← Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
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- [00:06]
A
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country?
- [00:13]
B
We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
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A
This is the Scott Horton Show.
- [00:18]
B
Libertarian foreign policy mostly. When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty.
- [00:25]
A
We're gonna take out seven countries.
- [00:26]
B
They don't know what the they're doing.
- [00:29]
A
Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right guys, introducing Tom Edlum from the Libertarian Institute, great writer of ours. Welcome back. How you doing, Tom?
- [00:48]
B
Hey Dan. Thanks for having me back, Scott. I'm doing great, great.
- [00:52]
A
Good to have you here. So the reason I had you on today was I remember years ago I interviewed a leftist, it may have been Max Blumenthal, it may have not. But it was about one of these attempted sort of regime changes down there in Venezuela or another. And I remember you emailed me and said, you know, I'd like to quibble with some of the details of the history of these elections down here and this and that. And so what I like about that is that obviously you know, you come from the right and have no love for these commies whatsoever. And yet I also know that you are a committed non interventionist and you're not here trying to in for regime change, but you are here trying to get the back straight and trying to make sure that I'm not screwing up and letting bad facts go by on my show without correction. So you came on and explained actually dude did lose this election and then they abolished this house of Congress and they did this, that and the other thing and let's get our facts right. So that made me think that I would like to hear very much from you again on really a lot of this history of the commie regime since the invention of Hugo Chavez and all of that and then his successor Maduro here and then also of course I want to ask you about what you think about the recent, I don't know, president change, if not regime change there and what that all means, the motives behind it and the your concerns about potential consequences and so forth. But I just wonder if you can make sure that because even for me, and I pay a lot of attention, I read anti war.com every day and all that. But I admit I don't always read the Latin America stuff at the bottom of the page, you know what I mean? I'm not very good on this stuff. So first of all, can you just educate us on some facts about these commies and just how legitimate or Illegitimate any of their standing for any so called elections have been or not or what. And then of course, the role of American policy and it all and et cetera, like that. Thank you, please, sir.
- [02:49]
B
Okay. There was a presidential election in 2024 and it's pretty clear that, that Maduro cheated. Now he, by, I think by all accounts he'd won the popular election when he was first elected after the death of Chavez. But because Venezuela's economy has been in the Tailspin for what, eight or nine years now, ever since actually since 2014 really, when the bottom fell out of the oil economy. I mean that, that was what was propping up the Chavista regime since it got elected in 1999. He needed to cheat in order to stay in power, so he cheated. And the interesting thing is he used some of the electronic voting mechanisms that are being promoted here in the United States.
- [03:42]
C
The.
- [03:43]
B
Oh man, I can't think of the name of it offhand. But, but they, the it's touted in the United States is oh, you know, these are unhackable or whatever. But of course in Venezuela they hacked it just as many years ago. The first electronic system was hacked in the Mexican election.
- [04:02]
A
But if I, anything that they were involved in 2020.
- [04:08]
B
What about 2020? What do you mean?
- [04:09]
A
Oh, in the, you know, supposedly the Trump people think that, you know, the Venezuelans had some influence over the voting machines in the election, that kind of thing. You know anything about that?
- [04:21]
B
Oh, I, I don't think so. I don't, I don't think there's any proof in that. I, I think, I mean I haven't looked into it but, but it, it is the same company. I can't think of the name of the company. It's. If I say it every. You're going to recognize it, but, but the Venezuelans don't control it. What?
- [04:40]
A
Well, I wanted to suggest something but I don't want to throw you off track. But like, was it.
