to be back.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Welcome to you. And welcome to our new compatriots in.

[Tommy Vietor]

The southern colonies in our vassal state.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. Who will soon have the honor of pumping crude to fund His Majesty's palace renovations.

[Tommy Vietor]

Viceroy Millers.

[Jon Lovett]

A new. A new. A new Majesty's palace renovations.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So, yeah, we got a lot to cover today. We'll get into the latest with Venezuela and all the other countries that Trump now wants to invade. We'll also talk about Tim Walls decision to end his campaign for a third term as governor because of the fraud scandal that's become the latest MAGA crusade. We'll get into what we've learned so far from the DOJ's release of the first batch of the Epstein files and some other news you may have missed over the holidays. And then Arizona Senator Mark Kelly talks to Lovett about all the latest news, including Pete Hegseth's decision to cut his pension and demote him because of that video he made about following illegal orders. But let's start with the biggest story of the week. Donald Trump's campaign to become emperor of the Western Hemisphere, which follows a well trodden path of authoritarians who respond to economic and political failures at home by pursuing imperialist ambitions abroad. Now we have it right here. Trump has chosen to start with Venezuela, where he ordered the military to capture the oil rich country's tin pot dictator, Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife in a raid on Caracas last weekend that has killed at least 80 people. The former first couple of Venezuela was brought to the US and arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Monday where they pleaded not guilty to various drug trafficking and narco terrorism charges. And in case anyone still thinks the people of Venezuela have been liberated from Maduro's brutal regime, the US Government has decided to leave that regime in place, which will now be led by Maduro's vice president, Delsey Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump administration where she gets to stay in power as long as she gives American oil companies access to her country's vast but underdeveloped oil reserves. Realizing that the American people may have some questions about the wisdom of this novel arrangement and the motivation behind all this, the Trump administration sent Marco Rubio, one of the masterminds behind this operation, out on the Sunday shows to give some answers. And here's Marco giving it his best shot.

[Jon Lovett]

Why wasn't congressional authorization necessary?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It wasn't necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn't occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of.

[Jon Lovett]

The United States and the interest of.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Venezuelan people are met.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that's what we intend to do.

[Jon Lovett]

So that leverage remains. That leverage is ongoing. We'll set the conditions so that we.

[Tommy Vietor]

No longer have in our hemisphere a.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Venezuela that's the crossroads for many of.

[Tommy Vietor]

Our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And as far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, I'm Very simple. We have court orders. I don't know. Is the court not a legal authority?

[Jon Lovett]

So is the United States running Venezuela right now?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What we are running is the direction that this is going to move, moving forward. And that is we have leverage.

[Jon Lovett]

This leverage we are using and we intend to use. We started using already.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So that's Marco Rubio kind of sort.

[Tommy Vietor]

Of answering, who looks just comically exhausted. I feel for him. He's got four jobs, a lot going on.

[Jon Lovett]

He's got an archivist, He's South American Viceroy. It's a lot of jobs.

[Tommy Vietor]

And then you see him at Mar a Lago doing like this to, like a Vanilla Ice concert, just wanting to.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Kill himself and watching a football game on. You see, Katie Miller has been. Katie Miller has been just tweeting out a whole bunch of videos that I'm sure that her. Her friends in the administration probably wouldn't like. There was also Kristi Gnome and Stephen Miller.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Dancing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I guess.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

To Vanilla Ice at Mar a Lago.

[Tommy Vietor]

Hell is having to hang out with that crew.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So punishment. Rubio gives these. This, this. These carefully constructed non answers. And then Donald Trump just hours later, does the thing that he does where he removes the lipstick that one of his advisors just tried to put on some pig.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's listen, don't ask me who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

What does that mean?

[Jon Lovett]

We're in charge?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Have you spoken with her?

[Jon Lovett]

We're in charge. What do you need from Delsey Rodriguez?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You've threatened total access.

[Jon Lovett]

We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country. We were prepared to do a second strike if we needed. We're totally prepared.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But that's.

[Jon Lovett]

We're still prepared. That's off the table. No, it's not. If they don't behave, we will do a second show. Also, as you're watching that video, you slow watch the kind of flush slowly come across Lindsey Graham's face. She's never been more kind of psychosexually aroused by a president. It's just so. I cannot believe how horny I am for what this guy is saying.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, since Iraq. Since 2003.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Speaking of Iraq.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He actually went to the bathroom right after that. Anyway, where to begin? Let's. Let's take Rubio's argument, which is clearly the argument the White House wants to make, that this whole thing is just about, as Rubio said, I think I meet the press. No more drug trafficking. No More Iran Hezbollah presence in Venezuela, and no more using the country's oil to enrich America's adversaries like China. JD Vance also took a cut at a version of this argument on Twitter where he writes all his best stuff, claiming that we just can't let Communists nationalize oil facilities that belong to American companies, which Venezuela did about a decade ago. Now, tell me, what would you say to these arguments?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean, Marco is trying to say it's just a simple law enforcement operation. One backstop by 150 warplanes, 15,000 troops in the Caribbean, couple aircraft carriers. And his argument seems to be that all you need to invade a country is a simple indictment of its leader, and then you can just invade. That's his argument.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which is easier to get when you control the doj.

[Tommy Vietor]

When Pam Bondi works for you, it's easier. I think I'll get to the dark stuff in a second. I think what this is about is Trump thinking that he is the king of the Western Hemisphere and that he gets to dictate events in Venezuela. And in practice, that means if you don't like Maduro, you take them out, including with military force, and then you make Rubio and Stephen Miller the Viceroys. It means that if you want Venezuela's natural resources, not only can you claim them for America, but you can decide that you could deny China access to them. That is explicitly part of their national security strategy that they released last year. And it means that in other situations, Trump has used US Diplomatic and economic power to prop up leaders he doesn't like in Latin America. Remember when he gave Javier Milei A $40 billion bank bailout in advance of an election there. So the fentanyl argument is bullshit. Fentanyl is made in Mexico with chemicals from China. It is most fentanyl interdictions, according to the cbp, according to the government's website, is that the border crossings cartels pay American citizens usually to smuggle it across the border in their cars. Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine, but it's a transit point for of the world's cocaine. That's not nothing. But if you really cared about cocaine, you could take a bigger whack at the supply problem through enforcement in Colombia and Ecuador. Trump has said over and over again, and he said it there, that he wants Venezuela's oil. That is what this is about. He doesn't care about democracy, doesn't care about human rights, doesn't care about the 2024 election that was stolen by Maduro. He wants to Decide who leads the country, what oil companies get access in Venezuela, what banks get to finance those oil fields going forward, in which of his cronies are going to get to play in that sandbox, in the kickbacks that he will get along the way. So, you know, like, we can do all the throat clearing we want about Maduro being a bad guy. It was admittedly an incredible military operation. The fact that they pulled this thing off without a single casualty, without a single aircraft going down is astounding. But sometimes removing a bad guy can lead to an even worse outcome. And so we're a long way from knowing like how this is going to go.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Love, what was your reaction to this show?

[Jon Lovett]

You know, when I saw the photo of Maduro on the plane in that sort of Nike athleisure, sort of a shocking image in part. Well, yeah, in part because like this is an administration has told us repeatedly how important it is to dress well for flights.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sean Duffy would be pissed.

[Jon Lovett]

And just like another example of the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, look, couldn't have brought us Delta, couldn't have brought a suit. The team, not the.

[Jon Lovett]

We're trying to elevate the flying experience. We all have an obligation, including deposed heads of state woken up in the middle of the night by the Delta Force, unable to get into their safe room. At least you don't want a lighter.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Door on that safe room. You're going to want it to be.

[Tommy Vietor]

User friendly, you want it to open and close.

[Jon Lovett]

You gotta get it closed quick. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Look, it's all is insane like now we've had administrations that have lawlessly toppled South American and Latin American regimes in the past and then claim they did not need congressional approval. That's something the US has done several times. One of our favorite things to do the like. What makes this all so strange is it's done with the kind of mix of like neocon logic kind of layered on top of it, but like underneath that is Donald Trump, whose motivations are egotistical, personal, kind of capricious based on whoever spoke to him last. Right. Like let's say you take the best version of this that Marco Rubio or J.D. vance would lay out. It would involve Donald Trump saying, we're not running Venezuela, the leaders are running Venezuela. Why? Because it's in the interest of his policy for that leader to seem strong at home. But he doesn't care about that. So this is like old school. Old school American imperialism in the Hemisphere run by a corrupt group of clods and buffoons. And it's. It would be dangerous if it was the best and brightest that Republicans had to offer. They have failed when they have done this in the past with their smartest guys. But that's not who the. Who's running this. It's Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and a bunch of fucking jokers. It's a small thing, but Pam Bondi put out this statement after we found out that this was all because it was a law enforcement operation. And she said Maduro will, will face the wrath of the US justice system. There is no wrath at the US justice system. It's actually not supposed to have wrath. It's supposed to have justice. Because it's not a wrath system. It's a fucking justice system. And what happens when you go to the justice system is it's not up to you anymore. It's up to the judge and the jury and the process. Right. But like, they're so kind of unserious and immature and not thoughtful about any of this.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They're just honest about how they feel.

[Jon Lovett]

For sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The mask is very much off. They're not, they're not mincing words. Everyone remember the, the no blood for oil signs from the first Iraq war? And you'd be like, oh, you know, I'm not against this war, but those lefties saying it's blood now, he's just like, oh, no, it is blood for oil. Fortunately, we didn't spill any of our blood this time, but, you know, it's definitely for the oil.

[Tommy Vietor]

Venezuelan, Cuban blood, for sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And we were told it was, you know, Maduro is this brutal dictator and we should be glad he's gone. But it's like, well, as you said, there was a legitimate winner of the 2024 election there. There's the opposition leader, Maria Machado, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Though I don't know if you guys saw in the Washington Post that two sources close to the White House said that even though she dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, the fact that she didn't actually give it to him really stung. And if she had, she'd be the president of Venezuela right now.

[Jon Lovett]

Just the fact that we live in a world where that is a possible thing to say, or that, by the way, that there's somebody betting on the poly markets to make a couple hundred grand, that's the fact that Maduro is not going to be in power anymore. All of this is so, yeah, it's so brazen and despicable and like all the, like the intellectual layers on top of Donald Trump just being a kind of, like, kind of careening maniac and.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The hubris that none of this is ever going to come back to bite us in the ass, you know, that you could like, we are the strong ones, we are powerful, we have the big military and so we can do whatever the fuck we want and consequences be damned. And if I get the short term win and the good headlines and this episode of the Trump show ends well, then no problems then if we, and if there's a huge problem down the road, if there's a terrorist attack or a war or a country that falls into civil war and mass migration crisis, all this stuff. Yeah, someone else will deal with that. I don't have to deal with that. One more point on the, on the oil. Basically, as soon as we learned about the operation, we saw reporting that American oil companies were getting ready to go back in and on Monday their stocks were way up. Also, Trump on that flight said that we just watched that someone asked, oh, did the oil companies, did you tip off the oil companies about the, about the operation? And he said, yeah, yeah, sounds like.

[Tommy Vietor]

They got a better briefing in Congress. Including the Gang of Eight gave a.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Heads up to the oil companies. Maybe, maybe that was one of the traders that made that account. Who knows?

