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Plus active or former military and first responders also save an additional 20% every single month. They're the people I trust with my phone calls and believe me, my phone calls are important to me the same way your phone calls are important to you. Head over to PureTalk.com/Shapiro. Make that switch in as little as 10 minutes. You'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage. Pure Talk America's wireless company President Trump totally upends geopolitics with the arrest and extradition of Nicholas Maduro. We examine what that means. Is the Iraq Syndrome finally dead? Plus, Tim Walls is out as the third term possibility for governor in Minnesota. Plus, a trans identifying person possibly breaks into JD Vance's house in Cincinnati first, everything the Daily Wire has to offer is now available in one app. Download the new Daily Wire plus app. Take the entire show with you wherever you are inside the app. Tap follow under my picture. You'll get notified the moment I go live or a new episode drops. Step away at any point. Come back exactly where you left off. You can watch the clips everyone is arguing about online without subjecting yourself to social media. The Daily Wire plus app is where the community lives. Chatting live during shows, sharing ideas, debating the big questions. And because it's ours, it can't be canceled, censored or shut down. Download the new Daily Wire plus app right now on iOS, Android, Roku, Samsung and more. Well, yesterday, Nicolas Maduro, the erstwhile dictator of Venezuela, who of course was extradited by the United States in a snatch and grab operation shocking in its magnitude, incompetence appeared in US Court for the very first time, again unthinkable one week ago. And yet here we now are. According to the Wall Street Journal, he pled guilty to narco trafficking charges during his arraignment in federal court. He said, I am innocent. I'm not guilty. I'm a decent man. I'm still the president of my country. Well, all of those things are not true. He is in fact guilty. He is in fact not a decent man. He's responsible for the deaths of probably hundreds of thousands of his own country compatriots the exile of millions. I'm still the president of my country. He really is not. He adds that he was a prisoner of war and had been kidnapped from his home in Caracas. According to the Wall Street Journal, Monday's hearing kicked off a legal battle with little precedent over a foreign leader in US Court. The arrest of a head of state presents challenges for both the prosecutors and the defense. And it could be years before this thing goes to trial, the judge interjected and told him that they would be a time and place to make the argument that he was wrongfully apprehended. His wife sat at the same defense table. Apparently, there were some signs of injury sustained during her capture. And again, the charges include cocaine importation, conspiracy and possession of machine guns. They're being detained at a Brooklyn federal jail, apparently to the great consternation of New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who really should be happier about all of this. After all, we just provided an illegal immigrant Venezuelan drug dealer with free housing in New York. So he really should be quite happy about all of this. The next hearing is set for March 17. Meanwhile, what is going on over in Venezuela? Well, you have the vice president of Venezuela, a woman named Delsey Rodriguez, who is by all accounts just as vicious, brutal and Machiavellian as Nicolas Maduro. She has been left in charge. Her brother is the head of the Venezuelan assembly, which of course is a puppet group, a puppet legislature. The question is whether the United States will be able to exert enough pressure on Del Rodriguez to get what we want, namely a reopening of the oil industry in Venezuela, a transition, you would hope, to some sort of actual democratic order that ends the socialist tyranny that has dominated Venezuela. You would assume that the reason the United States did not just topple the regime outright is because we do not want tons of boots on the ground in Venezuela. And that external pressure will force Del C. Rodriguez to essentially give up the ghost at an unspecified time in the future. It'll have to be fairly short order, obviously, because President Trump only has three years left in office, and I do not trust a Democratic successor, or possibly a Republican successor to do the right thing here. According to the Wall Street Journal, Maduro's top lieutenant, Delsey Rodriguez, was sworn in as the country's acting president on Monday. Small groups of armed civilians known as colectivos, paramilitary units in support of the ousted president, sped around Caracas on motorbikes. His loyalists are still very much in power. Rodriguez immediately declared a state of external commotion, authorizing police to search for and arrest anyone who supported the raid by US Commanders who snatched Maduro and his wife. Now the question is whether some of this is for show, whether she's attempting to demonstrate that she really is a continuation of Maduro's regime while really sort of doing the bidding of the Americans, saying outrageous things, doing outrageous things simply to keep her loyalists in line while actually doing the work of the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, Maduro hardliners in the legislature, including his own son, whose name is Nicolasito, took part in a ceremony on Monday to swear in the national assembly for a term that is supposed to last all the way until 2031. Apparently armed men were performing spot checks in the Capitol on Monday, stopping drivers to check their vehicles, forcing people to unlock their cell phones for suspect messages. At least seven journalists were detained. Three of them, or at least four of them remain apparently under arrest. Apparently, many residents didn't believe they could go out into the streets. One banking adviser in Caracas said, there's no change at all. We're going to remain in the same situation because it's the same people. So the question, of