- [04:44]
B
No, go ahead, go ahead. I don't think that was it. I, it was, it was one of those names that you're gonna, you're gonna, you'd say, oh yeah, I know about. I, I heard that. But, but anyway, if I, if I go back, I mean Venezuela was a prosperous country because it was an oil country. And it, it back in the 50s, the Dan. The. Not the Danes, the, The Dutch brought their engineers to Venezuela and started pumping out the oil and they made a deal straight up with the, the dictator there. And the dictators continued to have contracts and they extracted more from the companies. But again it was this is a government negotiating directly with a company, not free enterprise where the companies are negotiating with private property owners. So as Venezuela transitioned back to a democracy, if you want to call it an elected parliament and having a president, the oil revenues got a little tighter for the, the margins of the, the oil companies. But they were still happy to, to pump oil out of Venezuela. And what happened was there was, there was a drop off in the oil price and the, the politicians who were elected couldn't keep up. And, and Hugo Chavez got out of jail after trying to do a military coup and he won a popular election in 1999 and oil went up in price throughout the 2000s. So he was able to bankroll his socialism. And this was real socialism, not the socialism that we talk about with oil. The democrats are a bunch of socialists. They're not socialists. They don't want to nationalize the oil industry or the steel industry. Hugo Chavez did, I mean he had agricultural collectives. He nationalized the oil industry. And of course this really pissed off the, the oil companies that were making money with, with the government. But again, these are crony contracts. These are not, this is not free enterprise. This is a contract with the government for monopoly control. And Chavez did very well until he died of cancer. And Maduro, his vice president, who was, who's a bureaucrat, got elected as his successor and he kept it going because they could, with the high oil prices, they could keep pretending that socialism was successful. Venezuela fell behind some of its neighbors and other countries in South America. Certainly Chile went way past Venezuela. But in 2014, the oil price tanked globally. And that meant they could no longer just pretend to have this fake prosperity based on oil revenues and is. And of course the United States didn't like Maduro because he was friendly with Israel. That so we, we had sanctions on, on it. And it hurt the economy, Venezuelan economy even more. And what did Venezuela do that. Well, they turned to the people who would, would buy oil from them. For a while we bought oil from them. Even after 2014, we continue to buy oil from Sitco, which is which was bought out by the Venezuelan government. But eventually they looked for other customers. And who did they find in customers? Cuba, China and other countries that Washington is not friendly with. So that made them even more want to get rid of the United of get rid of the Chavez slash Madura regime. So what they did was they started growing replacements in the United States with money from the CIA, the NED and they also tried direct coups they, in 2019 they took this guy who was a Harvard graduate and said oh well you know, this guy won Guaido. He's, he's, he's, he's much more popular. They made him the, with American influence he got elected to be the opposition president which is a non government position but he was basically the leader of the opposition parties. And they said oh he's, he's the guy, he's, he's our guy. But the, the coup didn't work. It didn't work at all because Juan Guaido had no popular support and the pressure continued. But they, there was no solution from Washington's standpoint. And on, on the fringes there was another candidate. They looked at Maria Karina Machado. And Maria Karina had lived her life as ping ponging between Venezuela and the United States. She went to a girls boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts as a kid. I think it was Dana Hall. I think that's the only girls boarding school that I know of in Wellesley. I'm from Massachusetts. But whatever she started here and then by 2001 she created a group called, it was a non governmental organization. I say non governmental, it's more like near governmental. It was called. Let me see if I can get that, I have it written down here somewhere. She created this thing called Sumate and very shortly thereafter it started receiving National Endowment for democracy funding in 2003, in 2004 and 2008. They received tens of thousands, actually over $100,000 in 2004. And also at the same time she's, she is going to these events in, in 2005. She, she became a young, young global leader of the World Economic Forum and she was educated as a Yale world fellow in 2009. So I mean she's being groomed by the establishment to, to take over. And, and she heads the, the party that, what is actually the Libertarian Party in Venezuela. It's called Vente Venezuela Come Venezuela. And it, she actually has I think a lot of popularity. And in 2024 she ran for president in Venezuela and Maduro realizing, gee, I'm going to lose to this woman, got her kicked off the ballot. So she nominated a friend to run in her, his in her stead. And by all accounts, not by all accounts but, but by most popular accounts, most reasonable counts, Maduro lost that election. And the, you know, the Vente Venezuela did win there. The Vente Venezuela candidate won. So it was condemned all around the world. And of course what happened was the establishment rallied around Maria Karina. She got the, she got a prize from the European Parliament, the, what would they call it? Sakharov Prize. And then of course, in last year, she got the Nobel Peace Prize even though she'd never negotiated a peace and she was actually calling for the bombing of her own country. So. And she's back to the United States coups in, in, in a US Coup in, in Venezuela on her behalf. And the, the interesting thing is I think there's a little personal dynamics in here because, you know, the United States went in and our excuse was, well, it was at first it was the drug gang. So know the drugs are coming out of Venezuela and look how many tens of thousands of Americans are die every year from drugs. But most of those are from meth and, and especially from fentanyl. And none of that comes from Venezuela. The, if you look at DEA reports, the, all the fentanyl is coming from China through Mexico. It's not coming from Venezuela. Some of the cocaine does go through Venezuela, but it's not from Venezuela. Basically, most of the cocaine comes out of Colombia and it's shipped either through Venezuela or through. Most of it's through Mexico. You know, a small portion of it is, it goes through Venezuela, but it's not an inconsequential part. But it's a big difference between saying we're trying to stop tens of thousands of deaths in fentanyl and saying we're going to do a coup so that some stockbroker can't do an eight ball in a bent in a weekend bender. I mean that, that's, that's a big difference. So what they did was they said, well, he's not the legitimate Maturo is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. That's how the narrative changed. But the interesting thing is once the coup took place, once they kidnapped Maduro, Trump basically went with Maduro's vice presidential candidate. I mean, it's the same regime. I mean, you don't think that, gee, if, if Maduro got elected with this, this woman who's the vice president and he's not the legitimate elect, legitimately elected that he didn't get. Well, why would his running mate be legitimate?