[Tommy Vietor]

Smart.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But there's been other reporting about how hard it would actually be to rehabilitate Venezuela's oil infrastructure. Venezuela, of course, does have like the, the biggest oil reserves, I believe, in the world. The very unfair.

[Jon Lovett]

There's no question about that.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, so the, this number you always see is 300 billion gallons. 17% of the world's known reserves. But there's some, there's some question as to where that number came from.

[Jon Lovett]

Maybe Hugo Chavez's ass is potentially one of the sources. And it's literally, there's a great example of just how stupid everything is because it's like nobody seems to know where that number came from and they're all kind of basing all this stuff around it, but it may be something that was just sort of inflated decades ago.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they have a lot of oil. We don't know if it's the most, but they seemingly have a lot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And so, but like now we're finding out that maybe Big Oil isn't as enthusiastic about this or maybe they don't because it's just going to cost so much money.

[Tommy Vietor]

So I've heard competing views on this too. I think the most honest answer is we just don't know yet. And we won't know for sure until. First of all, oil companies need to get on the ground. They need to see, like, what do the fields look like, what do the wells look like, what equipment needs to be upgraded. They need to figure out what contracts have already been negotiated. Like, the Chinese have contracts with Venezuela for a lot of these oil fields. Are we going to negate those? Also, like, the political situation is going to matter a lot. I mean, so just on the investment side, the estimates you see are this could take years, it could take tens of billion dollars of your investment to really ramp up oil flows and that. But to get there, like, the oil companies are going to want legal certainty. They're going to want licenses or sanctions relief or something to ensure that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm sure they'll get that from Donald Trump.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, yeah, I mean, this is where he'll probably, like, dole out licenses one by one to that, you know, show.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Oval and give him a peace pass.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly. But they don't want that rolled back by either the Venezuelan government or by democrats. If we take power, inshallah. They want political stability and power.

[Jon Lovett]

What is that?

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know what is that?

[Jon Lovett]

I've read about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

So the political stability part will be key too. Right. Because that's clearly, I think, why Trump chose Delsey Rodriguez, who is Maduro's vp, who's now the acting president, because she is seen, first of all as a competent administrator who can. Who has done a better job overseeing the oil industry. And then also installing her isn't necessarily. Isn't a threat to the entire patronage system that Chavez and then Maduro have built up. Right. You imagine if you install the opposition leader that is going to rile, you know, the powerful officials running the military or the Interior Ministry, who could be displeased. They might be displeased anyway, but we'll find out.

[Jon Lovett]

Also, by the way, people that have been part of a brutal crackdown on civil society, on dissent, there's murder, horrible sexual assaults. Like, this is an abusive and despicable regime that they are leaving in place.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes. And are also corrupt. I mean, there are people in that government facilitated with drug cartels, etc. But you know, there's other things that could go wrong. I mean, there are remnants of these guerrilla groups on the border, like the ELN or the FARC that could stage attacks and, like, scare off oil companies. And the big question I have is, like, who's going to defend all this infrastructure, is it the US Military? Is it Blackwater? Is it the Venezuelan troops? Like, we don't know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, let's even take it a step further and say that everything goes perfectly well and the oil companies all get there and then they are just pumping away. Right. Hugo Chavez was right. And it's the most oil in the world.

[Jon Lovett]

So that's what a very handsome man whispers into Lindsey Graham's ear before hitting him the whip.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, my God.

[Jon Lovett]

Getting all the oil. Lindsey Smack.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Austin, you should be confused. I know, I know.

[Tommy Vietor]

So as soon as you said pump it away, I knew it was coming. So it's like, there we go again.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So it's like $100 billion to get this thing going. You probably don't get oil until, I don't know, like a decade, maybe years.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, you might be able to increase production like a year or two.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right. But like, to really get the most out of it. Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

You could double it from 1 million barrels a day to. I mean, I think the peak in the seventies was three and a half million barrels a day, for sure.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But my point is, the way that the world oil market works is that there's a lot of oil coming from a lot of places, including the United States. Global. Yes. And so maybe by 2030, your gas prices are a penny or two cheaper because if all goes perfectly in Venezuela. And it is very ironic to me that it's very like old Trump brain that he is obsessed with taking the oil, which, of course, he's been obsessed with taking the oil forever. He used to say that about Iraq. They should have taken the oil in Iraq. So he's been obsessed for a while about taking. He's like, he has this obsession with the most important resource from the last century at the same time, and China potentially getting access to it. When we were just talking right before the break of how he just lifted the export ban on the AI chips that we sell to China, that we're now going to sell to China, which is the most important resource of the next century.

[Tommy Vietor]

And got nothing for that, by the way.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Got nothing for that. That was for free. But we're taking the oil even as the rest of the world is moving away from oil as an energy resource. Good stuff. Just wanted to. We're all like, oh, but the oil. Is. Is the oil going to be. Is that going to help us? Like, no, the oil's not going to.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, it could help a couple. It will. You know, some oil companies have a privileged few make a ton of money, potentially, of Course, that depends on a lot of people going along, including China and, and, and, and Russia and others who will have a lot of, could have a lot of fun making trouble for us down there. Which by the way, again, a nice part of our history of countries having little proxy battles to, to slow us down.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Terrific. You see a lot of the, the MAGA chuds out there being like, oh, you guys wanted him to focus on affordability, affordability. Now he's going to bring down gas prices. Like, this is not going to bring down gas prices. Donald Trump's president. It's just not.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

So. So maybe the most ominous news that came after the Maduro raid is that Trump seems like maybe he wants to conquer the entire Western hemisphere. Who doesn't? Here he is again on Air Force One, musing about other regimes he'd like to change and territories he'd like to take.

[Jon Lovett]

Colombia is very sick too. Run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not going to be doing it very long. Cuba is ready to fall, you know. Yes. By the way, you have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get their act together. Greenland is covered with Russia, Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland. The Don Row doctrine.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The Don Row doctrine, guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

The Don Row doctrine.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's where we are now. The Don Row doctrine. What a dumb, so stupid world we live in.

[Jon Lovett]

Really reminds me of.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He took it from the New York Post. Did you see that? A year ago in January, they had a. I think when he was first amusing about Greenland, they had a Don Row doctrine front page. And he's been trying to make it happen ever since. And there, here it is, he's got it now. Cool.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a niche reference, but there's a movie called Ronan starring Robert De Niro and Sean Bean is in the movie. And he's sort of a gung ho, but a little too gung ho, a little too into the fight. And it's because he's not totally prepared for it and he gets kind of exposed in it. But there's this moment when he's like hopped up on the adrenaline of the fun of the action. He's like, oh man, this is going great. And the action slows down. He just has to puke outside the car window. That's what that reminds me of. They're high right now.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was bouncing. You could see him.

[Jon Lovett]

This is shock and awe. This is the immediate aftermath. The US Military is able to do what it is ordered to do and they are high on that. And let's see what happens next.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And so people know because obviously Trump has had quite a few gaggles on Air Force One where he just shoots his mouth off and says something kind of crazy that then the rest of the White House and his advisors tried to clean up. You know, the, the Trump team account tweeted out a picture of Trump astride the Western hemisphere taking a shit on it. Yeah. Stepping over. So with one foot and basically Greenland and the other in South America and over it and saying the Don Row doctrine. And then I think just on Monday the State Department has just a picture of him that says like this is our hemisphere.

[Jon Lovett]

So I think there's something happening, by the way, where the social media people in each of these departments are the kind of like biggest Trump freaks and they spin, they spin the whole media and left up. That's what happens when the. They're posting out of dhs. That's what the State Department posts. The White House post.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And like these are the people who excitedly read the I love Hitler group chat story in Politico.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, the one that, the one that wasn't released that they're in. Yeah, but, but no like I think like they are, they are there to spin everybody up and they just don't see a cost to, to, to acting like this and getting everybody worried because they think they can do their little reassurances to the serious people in the kind of deep within the article, the Susie Wiles style articles where they can of like actually it's a smart group of people really running things carefully yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And in case you're not like a meme person, but you like, sort of the rhetorical flourish of a C. Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller, who apparently is going to have a big role in governing Venezuela. Perhaps Viceroy Stephen Miller.

[Jon Lovett]

He's finally got that class presidency he's been gunning for for half a century.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

He took to Twitter in an attempt to expand on the thinking behind the Don Row doctrine, where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism, quote, built the modern world. And then when it ended after World War II, the West engaged in, quote, self punishment by sending aid to its former territories and opening its borders to immigrants, thereby betraying our, quote, native citizenry. So do we have to make the argument now that colonialism was actually bad?

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, Stephen, you know who didn't love colonialism? The Founding Fathers.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, okay.

[Tommy Vietor]

Boom. I might point you towards a document once stolen by Nicholas Cage called the Declaration of Independence that was specifically against it. I mean, the biggest fact check for Steve there is, he says, suggests that empires and colonies were dissolved out of the goodness of their hearts. I think there was some armed conflict in there that Stephen seems to be forgetting. And it is. It is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad, but it seems like we do.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The most prosperity this country has ever seen came immediately after World War II and the decades after when we welcomed immigrants into this country and had sort of, like, built the greatest economy and the biggest middle class the world had ever known. That's just some interesting history as well.

[Tommy Vietor]

Notable.

[Jon Lovett]

It's not like everybody was walking around 1945 and being like, things are great. We got to keep this going. Like, you know, we just been on the other side of the greatest conflict in the history of human civilization. And then what follows?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which, who knows? Maybe not the right side anymore. According to. According to the history book Donald Trump.

[Jon Lovett]

Wants to write, there was. I was. Whatever reason this reminded me of, it was. You know, there's. Those people were critical of. Of Grant because they're like, he's a. He's a. He's an alcoholic. Your general there is an alcoholic. And Lincoln, you know, apocryphally, he says, well, whatever he's drinking, send it to my other generals. It's like, okay, you have a problem with the way in which we welcomed immigrants from 1945 to 2025, the greatest period of economic transformation in the history of planet Earth, not just for the United States, but for vast numbers of people all around the world. And, by the way, not just for the richest people. If you look at the bottom, 80%, talking about an incredible improvement of quality.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Neoliberal, neoliberal, neolibil, lefties. Clip this and get them. You're right. You're right.

[Jon Lovett]

The decline, like air conditioning decline in maternal mortality and infant mortality, wealth, cars, nafta.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Sure. Just speaking for no reason.

[Jon Lovett]

And so, like, what are you talking about? It's so. It's such a pathological point of view and it points to something so deeply broken about him and this worldview, which is you care so much more about preventing people you don't like from having anything that you'd be willing to hurt the people you claim you're advocating for, which are Americans, because we built this system and benefited from it tremendously. Problems, flaws, of course, but the idea that you're gonna tear it all down, and that's for us, and not just to hurt people that you don't like for reasons that have to do with the color of their skin or where they come from or who was mean to you in high school. It's just, it's all so perverse and obvious.