course, is what comes next? Stephen Miller, special adviser to the President of the United States, he says, listen, we are setting the terms and conditions here. No matter what the Venezuelan government is currently saying. We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. United States is running. So the country during this transition period. If that's true, obviously that doesn't mean that President Trump is setting the bus fare schedule. Of course, the country. Okay, so the question is what that means. How much pressure can we actually exert, how much leverage can we exert on the Venezuelan government to do the things that we want to see done in Venezuela, meaning an actual change of regime? Because let's be clear here, the goal here is not merely to get Delsey Rodriguez to open up the oil industry. No one is going to invest in a country in which the dictator can simply revert back to type the minute that President Trump is out of office. This has been one of the major problems when it comes to investment in Latin and South America by major corporations. If you've got a 10 year Runway, for example, to get to the oil that you need, then how are you going to invest 10 years worth of knowing that at any moment, Delsey Rodriguez could change her mind and simply nationalize the oil industry again when President Trump is out of office. And so there has to be real effectuated change with serious commitments and the ability to carry out what needs to happen. So who are the major players here again? According to the Wall Street Journal, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino command Venezuela's police and military. Those are the forces that kept Maduro in power for more than a decade with their deadly crackdowns on dissent. And probably tens of thousands of people were imprisoned or killed by this regime. And so you are talking about the functional military apparatus of Venezuela, which typically a dictator will ensure is loyal to him. Something happened here that made clear that they were no longer loyal to Maduro and they were hoping that Trump would take his foot off the gas. If Trump keeps his foot on the gas, and I mean that almost literally, if the United States continues to inhibit the flow of oil in and out of Venezuela to prevent exports, to control the airspace, it's going to make it very difficult for the Venezuelan regime to continue to buck President Trump's demands. Right now, Cabello and Padrino are displaying unity with Rodriguez, but they represent a wildcard for President Trump's bet that the remnants of the regime will fall in line to avoid Maduro's fate. For now, Cabello and Padrino appear to be playing ball after that large scale strike that took out Maduro's personal security apparatus and led to his capture. So if the regime falls, then both of them are in serious trouble. They might find themselves in jail. You could see a world in which they end up having to go into exile. They also may not have a hell of a lot of choice because again, the United States demonstrated its full scale dominance militarily over whatever the Venezuelan military thinks it is doing. In a moment, we'll get to President Trump's demands for Venezuela's new government first. As we move into 2026, many businesses, including Daily Wire, are ramping up hiring efforts to meet ambitious new objectives. But bringing those goals to life requires assembling the right team. And that's easier said than done. Today's hiring landscape presents unique obstacles, from sourcing candidates with niche expertise to sifting through overwhelming numbers of applications to find the truly qualified prospects. For companies facing these hurdles, our sponsor, ZipRecruiter, offers a solution designed to streamline that entire hiring process. Right now, you can explore what ZipRecruiter has to offer at no cost. 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According to Politico, the Trump administration is demanding that Venezuela's interim leader take several pro US Actions. Her predecessor refused if she wants to avoid also finding herself in court in the United States, officials have told Del Rodriguez they want to see at least three moves from her 1 cracking down on drug flows 2 kicking out Iranian, Cuban and other operatives of countries or networks hostile to Washington and 3 stopping the sale of oil to U.S. adversaries. According to a U.S. official familiar with the situation and a person familiar with the administration's internal discussions, U.S. officials also expect Rodriguez to eventually facilitate free elections and step aside. But the deadlines for those demands are fluid and US Officials stress there are no elections imminent. This, by the way, is not a personal thing. There are a lot of members of the media right now who are trying to suggest that the reason that President Trump is not putting in place the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado, that the reason for that is because he has some sort of personal animus that she won the Nobel Peace Prize. That's really, really silly. That is not what's going on. The actual thing that is happening is that she has no ability to govern because she does not have forces on the ground. Maria Corina Machado, if she were in charge of military or something, then there would be the ability to put her in place. But if you just say she's in charge now, there is no way to actually effectuate that absent serious boots on the ground. This is why when Representative Maria Salazar says that Machado should leave the country, when there's an election she should. The problem right now is how do you make that happen? How do you get from point A to point B? Here was Maria Salazar making the case for Machado. Marco Rubio said it. It's been 48 hours. Let's give us a few months until we create the stability. And I'm sure the Maria Corina Machado who is the leader of the opposition, of the Democratic opposition, will go back in, be able to put together the process so you can have free and fair elections with international observers. I'm sure she will be the nominee. That Maduro did not allow her to be the presidential