- [14:14]
A
It's.
- [14:14]
B
She wouldn't be. And Marie, if Marie Karina was actually won the election or at least her, her stand in, then why wouldn't she. But the, of course, Trump had in the, the weekend after the, after the invasion, he had tweet, he had said to reporters, well, I don't think she. Referring to Maria Karina, she has any popular support. And I thought to myself. Okay, so from the standpoint of the Trump administration, what we've got here is we went in because Maduro is not a legitimately elected leader. And we're going to go with not the one who was elected, but with the one who was illegitimately elected and ran as the running mate. And of course, Trump sort of let everything out of the bag in the last couple of days in the sense that he said, we're going to take the oil, we're going to seize all the tankers and unload the oil, and it's our oil. He said, it's amazing how our oil always ends up under their sand and their forests. But, but from Trump's perspective, everything's a deal. Everything is about force and leverage. He, he, even in his business career never really cared about property rights. He, he used eminent domain to kick an old lady out of her house and build his casinos. So if the, the oil companies created a special crony deal with the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan government reneged, well, he's going to, he's going to defend the oil companies, and that's basically where we're at. I, I, I don't want to filibuster here. Yeah.
- [15:54]
C
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- [16:46]
A
well, there's a lot there. Including, first of all, it just goes without saying, Tom, but we gotta say it, that it was George W. Bush who tripled the price of a barrel of oil and did all of that, you know, gave all of that benefit to Venezuela and to Chavez's Venezuela, just the same as he gave to Vladimir Putin's Russia. Here, let us just triple the price of your main export for you, and you don't have to work any harder to make three times as Much money as you already were making. And so as you. It was funny because I almost interjected because I know what you mean, but I was a little afraid because the way you said that I was a little afraid people would misunderstand you because the way you said, I forgot your exact words was something like, yeah, so Chavez was a great success. And then you went on and it was just a couple of seconds later that you clarified of course, that under the illusion that socialism could possibly work simply because W. Bush had tripled the value of their oil revenue, even as their probably overall production is declining, they're still making bank because of the wars in the Middle east that they had nothing to do with. And so that, that was what sustained the illusion of the success of socialism for Venezuela. And then as you say, then they got way overextended, of course. And when the price of oil fell, hell, they didn't have any other industries left because of socialism. All their agriculture went to hell. You said they created socialized agriculture. Yeah. And then it stopped producing things. And so like their highly diverse economy stopped being highly diverse. It was completely dependent on oil resource curse style. And then of course, yeah, everything went bust and all their big promises went to nothing. But it was all America that fed the illusion the whole time on their behalf, which is the irony here from the, the massive, as everyone always agrees in every other context, the massive unforced error of Iraq War two that nobody had to do. Right.
- [18:47]
B
And it was, it wasn't just, it didn't just benefit Putin, it benefited Iran. If, if, if Iran is the boogeyman. Well, this is what, this is what Bush helped. But I, you let me emphasize, you know, socialism was a, was an absolute failure in the sense that the Venezuelan economy under Chavez and later under Maduro before the oil collapsed, was flat. And the natural tendency of an economy is to grow. And, and why was it flat? Because the, the incentive to, to work and create a business and profit that, that was taken out. I mean, I, I have a friend who, I don't, I don't know if I told you a story. He bought a house before he left Venezuela. I know a few Venezuelan immigrants. In fact, there was a story not too long ago that explains why Venezuelan medicine failed. It was, I think it was in the Financial Times, but it might have been the New York Times, but it said, it talked about how some amazing percentage, maybe it was more than, I think it was more than half of Venezuelan doctors had emigrated because they just couldn't make a living. And they let, they Figure out, hey, I'm a doctor, I can go anywhere. And, and what happened was there's, they, they talked to, the story was, hey, there's this great bonus that a lot of Latin American countries have and that now they've got these, all these, all these extra doctors. But Venezuela lost all their doctors because it, they all fled the socialism. So you know, the socialized medicine failed in that sense too. But the economy was flat while the, while the oil was going up. But once the oil stop, it went down. The Venezuela, their economy has been negative for 10, 11 years now. And it's just, it's just there's this great diaspora of Venezuelans. More than 10% of the country has fled to other countries, including the United States. And I had one friend, just to give you an idea of the massive inflation in Venezuela. He came to the United States I think in about 2018, but around 2015, his friends said, hey, hey, inflation's coming, you got to buy a house. And he goes, okay, no, he was just right out of college or not too long out of college. We said, all right. So we put together a bank loan of 300,000 bolivars. And it saved up the 10% at 30, 30,000. And he bought a house and it was like 10 to 1. So the property's cheap. It was like, you know, $30,000 in American money. But, but it was, it was a nice house. And the payments were, I think it was 250 to $300 a month in dollars. And it was 10 times that, 11 times that in Bolivars. But a couple years go by, he leaves, he leaves Venezuela, comes to