[Tommy Vietor]

It is just frightening that you would have to actually argue with Stephen Miller that it. Taking away someone's self determination through colonization is bad. Like treating someone as just a. Treating a race or a country as inferior is bad. Extracting their resources is bad. I don't, I don't know that he would agree with me when I, when I said those things. And like the rest of the world is taking this very seriously. Like, the UN Security Council met Monday about the United States. We are condemned by a bunch of our allies. At that meeting. Leaders across Latin America, the Brazilians, the Colombians, Mexicans, especially leftist leaders, they are holding emergency meetings about how to deal with the threat from the United States. The Prime Minister of Denmark has said she thinks the Greenland threat is a serious one. Like, that conversation was kind of tinged with like, oh, he's just, you know, Don being Don, he's trolling, whatever. Like you said, like, the social media idiots were just like, having fun with it. No, I don't think so. I think everyone in Panama is probably thinking, oh, that all that Panama Canal talk, that was pretty serious. Like, we are still in the midst of a diplomatic and economic rupture with Canada because Trump kept threatening to annex their country. And like, everything what he just did in Venezuela is terrifying people around the planet.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's also, I think I remember, I can't remember if this is the 2016 or 2020 campaign or whatever it was, but there was like oh, Trump's trying to take us back to the 1950s. Remember that was the thing, you know, Hillary said it or Biden said it, I can't remember. But this is way beyond, this is way before that. Where this is like, this is even like before 1800s, 1800s. I mean, this is like, you know, the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. That, that is the, that is the Trump Miller worldview. And it's not, it's also ceding some power and influence to China and Russia in this. Like, China gets to control Asia. Russia.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's the question.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's the question, can Russia, does Russia control Europe? And then we get the Western hemisphere. But it's like, so it is not a world anymore of, it's not a rules based international order anymore. There is no international law. It's just the strongest company, the strongest countries with the most nukes get to divide up the world and hopefully then once the world is divvied up, Trump and Xi and Putin, you know, can get along pretty well.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Saying that this is our hemisphere and that's your hemisphere is actually a much weaker position for you.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, Vance says this in one of his various defenses about how like, I don't think living in a palace in Caracas should protect you from, from the law. I don't think that lends you any special legitimacy. I actually think there's some truth to that. Right. Like, no, like claiming you own a country, that you run a country, even though you stole the election. Like, I, I actually don't believe that makes you legitimate. I believe in democracy. I believe in those things.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But like, the question is what to do about that.

[Jon Lovett]

The question is what to do about that.

[Tommy Vietor]

Justify killing 80 Venezuelans, of course, 30 Cubans on the ground.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, the reason you say that, you say, well, what does lend legitimacy? And it's a legal order, a rules based order that we defend that has certain values and precepts in which people, which, which individuals with the most power don't get to decide what happens.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Letting the opposition that was the rightful winners of the election take power, that would be one.

[Jon Lovett]

Or even suggesting that you're doing it on their behalf, which of course they don't. And the reason that's important is not just because it's right and just and all the rest. And I actually find people saying like, oh, this is going to be permission for China to go into Iran or Russia to do more in Ukraine, they've already taken that permission because they don't believe in these Rules.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I think that, I think it's different. I think for the Russians, they have gotten every signal they ever could have wanted that Ukraine can be theirs, at least 20% of it, maybe more. The China piece is an open question, I think. Like, I think Trump would trade away Taiwan for an economic deal. We don't know that yet. It gets a little more complicated when we're talking about like the Senkaku Islands, like some disputed territory between them and Japan, a treaty ally of ours. What happens then?

[Jon Lovett]

But the point I'm making is, yes, I agree with that. My point is only that these are other places that do believe in a power based system. And perhaps the only reason they're not going into Taiwan is because they're worried about the consequences. But the, the deal we made and what made our system attractive and by the way, one argument that the Soviets made and that, that our enemies made in the Cold War was that our ideology was inherently expansionary because freedom is expansionary and, and democracy is expansionary because we believe it is something fundamental people deserve. And the deal we offer, right, is you get to become part of this order. And not only will you be protected by our power, you'll be protected by these rules. These rules will be good for you because you will be safe inside of them. And when we attack that, we attack the things thing that allowed us to become not only like this hegemon, but also incredibly wealthy because we built a system in which you didn't need as many walls, which meant you could have trade and you could have bridges and all the rest that came along with the success of America of half a century, unprecedented in human history.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I think that the, the aging of that system and the failures of that system has now left people who are in favor of that system making a lot of arguments about like, but the rules, but the international order, but the institutions. Right. And this is that, this is the, this is the need for a renewal of that argument because the arguments that start crazy on their side become like their main open public arguments. Like in the 2028 primary on the Republican side, if there is one, like they're going to be making the case that, like, what's so bad about a world where Russia and China and the United States split up the world and there's, and they, and the strong countries make sure that the weak countries don't cause any trouble and everyone lives in peace. What's so bad about that? And like, we're gonna have to have an argument.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The other part of this I was Thinking about, I don't know if Tom, if you remember this, but like, for whatever reason, it came to mind, because maybe it was in Los Angeles, Remember when there was the Summit of the Americas in 2022 and Biden decided not to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba? And then there was this revolt by Mexico and a few other countries and those leaders refused to come. And this summit that was supposed to be about American leadership in the region became a story about conflict and American weakness and Biden's fecklessness. And in the story, Kamala is on the phone begging the head of Guatemala to come to the United States. And it was just pathetic. It was just pathetic. And I, like, I look at all this and I say, all right, I am against regime change, wars, I am against this kind of like empire, but what is the Democrat? What is this? What is like the policy that Democrats offer? Like, what do we say about what it means for us?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And not just Democrats as in the Democratic Party, but like pro democracy forces, liberal democracies all over the country. Because, I mean, you mentioned the UN too. And my mind went to like, oh, did the. Is the UN gonna write some strongly worded letters? Because we have, like the UN has become toothless at this point.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, I mean, yeah. Were they gonna censor us at the Security Council? We're gonna veto it, right? It's like just silly.

[Jon Lovett]

So bunch of people saying illegal.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, no, but it's bad. I mean, we, like, you know, every once in a while you look in the mirror and like, am I the baddie? And like, we're, we're pretty friendly there. And like before people. Well, actually me, like, I. The Obama administration made a bunch of mistakes. And like, I'm talking about this from the experience of watching the Libya operation and thinking it was launched with good intentions to prevent Gaddafi's forces from massacring everyone in eastern Libya. And then watching over the years as how it is unraveled, it has led to a horrible security situation for people in Libya, but also destabilized all of Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East. I mean like, these are these things. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you have no idea what is going to happen. And I think all the triumphalism on day one of regene change operation is so shortsighted and stupid and it feels like a rock all over again. The oil was going to pay for itself kind of bullshit arguments are just like everywhere. And I just. It's hard to. It's hard to watch this happen.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And all of that is true, and I completely agree with you. I think the. There is a difference, too, which is a lot of times debates over the use of force and whether to get involved are, like, tough calls. I think Libya was a difficult call, and I think you're right. It turned out like a fucking disaster. But, you know, Gaddafi was, like, in the process of massacring his people, and, you know, so it was like, do we stop it? Is that gonna get worse if we stop it? Or is it gonna be worse if we don't do anything? Right? And you can go through all the different interventions like that, and some are. Should have been easier calls than others, for sure. But this one is like, no, no, no, no. We just want the oil.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's no national security insurance.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

We just want the oil.

[Tommy Vietor]

The rationale changes every other day. Sometimes it's fentanyl, sometimes. Sometimes it's Hezbollah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Or now. Yeah, or now. Which I do. You hear Steve Bannon was like, I don't fucking know what Rubio was talking about with Hezbollah. He's off message there. We got to bake it about the. Because then, now Bannon's.

[Tommy Vietor]

By the way, he was opposed to this, and now he's like, oh, it was masterful.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But it is the. The oil thing. And now it's the. We want to control the Western Hemisphere. Now they're just going for broken.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And that's the Don Road doctrine. I mean, that was in the national security strategy. So we all, like, in some sense, should have seen this coming. I. I am like, I know we're gonna talk about the politics for Trump. I. I think, you know, I know you wanted to talk about the polling there, too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's do it. Let's do that. It's, you know, it's obviously, like, too early to know how all the politics are going to shake out, but early clues in some polls. We love polls. A Reuters poll out Monday found only 33% support for the operation and 72% worried that the U.S. will become, quote, too involved in Venezuela. The Washington Post conducted a poll by text message of a thousand Americans that was about evenly split on the question of the US sending the military to capture Maduro, with 42% opposed and 40% supportive. Though more lopsided on the question of whether Trump should have gotten authorization from Congress, 63% said he should have. And Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela and choose a new government, which only 24% support. To me, that's, like, the key number. You also have your Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Candace Owens and Thomas Massey's out there criticizing this, which is driving a new round of, you know, is the MAGA base dividing over this? What do you guys make of the politics on this issue for Trump and for other Republicans? And you can take it separately if you want. Is this something that further divides MAGA or brings Republicans together?

[Tommy Vietor]

So I'm very worried about the political lesson that Trump is going to take away from this operation and from the Iran strikes, no matter what the polling eventually says. Because so far there has been no cost to him politically, right, from like relatively limited military actions, at least terms of time frame, like no US Service members were killed. Congress hasn't done shit about it. Most voters probably don't know this is happening, right? Like most people. Just as crazy it is to people listen to this show or just checked out. And so meanwhile, Trump himself is surrounded by hardline, anti Maduro, anti Cuba forces. Every time he's in Mar? A Lago Bibi Netanyahu visits him like every other day wherever he is. And I fear that Trump is going to take these military actions, love the wall to wall press coverage, love being told how bold and daring he was and historic this action was, and then decide that, you know what, I actually love intervention. I love like helping the Delta Force guys solve our problems. And that could mean like he said earlier, like toppling or doing something else to topple the Cuban government, maybe does something to fuck around in Colombia. He's already threatening airstrikes in Iran if the Iranian regime cracks down on protesters. We've talked about Greenland.

[Jon Lovett]

He did airstrikes in Nigeria over the.

[Tommy Vietor]

Break, air strikes Nigeria over the break, like for no reason. And so, you know, look, if, if these, encourage these military actions are limited to like one night of airstrikes and he walks away. I honestly, I don't think there will be a MAGA revolt. I think they'll mostly be fine with it, even though he's basically adopted the Lindsey Graham foreign policy after years of calling him like a bloodthirsty lunatic neocon warmonger. But if this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem. And that's already showing up in the polling. 70% of people are like, what do you mean? Run Venezuela, we don't want that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You're right though. He's very. Because he's a TV president. I mean he said he's like, oh, I was watching the whole operation on tv. He does think he's playing video games. And so these interventions because everyone's like, oh, the hypocrisy of, you know, he said he was gonna be a peace president, but he's doing all this war. Well, in his mind, probably. What he doesn't like is quagmires. Right where we're spending a lot of money and we lose a whole bunch of American lives.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or lose, period.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Or lose, period.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's where Americans land on wars. We don't like losing. We don't like looking humiliated.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And Donald Trump, the TV president who just watched politics on tv, that is where he is. And so he thinks to himself now that he's got all his toys because he's in the White House, well, I can bomb this one and that one and fire this and, you know, airstrike here, and I look strong and it gets me some good headlines, and then that's it. I mean, I don't. When people say, oh, is he gonna send in American troops to Venezuela? Like, I can't see him. Who knows? We could. Who knows what will happen? Hope this doesn't happen. But, like, I can't see him sending in a huge ground force in Venezuela if things go bad there. I can see him just being like, meh, let it.