nominee. I'm sure she's going to win. Now, again, the question of how we get to an election is the big question here. According to the Wall Street Journal, the CIA had concluded that Machado would not have the ability to actually effectuate a shift in power in Venezuela at this time. She doesn't have the support base, not among the people, but with the actual people who have the guns. And it turns out that the people who have the guns typically make the rules. According to an intelligence report cited by the Wall Street Journal, it said that Rodriguez and two other top Venezuelan regime figures would be possible interim rulers who could keep order. The two hardliners, again, who we've mentioned, that would be Cabello and Padrino, could undo any efforts at a transition. Both face US Criminal charges similar to those filed against Maduro. They are seen as unlikely to cooperate with Washington. But they may be a little bit more likely now that, you know, their boss got defenestrated and brought to the United States for trial. According to the Wall Street Journal, last year the CIA cultivated a source within Maduro's inner circle who provided information on his whereabouts. The spy agency's close tracking of Maduro's location, which leveraged other surveillance elements including stealth drones, allowed the army's Delta Force to nab him and his wife during the raid, people familiar with the operation said. So what exactly is going to happen next? Well, the better course is likely to compel Rodriguez to initiate a transition of power, presumably economic discontent. Identifying people, maybe even lower down on the military infrastructure ladder who have now been elevated thanks to the moves against Maduro, might be a way to effectuate almost a second coup. But the threat is out there and it exists very clearly. Now, this may not be the end of the story. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He says that given the fact that Venezuelan oil was propping up the Cuban regime, Cuba may be next. You just wait for Cuba. Cuba is a communist dictatorship that's killed priests and nuns. They've preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We're going to wake up one day, I hope in 26 in our backyard. We're going to have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narco terrorist dictators killing Americans. Okay, well, you know, again, he is not wrong about this. Having Venezuela back in Cuba and then Venezuela no longer being able to support Cuba means that Cuba is in danger of falling as well. The other country that has come up a lot is the country of Colombia. Or Gustavo Petro, who is a radical far left socialist, is the leader. Now, he was only inaugurated in 2022, so he's not been in power for all that long. There is a one term limit for presidents in Colombia and it turns out that many of the politicians who have actually run Colombia in the past were right wing or center right. So Petro is a difference. He doesn't actually require a coup. There is due to be another election this year in Colombia. So he can talk all he wants. As long as there's a legit election, he probably loses in Colombia. He's very unpopular. Here's Petro trying to shout at President Trump. He says, don't threaten me. I'll wait for you here if you want. I do not accept invasions. I do not accept missiles. I do not accept assassinations. I accept intelligence. Come here to speak intelligently and we receive you. We talked one on one and with real figures, not lies. Stop lying. Okay, first of all, let's be real. If the United States fires a missile, he will be accepting the missile. He doesn't have much of a choice about it. But it's not necessary. Petro is not eligible to run for reelection right now. If you look at the polling in Colombia, it's wide open. You have somebody from Petro's group named Ivan Cepeda who's of the left. You have a candidate of the right sort of populist figures or Trumpian figure. You have another sort of more classical conservative figure. By August, there will likely be a different regime in place in Colombia. So the idea that we need to effectuate some sort of regime change in Colombia is not even true. And that's just Petro railing against the machine. Meanwhile, again, one of the big purposes here for the United States is to reopen the Venezuelan oil industry in a productive way that is directed toward the west and mostly directed away from Iran and China, cutting out the legs from underneath the oil support base for our geopolitical opponents. Right now, China gets an enormous percentage of its oil from Russia and Iran, but it also gets a not insignificant percentage from Venezuela. And so if China were to be deprived of that, that would do China pretty significant damage. By the way, Chinese weapons were on the ground in Venezuela. They didn't do much of a difference against the United States military. Right now, Chevron is trying to figure out whether or not to invest serious dollars in the Venezuelan oil industry. Energy stocks jumped yesterday on the assumption that the United States would not have taken Maduro if it did not have a plan for a transition to a privatized oil industry in Venezuela. According to the New York Times, President Trump has now allowed Chevron to continue operating in Venezuela. The company is in prime position to benefit after US Forces captured Maduro over the weekend. That remarkable turnaround is due in part to a spirited lobbying effort that included several conversations over the past year between President Trump and Mike Wirth, Chevron's mild mannered chief executive. So Chevron stayed active in the Venezuelan area and now they look like they are the company most likely to benefit from a reopening of Venezuelan private oil drilling. For Chevron, the rationale for staying in Venezuela was simple. Apparently, under a new contract in 2006, the company received an ownership stake in a key Venezuelan project. Rather than being paid a fee to produce oil there. Chevron apparently saw that if oil prices rose in the future, then they were taking the upside. So Chevron is still there. Chevron may benefit from all of this. Listen, cheaper