the United States and you know, even though he's got a college degree, comes here and works as a laborer, as a plasterer. And a couple years after he's in the United States, his, his, his wife says to him, honey, the, the mortgage payment just went under a dollar a month. And he goes, What? It was 250 not that long ago. And it was because Venezuelan inflation had gone up to 200,000%. So basically he, he should have had in principle, in dollar level maybe three, more than three quarters of the, the principle left. And in fact he did in, in Bolivars, he still had 240, 250,000 bolivars that he owed. So that should have been roughly 200, you know, $25,000 US dollars. But he paid it off for 120 something dollars. He paid off the whole mortgage for less than one day's wages as a laborer in the United States. So they, they they ruined the currency as well. The socialists always ruin the currency, but in every way the country was mismanaged. Yes.
- [22:50]
A
Yeah. Now, a couple different things, I guess it goes to. If there's nothing left except the regime, it kind of goes to the idea of why Trump decided to go with the vice president, because the idea was the other choice would be to truly try to debauchify the government, get rid of the entire gangster, crony commie regime that's there, the entire deep state that supports the current leader, and create some new, better government, which that's just too crazy to try even. You know, for the Republicans it is. They don't want to do that. But so then he says, okay, listen, vice president, lady, you can stay, but you just have to do whatever I say. Which, you know, raises the question of just how much he's going to tell her to do and just how compliant she can be before that same commie regime turns on her for being willing. He already did threaten to kill her, by the way. He said, you know, what happened to Maduro would be nothing compared to what happens to you, lady. So talk about playing hardball there. So, but it, I think it goes to show though, right? It was that he knew that even. What if you arrest the top 10 guys or something, that ain't going to do it. You have this whole commie regime there that runs what's left of everything.
- [24:08]
B
Yeah, I think a lot of this is not really about Venezuela. I mean, for, for Trump, it's about stealing resources and basically old, old style gunboat imperialism. But I think for the State Department, this is more about Cuba. Well, no, here's the thing. Like in, in, in Venezuela, the Venezuelan armed forces are thoroughly integrated with Cuban troops that are basically, they're hired guns, they're mercenaries. The deal is Cuba sends their commie troops to Venezuela and Venezuela sends them oil money. And I think the idea behind this is, hey, the Cuban government is being held up by a small amount of oil money. I mean, there's not that many million people in Cuba. I mean, it doesn't take that much oil to float their regime. And the, the expectations after 70 years of communism is, is it 70, 65. What is it? It's clo. It's closing in on 70. It. The, the expectations by the populace are, are very low. So they, even a small benefit is, is something that, that may placate them enough. So I, I think, I think a lot of it is, is Marco Rubio looking to Cuba and, and not so much about Venezuela and certainly it's not about liberating Venezuela because all we're doing is liberating them of their oil and not liberating them of the, the Chavista regime.
- [25:42]
C
Yeah.
- [25:42]
A
Hey, guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that, too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casale. Just go to my website, Scott, Horton.org and look in the right hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. See, I kind of think that that's all BS too, because you can't do anything with Venezuelan oil at these prices. Trump says he wants to keep the price low. You have to probably red lighten this same oil to make it expensive enough to then get it to market. But what they can do, though, is they can keep it out of the hands of the ChiComs and I think, and as you say, the revenue out of the hands of the Cubans and try to collapse the Cuban regime, finally. I, I totally agree with you. Brad Pierce has a great article about that, the wayward Raveler about that. But there's a whole thing too about the Chinese getting in there on the oil industry and also on the minerals. And so from the Pentagon's point of view, and I thought this was notable too, and I forget, I read a great article about this, but I'm sorry, I forget who to credit for it. But they, they talked about how, you know, it was Trump's tariffs last year, you know, almost a year ago, not quite, or yeah, not quite a year ago, that caused the Chinese to then react by putting all these limits on all their rare earth minerals. And so now then, this policy is meant to make up for that. Oh, China is now exercising this extra national control over their rare earths. So now we got to make sure that they're not monopolizing control over the mining and development of rare earth minerals in Venezuela. So just like with the oil companies are happy to help, but they're not the ones really driving this. This is the Pentagon joint staff, Pinky and the brain deciding how to rule the world and how to keep resources out of the hands of competing nation states. Right. Like when they did the pipeline wars in the Caspian Basin, that was all just about screwing the Ayatollah and screwing the president of the Russian Federation wasn't about, oh, we just have to please our masters in Houston who demand that we do this. In fact, the oil companies, in that case, they would have rather gone through Iran. It's shorter, cheaper pipeline. But the Pentagon, as you said, the State Department, they wanted to go and the National Security Council, they wanted to go due west to freeze, you know, their, their national competitors out, forget about business competitors. So I think that's probably a big
- [28:17]
B
part that, no, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't argue. I think that that's, that's also on their minds. I, I, I, I would agree with that.