[Jon Lovett]

Why is he leaving? I mean, he's leaving.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Who cares? Let them deal with it.

[Jon Lovett]

He's leaving the crime regime in place in part because he doesn't want to put troops on the ground. I think he draws a hard line between. I think military interventions that include troops are very different to him than just bombing or raids like this. I think he views the raids. This is exciting and daring. And luckily, nobody was killed on the American side. So it looks like a perfect success to him. And air raid, you know, he soleimani the most recent strikes in Iran. Like, he'll keep doing that. Yeah. I think the question is, what happens if this doesn't go as planned? And all of a sudden there's chaos in the streets and the only way you can get what you claimed you were getting is with troops. What happens there? And I agree with you. I think he is extremely reluctant to deploy American troops.

[Tommy Vietor]

That is the big question. Like, what happens if Delsey Rodriguez, the acting president, says fuck you, and doesn't let Exxon get access to the oil field Donald Trump wants? He said, like, the. The stakes for her could be even worse than Maduro. Was he threatening to kill her? Because that's sure what it sounded like to me. What if there's some rogue general in the Venezuelan military who stages a coup, you know, like Pulta Chavez Are we going to re. Intervene then to disrupt that? What if like the FARC or the ELN or one of these groups like just does a bunch of things to make political instability? So there's just, you know, it's chaos down there. There's more migration. Like things get worse. There's just so many ways that could break badly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

If I'm, if I'm Trump and that happens, I send in another round of airstrikes and then say, let them deal with it, screw it. And then the migration problem that you're talking about is real. But it happens, you know, then, then he closes the borders and he gets tough on migrants, right? I even like God fucking forbid that there is some kind of a terrorist attack either here or abroad against Americans and American interests. Even then he's going to be like, well, that's not my fault. That's the fault of this, these foreigners, that's why we got to bomb them more, right? I mean, this is what happens.

[Tommy Vietor]

But like most of it, like, like something like 8 million Venezuelans have left the country. I mean, Hugo Chavez and Maduro ran the country into the ground. I think they, their GDP was cut by like 75%. People were impoverished. They went from the richest country. Most of the people there, yeah, impoverished. Most of the people who left Venezuela though, went to Colombia or Ecuador or Panama or Brazil or other countries in the region. Like if more people flow out of Venezuela, it's going to destabilize the entire all of South America and reverberate in ways that we just can't see right now. In the same way, like we didn't see in the early days of the Syrian Civil war the way it would lead to like the rise of right wing neo Nazi parties in Germany, you know, a decade later.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So yeah, that happens. And suddenly the Don Roe Doctrine ends at the southern border.

[Tommy Vietor]

Not so good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What are you talking about? The southern right. I meant the quadrant. So Democrats, unsurprisingly have been roundly critical of this. But, but obviously because it's the Democratic Party, there's some drama. Axios had a story about some Democrats having misgivings about this whole thing. They quoted three centrist and or vulnerable House members anonymously, of course.

[Tommy Vietor]

Emotionally vulnerable.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, yeah, emotionally vulnerable. And they courageously went on background here. One of them said to Axios, quote, I think it looks weak. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. Another said, quote, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. And then another, the Third one said, maduro is bad. Glad he is gone. You can't have it both ways. Anyone want to respond to the. To the centrist House Democrats?

[Jon Lovett]

Not really.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, I just think, like, there's no doubt that Maduro is a bad guy. He's corrupt, he stole elections, he locked up the opposition.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's no doubt that the US Military is the most dominant fighting force in the world. They will win every battle we put them up against. But what I'd say to this House Democrat is like, you have no idea if this was a win for our country. No one does. We can't tell the future. It felt like a win when Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hole. How'd that turn out? It felt like a win when Gaddafi was toppled. How did that turn out? Right, like, again, Trump has said, we want to run the country of Venezuela.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Going forward to take their oil. To take their oil, and left the regime in place of the guy he just replaced. If you can't look at that and say what Seth Moulton said, which was, this is.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is crazy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Seth Moulton was great. He said, this is insane. What the hell are we doing?

[Jon Lovett]

Yes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That to me, that's everyone that should be. Everyone's right. Ruben Gallego was out there. He was excellent.

[Jon Lovett]

Cory Booker had a good statement.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Cory Booker, what did you guys think of the other Democrats who are out there from the statements you've seen?

[Jon Lovett]

I thought the Cory Booker statement, I think, stood out, if only because it put it in the broader context of what got us to this moment, which is a completely slovenly and pathetic Republican Congress that has not been willing to assert its constitutional authority in any way at any time. Right. Donald Trump couldn't even do the courtesy of the briefing the leaders of the Intelligence Committee and the leaders of Congress the way you would about a covert operation they're claiming, because those people would leak. Meanwhile, he's telling us he told the oil companies advance, or at least they may have known it was coming. Although I think that's probably him. Just who knows what he fucking means. But regardless, like, the reason we are in a situation where Donald Trump feels so emboldened is because he knows that he will face no accountability from Republicans in Congress. And so I do think when people go out there and say, like, this was illegal, this was illegal, it sounds pretty feckless and silly because to who and to what end? And so what? And at least pointing out, like, there is a world in which we have a Congress that's willing to hold an Administration accountable is a world in which doing illegal things could have consequences.

[Tommy Vietor]

Unilaterally launching a regime change war is a bad idea. We know this from a lot of pretty recent history, and I don't think we should be scared to make that case. I also think, like, just the key on these statements is to make it bigger. Like, Seth Moulton was great. Like, this is insane. Mark Warner made strong points about China and Russia. He talked about the hypocrisy of pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the actual narco kingpin from Honduras that Trump just gave a pardon to. Tim Kaine was good. Thomas Masti was strong. But, like, again, go big. Like, this is not about whether Maduro was a good guy or a bad guy. There are a lot of bad leaders in the world. We are not going to depose them all. I thought we'd agreed that we don't want to be America's policeman. And then you start to wonder, okay, how are we picking and choosing? Why aren't you deposing Kim Jong Un? Well, it's because of Trump getting love letters from him, but also because he has nukes.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

So if we want every country that is scared of us to suddenly race to get a nuclear weapon, like, this is a great way to do it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And by the way, also just pardoning the Honduran leader who was a drug trafficker. Right. Like, just the lack of any standard, any. Any kind of ideology behind any of this is just. It's all so capricious and dangerous.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I totally understand focusing. If you're a Democrat in Congress, focusing your ire on Trump not going to Congress, you are in Congress. It's your job. It's your prerogative. I think that is important. I do think that when something like this happens, the focus. The focus of the statement at the beginning is just, what do you think of this exactly? Because I did see a lot of, like, you know, throat clearing about the congressional authorization. But then you can tell they're too scared to say that this was just a bad fucking idea. And it's like, you know what? Donald Trump's never going to Congress. It's not happening. And we don't control Congress. Democrats don't control Congress anyway, and Republicans are shameless. So the most important thing you can do right now is to help shape the public debate by telling people exactly why this is such a fucking horrible idea. You know, that to me is like, number one.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. But this is where I do, like, I know it sounds. I, Like, I was like, actually before we even recorded I was like, am I just like, is this a bias that I have to just like, think about the ways in which Joe Biden failed? But, but I do think that like, one of the reasons you see Democrats kind of like unmoored a little bit. I do think for the most part people have been critical and this is a few random people speaking on, on background. But I do think there is a kind of. Well, when they say it's weak, what they're really getting at is, well, Maduro was bad and it would be a better world if Maduro wasn't in power and that that election had, had been allowed to carry through to the, to the, to the rightful winner. What did Democrats do to make that happen? There was Democratic backsliding in South America while Joe Biden was president, while claiming all of these values, claiming to speak for all of these values. So what is a full throated, like, moral, righteous policy that Democrats would embrace that doesn't seem kind of feckless and weak in the face of authoritarian rule, of, of China's expansion, of Russia's expansion? Because I, I don't know the answer, I'm not an expert, but like, that does seem missing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think the challenge is, you know, military action, things getting blown up. It looks strong, it looks decisive. And Democrats have all these scars from the Iraq war in 2003 and, you know, thinking that like, military actions automatically coded as strong and diplomacy is weak. But I just think voters are actually smarter than that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And like, so, like, you know, where they should have scars for all the ones who cast the vote in favor of Bush's war, which is a vote that haunted most of them for their political careers.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly. And like, you know, to your point about the kind of mealy mouth, process focused statements, like a lot of Democrats made those kind of statements about the Iraq war and they were like, well, actually what I voted for was for him to go back to the UN with firmer footing. And it's like, guys, history is not going to remember you that way. Are you for this? Are you against it? Are you for the Don Roe Doctrine and the next phase of toppling the Cubans and the Colombians and taking Greenland and Panama and whatever else.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And I would also say, like, this, to me is an easier one. And I know Dan wrote about this in his message box. This is an easier one than the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites. For Democrats, which some Democrats were like, it's good that he did that because that was about, okay, there are these nuclear sites. We bombed them. Did we get them all, do we not? That's, you know, the question. But the Trump administration told us after the Maduro raid that it wasn't really about Maduro, it's about the oil.

[Tommy Vietor]

So Iran with a nuke threatens us. People can die. If Iran is a nuke, there's no threat to the United States from Maduro. They're trying to call Fentanyl a wmd.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But yeah, this whole thing is like Maduro is a bad guy. But they're not saying that it's because Maduro was a bad guy. That's not, that's not what they're saying. Because Maduro didn't give them the fucking oil.

[Jon Lovett]

The regime's still in place. The same group of people, they're down one guy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I will say too, I haven't seen a lot of 28 contenders that have put out statements. Pritzker, I saw tweeted Gallego, all the ones in Congress said something because it's Congress. A little quiet out there from the rest of them. Kamala had. Yeah, that's right. Kamala did.

[Jon Lovett]

And we think of her as a 2028 candidate.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

For now. For now we do. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The other part of it, I just. What would have this. Like, as you both were going back and forth about how quickly we able to exploit the oil reserves of Venezuela, I was thinking what would this show have been about otherwise? Right. And what would we have been talking about today? And it would be our next bucket. But it just like, like he has decided that he wanted us all like he, he did. He chose this. He chose the timing of this. We're all now talking about this. Rather than the failure on to get any kind of Obamacare extension through the failure to attack any of the problems he claimed he was going to attack. And like that doesn't go away. Yeah, he gets a couple days of, of tough guy bomb guy news stories.

[Tommy Vietor]

But like the, the, the apparently he.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Wanted it, he wanted it to happen on Christmas Day because he likes the dates. But then there's some, some weather stuff and they had to, they basically the weather sort of in the, in the conditions. And the political reality is also kind of like it was wet and it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was windy and you can't fly helicopters in that kind of weather.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But it.

[Tommy Vietor]

What a dickhead. There's a lot of service members and government officials who have to work when you invade a country and do it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

On Christmas just because I guess it's my fucking consolation prize. I'll bomb Nigeria instead because I couldn't get the Venezuela thing done on Christmas.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

Speaking of Democrats, Tim Walls made a surprise announcement on Monday that he will be ending his campaign to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota. Walt said that he decided to step aside because of the political attacks he's been facing over a massive social services fraud scandal in his state that's become a MAGA obsession and spawned all kinds of right wing conspiracies. We covered the fraud scandal briefly in a previous episode. I honestly can't even remember when, but we did. But basically a nonprofit stole tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funding from the government by saying the money was going to meals for kids. It was called Feed Our Future. It was the nonprofit.