- [28:23]
A
I mean, they say the Wall Street Journal, I can't keep up. Honestly, man, I, I have so many jobs, I really got to get back in the habit. Just make sure read everything@antiwar.com and probably the Journal every day. But I mean, Trump said, I hereby demand that you cut off all ties with China and Russia and Iran. Don't do any business with them anymore. No more oil, no more whatever I say. So. And he's just declaring himself world emperor and they better bow down. They had no choice. So we'll see.
- [28:47]
B
Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny? He does act that like the only reason Venezuela sold oil to, why would they sell, why would they sell oil to Russia?
- [28:57]
A
We had them under a virtual blockade, but that's it.
- [29:00]
B
Like, you know, they, they were always, they always sold to us until we blockaded them and said we're, we're not taking your stuff. And then they look for other customers and oh, well, you know, you can't sell to them either. I mean, you know, I guess coas
- [29:14]
A
my whole life, at least in Texas, I don't know about the different brands around the country, but same here.
- [29:19]
B
Yeah.
- [29:21]
A
Well, what else I want to ask you? Oh, I want to ask you this. I know that you sure are obviously anti commie and the way these regimes have handled their economics down there and all that. But I know you're also an American patriot and that means you're very anti American government too. And this government, it's really mean a lot of the times and it does really horrible things to people like wage massive economic wars against them. And for people in business and government out there around the world, there's probably no two words scarier other than if you're talking about direct military action than Treasury Department. And these guys, they rule the global financial system and if they decide to put a massive economic war on your ass, they sure can put firepower on target, but, so my question to you is, what difference does it really make? Here's this ramshackle commie economy run by a bunch of political idiots making idiot decisions, and they would have and could have and did run their country into the ground anyway. But then they also had a lot of help from W. Bush starting in at least 05 and maybe before, and then Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Donald Trump some more ever since then, too. And so how do you gauge, or do you have any idea how to ballpark how much of the failure of, say, for example, the inflation rate you're talking about and just whatever breakdown in, in their economic system is due to America's sanctions and threats against international corporations that might want to deal with these people because after all, you could be a commie and still hire some French company to run your oil program for you. You know what I mean? Or something like that. But the treasury says, stay out, don't mess with me. And then so they do. Right?
- [31:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's hard to gauge that. I, I, I, I know what you're saying. You know, how much of Venezuela's economic collapse is socialism? How much is, let's face it, the collapse of the price of oil. I mean, it's right. I, I, you know, the gas station right next to me is $2.39. If you adjust that for inflation, that may be the cheapest it's ever been in my lifetime. I mean, I, I've, I, I Remember pumping for 87 cents in the late 80s, but, but 239, it right now is cheaper than 87 cents in the 80s if you adjust for inflation. So how much of it is, how much of it is oil prices? How much of it is sanctions, and how much of it is the failure of socialism? Ooh, that, that would, that would be a study. I, I would say all of them are factors. I, you know, I know, you know, the lefties like to say, oh, it's, it's only because of economic sanctions. But if you look, a lot of the other countries have survived economic sanctions and done. Okay, even something like Iran, Iran is not, they're one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. They have the oil, they had the oil collapse.
- [32:16]
A
Take them as an example. Actually, Tom, they're undergoing a massive inflation.
- [32:20]
B
Well, they are, they are now. But I mean, I'm just saying as far as overall, you know, they, their, their economy is, you know, probably middling to maybe above average, slightly above average among World countries. And Venezuela is not, I mean, they, you know, Iran, yeah, they, they, they're doing the same thing to their currency that Venezuela did. But, but I, I, I would say the, all three are factors I, I couldn't put a percentage on, on which, which one is which though.