[Jon Lovett]

And some futures were pretty handsomely fed.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Not, not the correct ones, but yeah. Biden's DOJ investigated. Dozens of people were indicted in 2022, so this is an old one. Many were convicted and Walls announced new oversight policies. Then right after Walls announced his reelection bid in September. This September, Trump's DOJ announced investigations into other Minnesota social services programs. And they are currently arguing that as much as 9 billion may have been stolen. And so far 90 people have been charged altogether, both in the Feed Our Future original case, but then there have been a couple other cases. All these investigations are kind of blurring together, but they are separate cases. But what made this an even bigger deal in MAGA world is that most of the people who've been charged are Somali Americans. And then the day after Christmas, a right wing influencer named Nick Shirley released a video that's since gone viral where he made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about alleged fraud at Somali run daycare centers in Minnesota that he visited that led to the Trump administration announcing a freeze in childcare funding nationwide while they investigate as well as just a general freakout on the right among everyone from Donald Trump and Elon Musk to nearly every Republican and conservative influencer. It was just like the couple days on, on Twitter and online and on YouTube before Venezuela were just. This is all they were talking about, including by Elon Musk, who has jumped back into posting about politics. Calls for all Somali American citizens to be denaturalized and deported, including Ilhan Omar and for Tim Walls to go to jail and be tried for Treason. That was one that. That Elon Musk also promoted. Trump continued the attack in response to the Walls news on Monday and accused the governor and Ilhan Omar of, quote, stealing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, which, of course, isn't true at all. Now that Walls is out, Amy Klobuchar may jump into the race where she may have the honor of facing my pillow guy, Mike Lindell, if they both win their respective primaries.

[Jon Lovett]

Amy Klobuchar holding a hairbrush tapping against her hand as a bunch of fraudsters come and bring cash back to the governor's mansion and just put it in front. That's awesome. I think that's cool.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That is cool.

[Jon Lovett]

She'll clean it up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, she should do that. What do you guys make of the fraud story and the MAGA obsession over it?

[Jon Lovett]

So there was fraud. It was very serious. The people that committed the fraud should go to jail. Many of them have. Not only that, they've recovered tens of millions of dollars. Well, not all of it. Can't recover all of it, but they've tried to recover a lot of the money. That's what you do. You find people who committed crimes and prosecute them. You don't punish communities because we don't believe in collective punishment. If just because somebody that committed a crime is the same ethnicity as you doesn't make you in any way whatsoever responsible. That was sort of a, to me, a kind of status quo ante that I came to the table with, but apparently others no longer have it. Also, there was so much pandemic fraud. There was so much. This is one example.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

This is the top of the list.

[Jon Lovett]

Now, sure, I get maybe.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe the PPP fraud.

[Jon Lovett]

PPP fraud.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Very huge. That's like way up there as well.

[Tommy Vietor]

Too.

[Jon Lovett]

Tons of other small business administration fraud. Remember, there was. There are all kinds of reports about people taking millions of dollars from the government, really wealthy people taking millions upon millions of dollars from the government. But this is what they care about. This is what they're focused on. Why? Because it affects a community of immigrants they don't like. And so they are making this the issue. Does that mean that it wasn't a situation in which, given the scale of the theft, it shouldn't have been caught earlier? Or I guess more to the point, once it was seemingly exposed, stopped earlier. Like, what were the reasons it was allowed to continue? Some of that is legal and judicial, but some of it clearly is administrative. Like, these are all really important. Ask them. We don't support fraud, but the idea that now this pain needs to be visited on every daycare in the country or every Somali immigrant is just, it's just racist.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, it really is. Combining the two passions right now of like the. Because Elon and like the all in boys were all over this. And it's like their thing is, is, you know, Doge 2.0. They want this to be Doge 2.0. Even though when they were running Doge 1.0 they didn't seem to find any of this fraud.

[Tommy Vietor]

Weren't so good at doging.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

No, they weren't so good at dojing. But now they're back and they are saying things now like, most of your tax dollars now go to fraud. The government is just one big 30% of all your tax dollars go to fraud. Now this is the greatest scandal in the history. If we just cut out the fraud in the government, we would balance the budget and no one under $500,000 would have to pay any taxes anymore. This is the shit that they're all pushing. And then you've got Stephen Miller pushing the like, oh, this is a great way to show that any immigrant in this country, even those who've become citizens, are bad and should be deported.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think it's sort of like a three part MAGA obsession. And yes, the fraud is, it's horrendous. Right? It's a ton of money, like billions of dollars at all. So it's like you're pretending to feed hungry kids. You're pretending to provide services to kids with autism. Like, fuck these disgusting. Lock them up, throw them away forever. Make sure it can never happen again. The MAGA obsession, I think it's like one, it happened in a blue state.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

So you can blame Democrats and you can blame. And you could use it to attack the social safety net and the welfare state generally.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that is part of their project. You attack the value of government in service of slashing taxes for the richest people in the country. That's like, like Republican 101 second because you know, it's a bunch of Somali descent. People of Somali descent are, have been arrested. That gets right the Stephen Miller, like nativist going. It also gets the racist going. And then third, like social media algorithms are designed to explode stories like this, especially on Twitter. Like if you, if, if a right wing, anti migrant, anti, you know, liberal video appears on Twitter, Elon Musk is going to find it and retweet it and respond to it and juice the fuck out of its reach. And then I think journalists scroll past that video and they see like 170 million views. A totally made up number by the way. I do not believe a single metric that man puts out on about view counts on social media or his businesses or whatever. But then they decide like, oh, this has been under discussed. This has been ignored by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, like Google three weeks earlier, a month earlier, the New York Times had a bunch of really great reporting about this fraud. Minnesota news outlets have been covering the story.

[Jon Lovett]

Often they say, why won't the media cover this story? I learned about from the media. Yeah, the, the other part of it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Too in the Justice Department, which has been on the case since 2022.

[Tommy Vietor]

Exactly.

[Jon Lovett]

The other part of this too is I do think like one of the reasons there should have been more enforcement and checking is because it was a pandemic emergency and they were trying to A, get money out the door and B, they were worried about sending. They worried about people interacting. Like that was part of a lot of the decisions that were being made in the early days of the pandemic to try to kind of of help people in the crisis. And part of what we're seeing is just a desire to rewrite the history of COVID which is all of this was unnecessary. All of it was fake. The social distancing, the protection, the need for people to stay home, which is why people couldn't work. All of it was manufactured. Right. Like that is part of this too, the erasing what was happening during COVID.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The other thing that feeds into this is, you know, I saw that Tim Halls gave an interview back when this happened in like 2022 and someone in his, I believe it was Department of Education or Health and Human Services, whatever it was there in the state, like flagged the irregularities and they were like, we're going to have to stop this. And then they got feeding our future, sued them and then in court and said it's because they were racist, that they were trying to do this, which is even more disgusting.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So that's feeding into now. Now the right takes. That is like Tim Walls fucked up because he. No, no, the Walls administration actually tried to stop it earlier and then there was a corridor, it was like a whole.

[Jon Lovett]

But this feeds, I do think this feeds into a. Like, like what is the kind of deeper critique from the right that they want Americans to absorb, which is Democrats are afraid of being called racist and they'd rather money go out fraudulently than deal with racism. And by the way, like, I don't think that that is a totally unfair allegation in some cases. Right. Like, there is absolutely Democrats who are afraid to attack a problem like this because they were afraid of being called racist.

[Tommy Vietor]

Certainly this auditor who reached out to these communities was like, look, if you don't want to see headlines all over the place calling you racist for targeting our, you know, nonprofit, then, you know, let us going. I do think it's really important for Democrats. There's, you're seeing a lot of, like, what about.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is.

[Tommy Vietor]

What about ism? Well, actually, look at Trump, look at the crypto corruption. And that is 100% right. And it is totally valid. There's this most corrupt White House we've ever seen. I do think Democrats, we need to take this really seriously first. Lean into prosecuting the hell out of the perpetrators. Like, fix the oversight problems, fix the social safety net challenges. Because like, like this is like when healthcare.gov went down.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like if you, if you want to sell people on the role of government in your lives, being good and helpful and being worth your tax dollars, like, we have to go that extra mile. Whereas Republicans have a much easier task, which is they just attack, attack, attack, and then say, I see government's worthless. Let's drown in a bathtub, cut your taxes.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Couldn't be more.

[Jon Lovett]

When Kathleen Sebelius opened up that computer and there was just an exhausted pterodactyl trying to connect the wires, that was such a bummer.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. You don't, you know, as a Democrat, like, you don't care about fraud because it's an issue that Republicans are going to attack you with. You care about it because if you want to prop. Like this, that change people's lives, like, you have to, you have to make sure that people trust you with their tax dollars. Right. Like when the, the better example of that is the Recovery Act. Remember, we, like, made a big show of appointing Joe Biden as the, Remember, he was like the Inspector general. He was going to make sure that none of the money was wasted on the Recovery Act. And, you know, they found like, there's a million. How. How much money? They found Solyndra. Right. And that was like the big thing. But we took that seriously because we're like, if this much money is going out the door, you better fucking believe we're going to make sure that it's not wasted and that there's not fraud. And I do think that's an important, like, you know, lessons for Democrats to learn as they're proposing policies.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. The Energy Department loan program that Solyndra was a part of ultimately turned a Profit.

[Jon Lovett]

But I can't the idea that if you're going to bet on betting on companies that some of them are going to go down, but on the whole, it's going to work. That whole, like Solyndra was not any, I don't want to do a Solyndra thing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

A guy with, a guy with a cool car startup ended up benefiting.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, he did. Okay.

[Jon Lovett]

What was that guy's name?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah, I don't know where he went.

[Tommy Vietor]

Okay.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

What do you guys think about Walls's decision and, and Klobuchar jumping in the race? Possibly.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, look, I, I respect anyone who like decides that for the good of, you know, the team to step back.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

When there's time. Yeah. You know, not referencing anything specific here, but you know.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, for sure. Well, why not? I think it's better than, yeah. Other people hanging on. But the, yeah, like I, I, I do think it's a little bit of an admission against interest here. Right. Because he's saying it's because of right wing attacks and that it's important to continue fighting right wing attacks, but you're also conceding to them by stepping aside. And I've seen some people say some version of I can't believe Tim Waltz is giving into this kind of right wing attack. And I think two things can be true. One is there's a lot of unfair shit being circulated, a lot of ways in which it's being exploited completely unfairly. But also he's the governor of the state and this was a massive fraud. And the scale of it compared to what they expect expected the program to be is just so gobsmacking that I understand why he would step aside, but.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It'S clear he cares about, cares about the seat, cares about the state and that he wants a Democrat to win that and he thought it would be harder to do for, you know, reasons that are fair or unfair.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And then on Klobuchar, just so people know, so there, if she runs in 26 and she wins, there's also a Minnesota Senate race right now. There's a primary with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Representative Angie Craig. And so that's for Senate. And then if Klobuchar wins and she wins as governor, she would be able to appoint her replacement in the Senate. That would then be up in 28, I believe. And she also wouldn't have to get rid of, she wouldn't have to step down from her Senate seat. So it's a freebie if she wants to run and then if she loses, then she'd go back to the Senate.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I wonder how that affects the primary. If you let that primary play out or you sort of. Because now there's an extra slot.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

There's an extra slot. Yeah. I guess you let it play out and then maybe potentially the loser of that primary could be appointed by a potential governor, Klobuchar. So we'll see. Getting ahead of ourselves there.

[Tommy Vietor]

Strong candidate. I mean, I also think Walls stepping back probably speaks to how miserable politics is if you get in like Trump's glare, like the eye of Sauron. I mean, do you guys see like over the weekend, Trump retruth, some video that had basically alleged that Tim Walls had had some r role in the murder of Melissa Hortman. Oh, my God. The Minnesota state legislator who was killed along with her husband last year. I mean, sick, sick stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Because she spoke out about immigration or something. I think about the scan. I think she spoke out about the fraud and was like one of the few Democrats. And so this has been, I remember they, this was going around when she was first murdered that like, maybe this was a left wing person because she took this unpopular stance among Democrats. It's crazy.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, her kids were like begging Trump to remove the video. And as far as I can tell, he's not. He's just the cruelest person on the planet.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, so we knew this was going to happen because of where the deadline fell. But the Department of Justice released the first big batch of Epstein documents on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week. And we haven't had a chance to talk about it because we were like, peace out. See you later. The new law gave the Department of Justice until December 19th to release what they have on Epstein that day. They posted a searchable database containing hundreds of thousands of files and including redacted documents, emails, photos and more, most of which lack context or order. Some of the, quote unquote highlights from the trove. Photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, investigations into 10 co conspirators of Epstein's, and revelations that Trump, despite claiming otherwise, flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times in the 90s. However, DOJ admitted that it hadn't been able to get through all the files by the deadline. And there were reports just before New Year's that they're trying to borrow at least 400 government lawyers to help process over 5 million more Epstein documents.

[Tommy Vietor]

It could bum a lawyer off you. It's such a weird way to phrase it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Clearly they're not doing A lot of work in the rest of the government. They're lawyers, right? Not a lot of legal. Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

And also they were doing a terrible job redacting because apparently you could just highlight the black text and get the actual information.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Any takeaways from the documents that we've seen from you guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, you highlighted the three big ones I took away. Like, it's pretty notable that this federal prosecutor was flagging in January of 2020 that Trump was on Epstein's jet many, many more times. Why was he sending that email? What was he doing on that plane? The ten co conspirators point seems to completely contradict Cash Patel's claim. There was no client list or other group of people that he could have charged. And then I think you just come away thinking like, the FBI screwed up this case so unbelievably badly over the course of decades because there's all these credible tips and witness testimony, even including from like the sister of one of the victims that could have been used to arrest Jeffrey Epstein so much earlier. And they just completely screwed up.

[Jon Lovett]

The fact that this all begins with Palm beach police basically having this guy on sexual abuse of minors from the jump, from the beginning, multiple victims, and that it never moves forward. It gets pled down from the beginning and never leads to anything else. The other thing that jumped out to me, first of all, the fact that he was on the plane that many times was news to me. Maybe I didn't know if I had a real view of it before, but I suppose I had internalized that he hadn't been on the plane because there just hadn't been evidence of it. We hadn't seen it. He denied it outright.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The first we heard of it was Susie Wiles saying it.

[Tommy Vietor]

So, yeah, he's on manifest in that interview.

[Jon Lovett]

And the fact that he was one of the people that was just, just on the plane over the time, there are people that had just a rationale of like, of course he wasn't on the Epstein plane. That's not his style. He would fly himself. He wouldn't go to a place like that. He would do things like there was just a whole story about how Donald Trump wasn't on the plane. That's a lie. Many, many times.

[Tommy Vietor]

Do you also do the Wall Street Journal article that Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a frequent visitor at the Mar A Lago spa, the spa would send young women to his house on house calls for massages?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I mean, it is if you're wondering, like, why is Trump trying so hard to Cover this up. Why has he tried so hard to cover this up for so long? That does not where the explanation is not that he was in on it, that he was, you know, participating in this. It's that there's so much bad behavior from him around it being on the plane. Marjorie Taylor Greene said over the break too, that Trump told her his friends would get in trouble, friends of his would get in trouble if the files came out. This whole thing about the Mar a Lago, right, like, there's enough behavior that's maybe not chargeable, criminal or, you know, but like, pretty fucking embarrassing part of the problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, the COVID up.

[Jon Lovett]

Exactly. The COVID up has always had to be the second worst outcome for Donald Trump. I will say also one other part of it is just as a sort of a. Whatever. A silver lining to the Epstein cloud is only that Donald Trump does not believe he has the power to cover this, this up. They don't believe they can delete the stuff, erase this stuff. That there's too many people that are not loyal to Donald Trump that have the information, which is why they feel so stuck. Right. Like if they. They would obviously love to shred this. They would obviously love to make this disappear. They have no compunction about. They're not into records retention, but they are trapped. Because inside of DOJ, it is not MAGA1 one inch down. It is a bunch of people that are not going to go along with a cover up, which is like, I do think a little bit harder.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right. There's plenty of other news from the last two weeks. We haven't had a chance to cover way too much, but we did just want to mention a few items that probably flew under your radar, unless you're one of the real sickos out there. Which is why we asked Crooked's biggest sicko, Elijah Cohn, to help us out. One of Elijah's many rules here is host of Terminally Online, which is our most hilariously unhinged pod for subscribers only. Which is yet another reason you should all become [e-mail] friends. Become a friend of the podcast. Gonna have a lot of new awesome stuff behind the paywall this year. So you're gonna wanna sign up for that.

[Tommy Vietor]

The number one way you could help independent media is to be a subscriber. So if you like the show, please subscribe. If you really, really love the show, go to crooked.com friends consider becoming a Friend of the Pod member.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. And so because Elijah spends his days never taking his eyes off the Internet, he gave Me a list of stories, takes, and tweets. None of them had flown under my radar because I'm just as much of a sicko. But I'm curious how familiar you guys are with some of these.

[Jon Lovett]

I was pretty offline, by the way. And every once in a while, I would. To, like, like, go into my. My phone and I would see that. Like, that. Like, it's. Yeah, well, just. It's also just sort of like realizing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Your head up at Normandy and on Private Ryan, that opening scene. I always think about that with Twitter. It's like they're in. They're under the water, and they go back under the water.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, just sort of like, it's. It's almost like I. Like, you guys just been in the casino the whole time I went to bed.

[Tommy Vietor]

There are definitely days where it's like, you're like, it's been off for, like, two weeks. Having a great time with my kids, like, spending great family time. Saw my mom, saw Hannah's parents. And then you just, like, log it to Twitter and you're like, it is designed to enrage me. And I'm, like, ignoring my daughter to, like, fire off. Who's that? The hedge fund asshole who's Bill Ackman specific.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Stop drafting.

[Jon Lovett]

Stop drafting.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I know I was good until Elon and Chamath and fucking the all in people and Bill Ackman, they all got. They started doing it with the fraud stuff. I was like, I had, like, a good week and a half.

[Jon Lovett]

I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I was out. I was out.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

All right, first one. Did anyone catch the marble armrest story? Does that mean anything to you guys?

[Tommy Vietor]

I actually missed this.

[Jon Lovett]

I missed it.

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't really care about the Kennedy Center.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay, so Donald Trump. Can we put up the. For people who are watching on YouTube? You should all watch on YouTube. Donald Trump decided to post right before Christmas. What's next for the Trump Kennedy center, which is marble armrests? He said nothing's ever been done like this before. It's like, yeah, no shit. Unbelievable. That is the crazy marble armrests.

[Jon Lovett]

Hey, you want a wood. A nice soft wood there or.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or something padded.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. This is what the Venezuelans are gonna have to be pumping oil for. Right?

[Jon Lovett]

I can't believe people don't think he's focused on their problems.

[Tommy Vietor]

I know, I know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Okay, here's a tougher one. If someone asked you what you thought about Gen Z looks, Maxing Influencer Clavicular's take on Gavin Newsom mogging JD Vance in 2028 because Newsom's a chad and Vance is subhuman. What would you say?

[Jon Lovett]

I have to tell you something. I don't know that, that interview. I didn't know about that interview. But I sadly do know all those terms. I do, I do. You. I'm.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm a little too deep in this one, unfortunately. So looks maxing, as I believe when you. It is what it sounds. You just do all the things to make yourself look better, including testosterone injections, plastic surgery, you know, remember the dude who got calf implants on that MTV series?

[Jon Lovett]

I do remember that. Remember the end of that? His cat. He and his caf influence are still alone. He never got that girlfriend.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Vinnie's older brother, who is apparently the.

[Tommy Vietor]

Looks maxing is kind of an ideology that is adjacent to kind of, of white nationalism or the right wing. Because you always see clavicular talking to like Nick Fuentes and their buddies and then clavicular like ran over a guy, hit a guy with his car, over.

[Jon Lovett]

The brain, didn't get prosecuted.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Cybertruck. Yeah, he took a cybertruck.

[Tommy Vietor]

So anyway, so he thinks J.D. vance is ugly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

And we have, we have the clip. Yeah, let's play the clip.

[Jon Lovett]

In like this next election cycle, who's going to win? It's going to be Gavin Newsom against JD Vance because JD Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom mugs.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

JD Vance is subhuman. Yeah. What makes you say that?

[Jon Lovett]

He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's obese, very recessed side profile, whereas newsome is like 63 Chad. So I just want to say that's manly.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

By the way, guy was Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire.

[Jon Lovett]

I want to just conducting that interview. Look, all you people out there with your horoscopes, I just want you to know that you and phrenology are coming into the light together. But yes, the return of phrenology was inevitable in our kind of demon haunted world. But yes, JD Vance has a recessed chin, therefore he does not have what it takes to be a leader.

[Tommy Vietor]

I also saw that guy saying that he takes so much testosterone that he no longer produces it. So I'm not sure that he is able to have sex. Like, look, we've all lived in a world where obviously optics and the looks of a candidate is like seen as part of how they get elected, right? Like Barack Obama's a good looking guy. Like there was all this thing about the tell, the taller candidate always wins. But this guy Seems to have turned looks maxing into a political ideology. And I think that that was new to me in the last couple weeks.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Do you see that Newsom got in on this? Newsom? The Newsom press office account. Just like did he mog him. They posted a picture of JD Vance's face a little fatter than it used than it is today. And not the fake one, the meme. Like an older picture of him when he was a little heavier. Got it. So that's something that happened.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, that's what they do.

[Jon Lovett]

Total chad.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Total chad.

[Jon Lovett]

Try mewing. Total chad. You got to get that mouth tape.

[Tommy Vietor]

Mogging means someone looking significantly better or outshining others in attractiveness, style or confidence that's gathered. Didn't really know that.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Mogging the competition. How about the phrase globo homo?

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, all up.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I give you a hint. It's related to the Maduro raid.

[Jon Lovett]

I do know. Is this about the homo nationalists?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Maybe.

[Tommy Vietor]

Elaborate.