- [32:52]
A
Yeah, fair enough. Oh, let me ask you this. Trump keeps making a big deal about the nationalization. Now first of all, I think if anybody just thinks this through, it's just completely absurd to say that if any American corporation goes and makes investments in another sovereign nation beyond the political borders of the United States of America, that thems are the risks and they know the risks and they could lose that investment. And it's insane to think that just because an American company can make a deal anywhere that then that justifies having a world empire to enforce all of their claims anywhere in the world that they may go. If you applied that universally to all the other nation states, well, that wouldn't work very well, would it? It's completely nuts the way that they, you know, use that as their excuse. There's no way that they could, you know, universalize that at all. However, though, obviously Trump is very animated, at least by the talking point that they nationalized the oil that American companies invested a lot of money in developing, as you said there, but they originally nationalized it 50 years ago, 1976, the same year I was born. And you can see how old I am. And so then I know that they made some settlement and some deal and smooth that over. And then I know as you're talking about, they had these companies back in there, but more on contract. And then Chavez screwed them again, right? Chased out everybody except Chevron. And I know Chevron stayed and there's some great articles and I'm sorry, you gotta, I know that it's evil propaganda, but this is who the government talks to. You have to read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They have things in there you're just, you're supposed to hate read them, but you still got to read them. So anyway, they have these in depth things about Chevron's ongoing relationship because they had a guy that, it's the New York Times story, I think says they had a guy in their board who is a close personal friend of Hugo Chavez. I think they just hired a close personal friend of Hugo Chavez to be on their board to keep that relationship. So when Exxon and everybody else got kicked out Chevron state and all that. But anyway, I'm off on a tangent. My question for you is Just how bad did these companies get screwed? And I know even Chavez ended up settling and paying them off something. How close to whole were they made or not? I mean, I don't really care either way, as I said. But I'm interested, like, if you took that talking point at face value, like how much money adjusted for inflation or not or whatever, how much does Venezuela actually owe Exxon or any of these other companies anyway? Or have they just already agreed and settled that and it's a totally moved point at this point, or what?
- [35:29]
B
Wow. I haven't gone into the too much detail, but a lot of the, even though there's a lot of expense in oil exploration and oil extraction, a lot of the contracts are written up so that most of the profits are, most of the costs are recouped right away. So it's really not so much a matter of, gee, these companies lost money. It's a matter of, gee, they were making good money and they had already recouped their losses and they were making profits and now that profit was taken away from them by the central government. But I, but one of the things I want to say because, I mean, look, none of them went out of business, none of them reported huge losses. I mean, it's, you know, there's no, there was no, you won't find a, a Wall Street Journal article talking about how ExxonMobil or Conoco or any of those other countries had companies had risked bankruptcy over what happened in Venezuela. You just won't do, you won't find that. But let me just say one thing. We talk about nationalization of the resources and how the Trump administration really invade heavily against how they were nationalized. Well, they've just been re. Nationalized. I mean, Trump is just taking, now the, the, the money is no longer being administered by the Venezuelan government. But as he said in a truth social tweet by me personally as President of the United States, all of the oil is going to go to the United States. That's, that's, they've been just renationalized to the United States, not nationalized by the, the Venezuelan government. So these companies are, are not going to get reimbursed that way. I don't think, you know, maybe they could sue in U.S. court, but I,
- [37:16]
A
they even already quoted that, you know, we might have to subsidize the companies to get them to go back because they're not going to want to take the risk, so maybe we'll have to help pay for it in the first place. And all this so Far from. No, I don't pass their dividend check now or, you know, somehow make an extra profit off this.
- [37:34]
B
It's, it's weird. I, I just wrote last month an article. Billion. The title of it was Billionaires Not Socialism are the greatest threat to the Free Market. And, and what does Donald Trump do? He, he, he nationalizes the Venezuelan oil industry on behalf of the US government. And of course he, he also extracted 10% value out of, Was it, what was that company, that tech company? Not AMD percent.
- [38:03]
A
I think he put a guy on the board of intel or something.
- [38:07]
B
Something. Yeah, it was. Yeah, so, so, I mean, you know, here he is nationalizing the means of production at least partially. I mean, I, I may have to write an apology the way Trump is going that, that maybe, maybe socialism is an actual threat, but for the most part, it is. What you just described about oil companies being subsidized, it's, it's, it's the crony capitalism, what used to be called fascism. It's the subsidies, the gateway regulations, gatekeeping regulations, rather, it's those kind of things that are, that are the real threat and really what, what hurt the American consumer, the American taxpayer.