[Jon Lovett]

So there was a report about increasingly right wing gays. Not the right wing gaze where you wish somebody had higher cheekbones and filler lips but. But right wing homosexuals who are embracing anti immigrant rhetoric because they are homonationalists who want to be free to be gay but also don't want to be surrounded by immigrants. That's what I thought. This was related.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Didn't know about that.

[Jon Lovett]

Different thing.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Let's take our friend Tucker Carlson has the.

[Tommy Vietor]

You're not going to believe what this one is.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yeah, I know.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I couldn't go kill Nicolas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility.

[Jon Lovett]

But no one will say that out loud.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Not defending the regime, just saying. And by the way, the US backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is of course pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela. So those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo not crazy, actually.

[Jon Lovett]

What? What's global homo?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Nope, definitely crazy.

[Jon Lovett]

What's global homo?

[Tommy Vietor]

Globo Homo is him thinking there is an international conspiracy to take out Nicolas Maduro because it's a conservative country that didn't allow gay marriage. That's his theory that I guess a super gay deep state forced Donald Trump to launch this military operation to take out Maduro.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Wow.

[Jon Lovett]

Would that. Sadly it wasn't the case. It was the Jews in this case.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Why not?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Why not both?

[Jon Lovett]

Why not both?

[Tommy Vietor]

Remember the kind of like the Megan Kelly Ben Shapiro moment when he was like, I don't give a fuck about Maduro being a conservative. That he was sort of referencing that in the right.

[Jon Lovett]

The idea that. Right, that doesn't matter.

[Tommy Vietor]

Socially conservative.

[Jon Lovett]

That's right, Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's crazy.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Finally.

[Jon Lovett]

Cuz his point by the way was we should remove dictatorships. That's what Ben's point was there.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, Ben's point was like he's a terrible guy. Like we shouldn't like him cuz he's super conservative on social stuff.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Right, right, right. All right. Finally, Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City just after midnight on New Year's Eve and has already increased discourse supply to record levels. Which one of these Mayor Mamdani takes aren't real? 1. One, the buses aren't free yet. Mamdani lied. 2. Mamdani needs to free Maduro. 3. Mamdani defeated Abundance by implementing YIMBY policies.

[Jon Lovett]

Wait, one of those is not real or the two of those are real?

[Tommy Vietor]

I gotta guess what.

[Jon Lovett]

I think the bus one is fake.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think that one's fake too.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

They're all real.

[Tommy Vietor]

They're all real. It's a trick question because I saw in the wild a couple versions of the free Maduro tweet and I was like, okay, amazing. Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

The defeated abundance by implementing. Because he said the word abundance in his speech in his inaugural speech. And so then the lefties were like, yeah, he's basically. He's taking it, he's co opting it because he's now he's using the word but it's like the socialist version of it.

[Jon Lovett]

He's getting democratics. He's hey, you're getting socialism all over my abundance. I wasn't done with that abundance yet. And now you've got your socialism all over it. That's gross.

[Tommy Vietor]

There was another big like abundance dust up right before Christmas. And like I didn't know any of the people involved. But like it's the, the.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I kept thinking, I'm like Tommy is. What did you say on the pundies? As he's so. He was so right.

[Tommy Vietor]

The fever pitch of it like the, the, the rage compared to the stakes.

[Jon Lovett]

We got to build more houses. So much rage. So. Got to build more houses.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah. However we get it done, it's crazy.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'll just be bad about a new book in 2026.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I just, you know, build more houses. Sometimes it's going to be zoning and regulations. Sometimes there's rich people doing some bad shit. I don't know. It's both. What the fuck?

[Jon Lovett]

Just build. Yeah, just build my own problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't even care about the underlying policy.

[Jon Lovett]

Just fight about another book.

[Tommy Vietor]

Let's get another book.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, boy.

[Jon Lovett]

I read the Candy House by Jennifer Egan.

[Tommy Vietor]

You did great.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I love that, though.

[Jon Lovett]

It's a good book.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

It's like. That's one of my favorite books.

[Tommy Vietor]

I've been reading it.

[Jon Lovett]

It's one of the books you've read.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So I'll have five.

[Tommy Vietor]

I've been reading Fort Bragg Cartel. I'll give you a very different window into the Delta Force community. Oh, it's very good.

[Jon Lovett]

Finished. Dead Wake.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, great.

[Jon Lovett]

Really great. Really great. God damn it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

I'm halfway through George Packer's novel the Emergency. I interviewed him on offline and told him I was gonna read the book. And I started it.

[Jon Lovett]

You know, a book I read that I read why Nothing Works.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Oh, yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Is it Dunkelman?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

You got through that. Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

That is the rageless abundance.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

But that's the supercharged abundance. That's the longer abundance. That's an abundant abundance.

[Jon Lovett]

I want to have a conversation with that author about how many times you're going to say the phrase, is it Hamiltonian or is it Jeffersonian? I got it. I got it, man. I'm reading your book. I'm here. You've got me. Stop saying it. It's very niche. Is it worth the read? I'm learning a lot, but how many times you got to reintroduce the thesis?

[Tommy Vietor]

An abundance of these eye.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, there's a thesis abundance. How stupid do you think I am? I'm following your logic, man. Trust me. Like, genuinely getting annoyed at that professor.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm also reading the interesting history of the Intelligence War between East and West.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Wow, you're really.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well, just on Kindle. You flip around.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's keep the escalation going. I'm also reading the Steven Pinker book when everybody knows that. Everybody.

[Tommy Vietor]

Epstein list guy. Good for you. Who else are you celebrating on Epstein's list?

[Jon Lovett]

Everybody did not know that. Who else did not know that? Well, it does not come up. You might find it hard to believe it's not in the book. And also, by the way, before I even knew that, which was. Was at this moment, I wasn't going to recommend it. So good.

[Tommy Vietor]

Good.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

So good. Okay, when we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Senator Mark Kelly. But one reminder before we get to that, we're headed to New Zealand and Australia in February. I think it's like five weeks away.

[Jon Lovett]

Crazy.

[Tommy Vietor]

What? Got to get sure.

[Jon Lovett]

We got to make sure. The visas.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Good. Again, we might be staying.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Which. Which sphere of influence is Australia gonna be on?

[Jon Lovett]

I don't think Australia's gonna like it.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Is that gonna be the she? The she, Sphere of influence.

[Jon Lovett]

It depends on how much money. How much money they're gonna put in crypto.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

How west does the western hemisphere go? Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Are we crossing the date line?

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Crossing the date line? Are we moving the date line? I can see Trump moving the dateline. Anyway, we're gonna be there. The Pod Save America, hopefully just visiting tour comes to Auckland on February 11, and then three cities in Australia after that. Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th. If you're a listener in one of those cities or if you want to fly there, we'd love to see you. Tickets are on sale right now. Head to cricket.comevents to grab yours when we come back. Mark Kelly.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

Are you curious about the hidden side of everything? Then I have a Podcast for you. I'm Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio. Each week we hear from some of the most fascinating scholars and thinkers as we tackle big topics like how whales became the face of environmental activism, how to succeed at failing, and whether public transportation should be free. Go ahead, listen to Freakonomics Radio wherever you get your podcasts. Joining me now is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Senator Kelly, welcome back to the pod.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Thank you for having me back.

[Jon Lovett]

All right, so Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted today that in response to what he called sedition statements and a pattern of reckless misconduct, the Defense Department is moving to censure you to potentially reduce your rank, cut your retirement pay, also threaten further action. The claim here is not just that you called on service members to refuse illegal orders in that video. It's that you've also described lawful orders as illegal. What's your response to this?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

That's a bunch of bullshit. The entire thing, it's ridiculous. And it is, you know, stifling the First Amendment rights of all Americans, especially retired people like me. You know, I said something that the president didn't like. He said, I should be hanged, I should be executed. I should be prosecuted. And then his minion, Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we've ever had, you know, he makes a decision that he's going to court martial me under the Uniform Code of Military justice for saying what is in the ucmj. Saying something that is lawful, telling service members they need to follow the law. They didn't like that in that censure letter, by the way. They also put all these other things that I said that they didn't like. Now think about this for a second. What message does that send to other retired service members or people who have left the military, people on active duty, or just any US Citizen. Don't cross this president. He might try to get you hanged, but if that doesn't work, he's going to demote you in the military if you're a service member or take away your pay. You know, this is, I got to say, I mean, I spent 25 years in the United States Navy, and I've been retired now for another, well, 15. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this is what we've become as a country where people can't speak out against the government, can't disagree.

[Jon Lovett]

So did you find out via the tweet? Is that how you found out? Did you get notified in any other way?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, so I found out initially today via the tweet, they did send a letter to my attorney. This is the first time they've actually corresponded with my legal folks at all. But I think this says, shows the unseriousness of these clowns here. They're more concerned about getting likes on Twitter and views than they are running, seriously running the Department of Defense.

[Jon Lovett]

Were you surprised that this was the tack that they took? Obviously, Trump has threatened all kinds of things. They've threatened you with court martial. This is an administrative action. Yeah, well, they're making all these claims about how what you've done is so dangerous and now they're going to kind of come after your pay.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

It seems even seditious in this. In. In the central letter of sedition. Right. Well, I think they realize if they put me in front of a jury, they would have been laughed out of court, even by a military, you know, whatever military case here. So I think they reverted, you know, to this option where they don't think I have a lot of recourse. But. But I'm gonna, you know, I've got to stand up for the American people here. This is not just about me at this point. They're trying to shut everybody up. If you're a retired guy like me in the military, or you're a former service member, or you're just somebody speaking out against this President Donald Trump wants you to shut up. That's not acceptable.

[Jon Lovett]

So you made. What set this off was the video you and several of your colleagues made, basically saying that members of the military have to refuse unlawful orders. Clearly, you knew this was going to spur this kind of a fight or fight of some kind, right?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

No, I thought that even this guy, even Donald Trump would say in. If he said anything in response to what we said, he would say, of course, of course members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders. That's what I expected. I actually expected him to ignore it.

[Jon Lovett]

So I guess part of this is that. That look like we've watched over the last several decades, as presidential authority has expanded, Congress's role has been minimized. And, you know, presidents operate in this kind of a gray area about, like, what is the lawful use of. Of military power. Like some of this. Right. There is a genuine kind of philosophical problem here of when presidents aren't going to Congress at all. What is.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yeah, well, these are different things, though. You're talking about constitutional authority of a president. And you're right, over decades, we've seen an erosion of Congress's role and an amplification of the president's There are some exceptions to that. The first Gulf War, 1991, I flew 39 combat missions over Iraq and Kuwait that had an authorization for the use of military force by Congress. That's the way this is supposed to be done. But you're right. Presidents often just kind of go it alone. And this Congress, especially my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate, have abdicated to the White House, basically carte blanche, do whatever you want. We're not going to get in your way. That's not what the founding fathers intended. We are the Article 1 branch of government. We come first for a reason. And most of the power was put there. They're giving this up.

[Jon Lovett]

But that's not what you're referring to. No, no, no.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

What I was referring to are those things that are so obvious to a reasonable person that, hey, I'm being ordered to do something specific and that's got to be against the law. That's what we're getting at. We're not talking about big constitutional responsibilities and roles that the president has over Congress. No.