- [38:45]
A
Yeah. All right, guys, well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use Amazon.com all the time because what are you going to do? They got prime. They bring this stuff right to your door and all that, so that's fine. But what you do is make sure and stop by Scott Horton.org and click the Amazon link in the right hand margin there. Get yourself a bug assault shot gun, salt shotgun for destroying flies trespassing on your property. And then also whatever you get from
- [39:10]
C
Amazon and the Scott Horton show will
- [39:12]
A
get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale, which is very nice. And look, this whole thing about. Oh, we, Boy, as soon as they start talking about we, like, I'm not trying to be a language national socialist here, but I am saying that like, well, wait, just who all counts as we in this thing? At least let's stop and ask. We are all going to benefit so much from stealing this oil. We're going to get all this oil for free. And that's supposed to drive the price down a nickel for everyone or whatever. We should all be so grateful for something like that. The overall contribution to the American GDP there essentially, no matter how many, what, how many tens of billions of dollars would they have to just outright make in profit off of this? Where you could say that, oh yeah, no, overall, the American people's standard of living was bolstered by this marginal increase in hydrocarbon imports. I mean, it's completely preposterous. It's like when they say, look, American tax money, they take the money from Utah and then yes, they give it to Israel, but then Israel spends it on Boeing products made in Washington state. Aren't you thrilled that you're getting your money back? But then that's a bunch of crap, right? You don't live in Washington state and you don't work for Boeing. So you ain't we in that context at all. Same kind of thing.
- [40:36]
B
Yeah, yeah. When Trump says we benefit, I, I, I first have to check. Wait a minute, is he pregnant? Does he have a tapeworm? Because that's how you speak of yourself in the plural then. But really what he's talking about is the oil barons, you know, the, the, the oil executives. He's not talking about the average American consumer. We're not going to get anything out of this and probably it's not going to make much difference in the price of oil. I, I don't see the price of oil going down much more than it is no matter what the supply is. I mean they, at some point they just, they just shut down all the oil fields in, in Oklahoma that, that are, that they're fracking that, that is fairly expensive to extract. I mean, a lot. That's, that's one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia went full on a few years back production. They, they wanted to keep the price of oil really low and they wanted to get rid of all the frackers. But they also wanted to hurt Iran because Iran at the time had, had b, basically peg. Pegged their national budget to $90 a barrel. And it hasn't been that for a long time. But, but you know what will happen is there'll just be less production. So it's not going to, at some, it's not going to lower the price other than maybe a few weeks, a month or two. I mean that, that's, that's, that's the best case scenario. So us stealing all the resources from Venezuela is not going to benefit us unless you're a major Stockholder in, in ConocoPhillips or ExxonMobil or any of the major oil companies.
- [42:08]
A
Yeah, it sounds like what you're saying is the policy will benefit Saudi oil producers over American oil producers and will help drive Americans out of business because they're doing all this fracking and shale oil and all this more expensive stuff. And Saudis by, by driving the price down, they bankrupt American producers and try to keep us and everybody else more dependent on Middle Eastern exports and trump their side in that.
- [42:39]
B
I mean, it's, you know, Americans, you know, if you go back to 1980, they were talking about peak oil. Why? Because all the easy oil had been extracted. I mean, they, you know, Little Round Top, which was, was first tapped in in the late 1800s. It, it, it gushered for 30 something days and it, it continued to provide oil even into, I think into World War II. And all of the easy oil was extracted. Now, it's very difficult, but you could still go to Saudi Arabia, stick a toothpick in the sand and Augusta will come up. I'm exaggerating, but not by a heck of a lot. Comparatively speaking. The Saudi oil is easy to extract if you contrast it with the United States. And it's also, by the way, easier to refine than the heavier Venezuelan oil.
- [43:30]
A
Yeah. Hey, by the way, I was reading this thing, which I don't remember the guy's name or the names of the molecules, but anyway, this guy clearly knew what he was talking about and he was saying, listen, when you're talking about refining the heavy oil sands and shale oil and all this stuff from Canada in the United States, well, that's all polluted with what you call it molecule, whereas the Venezuelan crude is polluted with sulfur and these other things, which is a totally different process. You can say they're both kind of heavy crude, but it's a much more expensive and difficult process to refine the heavy Venezuelan crude. It's the yuckiest stuff in the world compared especially like you're saying to the, the lightest, sweetest crude in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Greg palace used to write about years and years ago, was how the Saudis would do this. They crash the price, they raise the price so that they can make as much money as they can off of doing the same amount of work. But then when Canadian and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Texan oil producers start ramping up their more expensive techniques, then they crash the price again, drive them all out of business and then start the cycle again, you know.
- [44:38]
B
Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's the Saudi strategy. And at least, you know, it has been for the past few years and probably will be for the next few years. And you know, as a result, we've got what we've got. But going back to Venezuela, I don't, I, I don't see. I think it's going to be tough to get into Venezuela just Because it's a heavier oil, it's a little more expensive to. Not so much to extract but to, to refine. And it's, it'll be a hard road for Venezuela to become a major oil producer with the price where it's at right now. And, and I, I don't know that it's going to go up that much more in the next few years.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah. Hey, by the way, I interviewed earlier today a guy named Chris Brunette who used to be at the Manhattan Institute. And then he got real wise and now he's writing on Substack and he wrote a thing all about Paul Singer, the Vulture and how he got away with this sweet deal to take over Citgo, his privately owned company, company, I think it's called Amber now, is a single private owner of all of Citgo because he was able to gangsterize this debt through Lawfare and, And take over this company. And now he is one of. Going to be one of the prime beneficiaries of, you know, or is primed to be. I guess we'll see what happens. But is set to become a major beneficiary now of this if he can get that up and going again.
- [46:16]
B
So this, there's a lot of that stuff going around. I mean, there was, there was a story floating around the last couple of days about how a lot of big bets were put on Poly Market about Maduro being.
- [46:28]
A
Oh, yes.
- [46:29]
B
All of that losing power. Yeah. So, I mean, and you know, I, I've thrown a few bucks into Calshi, which is a competitor, Polymarket, same kind of thing. And you know, it's, it's amazing. Like you, you, you could make some serious money doing that if you're in a policy. The action end of the policy.
- [46:50]
A
Yeah.
- [46:50]
B
Making.
- [46:51]
A
That's how accurate I gotta be on the timing.
- [46:54]
B
Well, that's it. I mean, you know, but you know, if you look at these markets, they, they say Maduro will be out before June, before August. Like there's, you know, you can place any kind of number, any number of bets. So.
- [47:07]
A
Yeah, and maybe I do need to get into that, so. Don't have any money to gamble with. All right. This has been so much fun. Thank you for coming on the show and talking to us about all this great stuff, Tom. And please write all about whatever you think and know for the Institute on the subject too, if you can.
- [47:24]
B
Yeah, I'll do that. Can I do a plug for my, my little podcast, the. It's called Blue Collar Breakdown and it's on YouTube and Facebook and Rumble and soon to be in a lot of other places. Talk about mostly economics, but.
- [47:37]
A
Yeah. How many episodes? Yeah, we'll. We'll feature it.
- [47:41]
B
I've done 20. Yeah, yeah, I've done 27 episodes. I just started. Listen, 28 episodes.
- [47:51]
A
Listen, please get in contact with Harley and we'll add it to the front page, man. And add you to Harley.
- [47:56]
B
He already offered. Okay. And I said no. I want to do a few episodes before they, you know, I want to get it. I want to get the style down. I want to make all my mistakes first, which I've made some mistakes. So if you listen, you'll see some mistakes. But I wanted to make those before I put it on the Institute. But I think I'm ready to go.
- [48:12]
A
And we do have a feed everyone, that is all of us at the Institute. You get all of our shows if you sign up for the Libertarian Institute feed, which is a pretty cool thing. And soon we will feature Tom Edlum there. And what was your. Does the name of your book again? Patriots Descent. Is that right?
- [48:29]
B
It was. Shoot, it's what the judge called me.
- [48:35]
A
I shouldn't have said that.
- [48:38]
B
It was, man.
- [48:41]
A
That ring a bell?
- [48:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's weird that I can't think of it. It's something sedition. Oh, he called me. He called me. He called me. Oh, man, I'm having an old man moment here, you know.
- [48:54]
A
Yeah, I forget a lot of things, but I remember the names of my dang books that I wrote. That was such a problem. Hang on, I'm looking at Amazon now and there is Will Greens book A Rogues Sedition. Of course.
- [49:09]
B
That's right. That's right. He called me a rogue. He called me a rogue rolled juror. That's what the. You know, I have that in there. The stuff I wrote for Lerockwell.com about my jury service. And I got jury service coming up at the end of the month. So we'll see how it goes. I got kicked off that Jerry.
- [49:28]
A
Ah, well, that's good. Get back to work. All right. Thank you, Tom. Appreciate you, man.
- [49:33]
B
All right. Hey, thanks, Scott.
- [49:35]
C
The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out the My Books Fool's Errand.
- [49:50]
A
Enough already.
- [49:51]
C
And my latest provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scotthorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scotthortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott HortonShow Bumpers by Josh Langford Music intro and outro videos by Dissident Media. Audio mastering by Podsworth Media.
- [50:14]
A
See y' all next time.