[Jon Lovett]

And do you think that there are specific orders that members of the military should have already refused?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, I mean, sometimes you don't know. Right. So what we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the uniform code of military justice. It is the law. There's. When a service member gets in a situation, you know, they, they can go to their chain of command and say, hey, I've got questions about this. Can we, can we talk about this issue? That never happened with me. I mean, in the early 90s, you know, desert Shield, Desert Storm, every order I ever got, even sinking two ships. Very obvious. We were well within our rights to do this. But it has happened historically where members of the military have been ordered to do things that people should know. That's against the law.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

Law.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

And when the law and orders are in conflict, it says this right outside of West Point on a plaque. Yeah, you go with the law. That's all we were trying to do is remind members of the military because we have a president who has talked about killing the family members of terrorists. Family members. That means women and children. He has talked about shooting US Citizens protesters in the legs. He's talked about sending troops into US Cities to use those US Cities as training grounds, which means you're going to use U. S. Citizens for training for the US Military. So that's why we did the video now on, you know, afterwards, you know. Well, at the same time, those had strikes that already started in, in the Caribbean. And I do and continue to have a lot of questions about the big picture legality of that. But we were, you know, our goal here was just to remind, you know, service members, because I don't want to see some young, you know, Navy, Marine, Air Force guy, guardian, you know, I don't want to see these people finding themselves in a really bad situation.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, aren't people already in that situation? I get like, the reason I'm pushing on this is only because we don't need to be hypothetical. We have reports in the Washington Post that the administration ordered people to be killed who were clinging to the wreckage of a ship. And there are people that had to execute that order. Should they have gone to their superiors and say, I worry this is unlawful?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, I've been briefed on that in the skiff in a secure facility about that strike. I've seen the videos. I have more questions coming out of that than I had going in. And I think the American public needs to see that video and needs, we need to have an open hearing on this and people need to answer some, you know, hard questions about why we are taking those kind of actions. But that is the, that's kind of an example. We didn't know about that when we made the video, but that's, that could be pointed to as the kind of an example of one of the things where we're getting at that.

[Jon Lovett]

We talked about the broader issue of, of Congress not being involved in military action by the White House. Obviously, this is, we're days after the intervention in Venezuela. Axio's got a couple of Democrats to say on background, of course, that criticizing Trump looks weak on this. You've been very critical of the administration for what they've done here. What's your response to that?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

That, Yeah, I, I, I think when it's appropriate, it is our job to be critical of this president, any president. I was critical of Joe Biden on things. It's, it's, it's, you know, our constitutional responsibility. And when it comes to the military, I sit on the Armed Services Committee. I'm the ranking member of the Airland Subcommittee. I'm on the Strat Forces subcommittee as well, and others. I sit on the Intelligence Committee. You know, one of the reasons I actually enjoy, you know, this job is the, the military stuff, the intel stuff, it's in a, it's consistent with my background. I understand, you know, stuff about this, but it's also my job when this administration is doing stuff that makes us less safe, less prosperous, putting service members at risk, it's my job to say something? I mean, does this make us look weak, strong? We're, we're in the beginning of whatever this thing is going to turn out to be, right? He extracted Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy. He needs to be prosecuted. It would have been better if maybe he was overthrown. You know, we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country. What precedent does that set? But Donald Trump has a habit of breaking and he has no plan here. He says he runs the country, we're running the country. These guys and he's pointing at, like, Hegseth and Rubio, these. We're running the country. They're not running the country.

[Jon Lovett]

What would you like to see? So there was also a report, by the way, in the Washington Post that the White House is potentially planning a larger role for Stephen Miller in, quote, running Venezuela. What?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

I didn't see that.

[Jon Lovett]

So what, what should happen? I mean, look, we're in this now.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

What should happen?

[Jon Lovett]

What should our. What should happen?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

I think we should push for an election in Venezuela. We, you know, pretty, pretty much know who's going to win. I think at this point. The opposition party won 70% of the vote in the last election. Venezuela was a democracy for decades until Chavez. And then now, you know, this, this joker showed up. So, you know that we need at this point to try to help them get back to that, that us running Venezuela. How does that help Americans with the cost of their rent and their groceries and their health care? This president has destroyed the prospect for Americans to have affordable health care. Millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance because of this president and Republicans in Congress because they wanted to give a big tax cut to billionaires. And now his whole plan is, well, we're going to take over the oil operation here. More profit for more rich people. What are the consequences to US Service members if they have to go in there and try to really take control of Venezuela? When this happened in Iraq and we toppled Saddam Hussein, remember the jubilation in the streets, the statue coming down, The Iraqis are all happy. How long did that last? Country winds up in civil war and we're in the middle of it and there's a lot of dead Americans. I do not want to see that happen here.

[Jon Lovett]

So I remember in 2022, President Biden held a Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and there was this debate about excluding Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. Then a bunch of leaders from other countries refused to intend to in protest because those leaders have been excluded. And it became, you Know, it was supposed to be an assertion of American leadership in the hemisphere, and it became a story about conflict and weakness. And obviously there's just one, one summit. But to me, it does speak to some kind of a vacuum of American leadership that's existed. And I, and I wonder if, like, in seeing what Trump has done and how dangerous it is, have we offered an alternative of what it looks like to really stand up for American values, democratic values in the region?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, this isn't standing up for values.

[Jon Lovett]

I agree, I agree. But I'm saying, what is our alternative?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Do we have an alternative principles when they're convenient, and if they're inconvenient, screw it. That's what we've seen from this administration threatening Canada. Do we have a closer ally than Canada? Who is the moral authority in the Western hemisphere at this point? I don't know. I mean, what.

[Jon Lovett]

No, I, I agree with you. What I'm saying is this. Look, Trump is doing a regime change. He's pardoning drug trafficking leaders. He's, he's obviously entering into all kinds of corrupt bargains here. He's, he's playing footsie with Bukele's terrible. There's no moral leadership and no kind of ideological leadership whatsoever. I'm saying, what is our alternative?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

What's the alternative now?

[Jon Lovett]

I mean, what's an alternative vision for what American leadership in this region should look like?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

The alternative vision. I get it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

So the alternative vision is what is in the best interest of the United States of America and our allies and our partners across the globe today and into the future. We need to be thinking, the Chinese think out 100 years. We can't be about, like, what is in the best interest of us right now, this second. We've got to be thinking decades into the future, evaluating all the time, what are the threats to our national security, what are the threats to our economy, what are the threats to our future? How does this thing that Donald Trump just did in Venezuela, how does this affect us five or ten years from now? And I can tell you this, it's going to have an effect. Is this the justification that she needs to go and take Taiwan, kick out the leader, he'll say, hey, you kicked out Maduro. We've got interests here. This is, this is 90 miles from our shoreline, a lot closer than Venezuela is. So is that the justification, or is this the justification that Putin needs to go beyond Ukraine and say, hey, you know, Kazakhstan used to be part of the Soviet Union and they've got a lot of oil that they're not exploiting the way they should. We're going to work on that. And by the way, Donald Trump, it's kind of the same thing you just did in Venezuela. So what should we. We need to have a government that can, that is playing chess and not checkers. I mean, Stephen Miller running Venezuela, that guy's a moron. I mean, you talk about you want to ruin that country, you want to, to, you know, set this up for a situation that is not going to be in our best interest, put him in charge. So, I mean, we have to be thinking ahead. We've got to have serious people in these jobs. We can't have a bunch of sycophants and yes men. Pete Hegseth, is he ever under any circumstance going to speak truth to power? I don't think so.

[Jon Lovett]

So there's something so obviously ugly about somebody like Pete Hegseth going after you. Somebody like Donald Trump going after. You've served your country for decades. You've sacrificed a lot.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

And Donald Trump's a draft dodger. Right. Five times.

[Jon Lovett]

We see a lot of stories about the ways in which Trump is politicizing the military, deploying National Guard into, into American cities, doing these kind of lawless raids in the, in the Caribbean. They're coming after you and other service members who've spoken out. What are you hearing from people in the military who are maybe not hardcore Democrats, but are certainly not MAGA about what they, about their response to this, about what it's like seeing the military being used and abused in this way?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, it's quiet, right? They're not doing a lot of this stuff publicly. And I've been told by more than one occasion there are folks inside the Pentagon, there's the Donald Trump people, the MAGA people, and they're the quiet people. And when they see them go after a US Senator for something I said, that shuts them up. I mean, are they going to speak out when they see some defense contractor that's a buddy with Donald Trump, you know, fleecing the US Taxpayer? Or are they going to be afraid and they're going to think, wow, man, they, they went after that US Senator over something. He said, I can't speak out about this. So they're stifling, you know, free thought and speech. And what I hear from people, I mean, I was, you know, at a military base not too long ago. I'm not going to say where. And as I got into the car, one of the very senior people thanked me, you know, thank you for, for Speaking out. Thank you for what you're doing. We need it. So yeah, there are people that, you know that, that they get it and they understand the, you know, situation we are, you know, currently in. And we have a president that doesn't, obviously doesn't listen to anybody and he's got a bunch of yes people around him and that's dangerous.

[Jon Lovett]

So last question. There's also now a move in Congress to try to reassert some kind of congressional authority over military involvement in Venezuela and beyond. There's going to be a war powers vote by that Senator Schumer is going to force. Is there any hope that you'll be able to get Republicans on board to pass it behind the scenes? Are Republicans questioning the administration's refusal to even let members of, of the, the, the gang of whatever it is, the gang of eight know that this was coming? Like, is there any hope that Congress is going to reassert its authority here?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

There's a serious lack of spine on the Republican side of the aisle right now. There will be some people obviously that will speak out against this. I mean Rand Paul being a, an example. There will be others, Lisa Murkowski and I think you'll see a few other people's people. But is that enough to really put pressure on the administration? Probably not. But I do show up every day for work being optimistic and hopeful things will turn around. That's what we need. I mean, if we're going to keep this administration in check and possibly keep them from. A few days ago, I would not have said this, but keep them from invading Greenland. I mean, it sounds crazy, but in the last couple days, you know, after we just saw what happened here, and then he's talking about Greenland again and Stephen Miller's wife saying soon Greenland is going to be part of the United States. If we're going to prevent things like that happening or maybe even going after Canada. I mean, how crazy does that sound? But who knows at this point? We're gonna need the Republicans in the Senate and the House to stand up and say something.

[Jon Lovett]

I was once at a, some sort of, you know, fancy conference that I had no business being at and somebody was talking about what would happen if someone tried to invade Greenland. And this, I think Danish academic was describing the mile high sheets of ice and the temperature and the conditions on the ground and he said in his Danish accent, if someone were to invade Greenland, we'd be begin immediately an effort to rescue them. Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and good luck in the fight.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Mark Kelly for coming. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic, Frank and Saul Rubin. Our our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our Executive editor. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our Head of production. Naomi Sengel is our Executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelavie, David Tolles and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America east.

[Jon Lovett]

Hi there, it's Andy Richter, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[Tommy Vietor]

The Three Questions with Andy Richter.

[Jon Lovett]

Each week I invite friends, comedians, actors and musicians musicians to discuss these three where do you come from, where are you going, and what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowe and Ted Danson, Tig Notaro, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call in show Episodes, where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating, disasters, bad teachers and lots more.

[Dan Pfeiffer]

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