energy, a Venezuela that is not directed at support of China or is barred from support of China is a win for the United States. Does that get us everywhere that we'd like to see Venezuela go? No. But there will be, I would assume, a transitional plan here towards something better for Venezuelans, even if it is not in the immediate term. And of course, what President Trump is attempting to do is to effectuate the will of the American people, to serve the interests of the American people without getting involved in a large scale occupation of Venezuela. Meanwhile, the DHS assistant secretary, Trisha McLaughlin, she's saying that Venezuelans who are here on temporary protected status can now go home because Maduro isn't in charge. Well, I mean, we may be a little bit away from that. Given the fact that again, the regime still in power is still Mazura's regime, it's all of his remnants. I'm not seeing any changes to our posture on this. I think the great news for those who are here from Venezuela on temporary protected status is that they can now go home with hope for their country, a country that they love, that there is going to be peace and prosperity and stability. Tell me, you know, we can hope that that's going to emerge very soon. It's not quite there yet. Right. We are in phase A of whatever happens in Venezuela now. The left's reaction has been exactly what you would predict. Some of it is just pure anti Americanism. Internationally, you can see all the enemies of the United States very, very upset. So, for example, the representative of Colombia at the United Nations, Leonor Zalabada Torres, had this to say. Colombia condemns categorically the events that occurred in the early morning of the 3rd of January in Venezuela where we saw multiple explosions and air activity over Caracas and other areas of the country as part of a military attack carried out by the United States, which which including included bombings of civilian and military infrastructure, creating panic amongst the population. All of this represents clear violations of the sovereignty, political independence and the territorial integrity of Venezuela. Other representatives condemning the United States included the Russian Federation as well as China. Of course. Here is the Chinese representative Sule at the UN condemning the United States for its actions against Nicolas Maduro. On January 3rd, the United States blatantly launched large scale military strikes against Venezuela, forcibly seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and took them out of the country. It claimed that it will run Venezuela and even didn't rule out launching a second round of military operations on an even larger scale. China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the unilateral, illegal and bullying acts of the us. Our Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, he of course had the proper response, which was, who gives a flying bleep what Russia and China and Colombia think of all of this? These are not exactly human rights oriented nations. If the UN and the United nations in this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco terrorist and the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state. What kind of organization is this? And the answer is the United Nations a garbage organization. And I would hope that on his way out of office in three years, President Trump defunds the United nations entirely, uses eminent domain to take control of the building and builds a Trump Tower there. Because honestly, the United nations is not only useless, it is wildly counterproductive on every available level. And meanwhile, protesters in New York City have already gathered in favor of Maduro. According to the New York Post, these protests have been organized by the hardcore left wing group the People's Forum, which. Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. They have close ties to China. To China. The People's Forum put out a press release saying this war is not about drug trafficking, it's not about democracy, about stealing Venezuela's oil and dominating Latin America. I think one of the great interviews that I've seen recently was an interview with a person on the streets of Venezuela who's asked about this. And he said, well, hold up. I mean, Iran, Russia, China, are they here because they're looking for the recipe for arepas or are they also here for the oil? Like, let's be clear about how foreign relations works. Nonetheless, members of the left have been searching for an angle here. So naturally you have Representative Ted Lieu of California saying, this is terrible because now that we have done this to Maduro, what's to stop China or Russia from making aggressive actions in the world? Madud, check a calendar. Russia has been taking aggressive actions since the invasion of Georgia during the Bush administration under Vladimir Putin. And what are you talking about? China has been building military islands in the middle of the Pacific. They've been threatening Philippines and Taiwan, obviously. What are you talking about? Do they need a handwritten invitation from the United States in order for them to feel emboldened or something like what? What nonsense? Certainly this illegal action by the President does also take away the moral argument that the United States had against China and Russia with respect to their aggressive actions towards other places in other countries. Give me a break. I mean, really, truly a stupid take there. Meanwhile, Sunny Hostin, who can always be trusted as a lawyer to give the best legal take over on the View. She says that the kidnapping is illegal. In her humble opinion. It's not legal to do this. It tells people. Why not? Well, it's not legal because it violates international law. Right. And this sort of represents this new. I mean, I've never seen it before. The President of the United States to kill. I believe he killed. The US government, killed over 100 people, including civilians and military, in Venezuela during this kidnapping and capture. And international law doesn't allow it unless there is. Unless Congress declares war, violates international law. Tell us more about international law, Sunny Hostin. Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York. He went after Marco Rubio, suggesting that Rubio had been deceiving Congress in the lead up to the war in Iraq. The same things were said about Vietnam when comparisons were made in a similar way. It is such chicken hawk BS from Rubio, who's not served a single day in uniform to dismiss that as a phobia. You want to tell that to My friends, on this bracelet that I lost in combat. You want to tell that to the innocent Iraqis that were killed? You want to tell that to the Venezuelan people who are saying, we're glad Maduro's gone, as am I, but what the heck is the plan afterwards? And are we just going to hand this to another dictator who's going to do the will of our increasingly authoritarian president in Donald Trump? Again, the argument that somehow Rubio lied is ridiculous. What is he supposed to do? Disclose secret operations that could be blown at any moment? That is not going to happen. It never has happened in the modern history of the United States post World War II. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries, he is putting, he's hanging his hat on the idea that the future of the Venezuelan people should be decided by Venezuelans. Yes, it's a step by step process. The first step is to get rid of the guy at the top. And then we'll move to phase B. The future of the Venezuelan people should be determined by the Venezuelan people, not by Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, or Stephen Miller. Are you kidding me? These people don't even know how to run the United States of America. So I do have a question here, which is Maduro was running it until five seconds ago. So the choices were not the Venezuelan people or Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and President Trump. The choices were Nicolas Maduro or a transitional plan that moves toward democracy presided over by a tutelary power in the United States. Leave it to Senator John Fetterman, apparently the last sane Democrat to just say the quiet part out loud and the obvious part, which is this is a good thing and we should salute our military for what they just did. I think. I don't know why we can't just acknowledge that it's been a good thing. What's happened. I mean, I mean, I've seen the speeches from whether it's Leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden. No, we all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here. And I think we did. Just as I've salute our military. What they've done that was really so surgical and precise and very efficient. So why we can't celebrate these kinds of things now. Good for Senator Fetterman, by the way, Anna Navarro. You know, credit to strange new respect for Anna Navarro over at the View, who occasionally, apparently will say the right things here. She was. I think you can criticize and ask questions and have concerns about the way it was done and what this means in the future. Right. And I think you can still celebrate that this murderous, corrupt, sadistic son of a is out of Venezuela because he has, I think there's 8 million Venezuelan exiles all over the world. People have fled from this man's tyrannical rule. Okay. She is right about that, obviously. Okay. So the real question in all of this is where does the United States stand? What has happened here? And something important has happened here. There's an attempt to minimize what's happened here because we don't know exactly what's going to come next. Again, you have to imagine that the pressure tactics are not over. The administration is saying that over and over. But something more important has happened here, and that is that President Trump has substantively killed the Iraq Syndrome. The Iraq syndrome, the syndrome that arose in Americans minds about our role in the world arising from the failure of the Iraq War and subsequent occupation. So you have to go back in history to understand this. In the aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam War, America's foreign policy establishment fell into disarray. According to a lot of the experts, the Vietnam War hadn't been lost because of a combination of terrible war strategy and domestic discontent. Instead, the new conventional wisdom said the Vietnam War never should have been fought in the first place. Not only that, but America had to fundamentally rethink its role in the world. The new conventional wisdom suggested that that the US should stop engaging in aggressive foreign policy in its own interests. Instead, the United States ought to pursue a more dovish or isolationist foreign policy in order to avoid quagmires. This conventional wisdom came to be known as Vietnam Syndrome. Undergirding the Vietnam syndrome was very, very often a thinly veiled anti Americanism. The belief that America was in fact not good but a malign force on planet earth. As former Princeton professor Richard Fox said at the time, quote, I love the Vietnam syndrome because it was the proper redemptive path for American foreign policy to take after the Vietnam defeat. In other words, America is at root guilty. And we learned that in Vietnam. And now we ought to withdraw from the world and acknowledge our guilt. The Vietnam syndrome in the real world came with really serious costs. As it turns out, a world without a strong America is a far worse world. An America dedicated to self. Castration on the international stage ushered in the Cambodian genocide, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among other foreign policy tragedies. Well, by the mid-80s, Ronald Reagan had decided that it was time for America to move beyond The Vietnam syndrome. In 1983, the Reagan administration intervened to depose a Marxist government in Granada, a successful intervention that cost few American lives and restored that small island nation to freedom. And just a few months later, Reagan's Defense secretary, a man named Caspar Weinberger, spelled out six standards to be met prior to a military intervention. First, a vital interest had to be at stake. Second, the United States had to be prepared for outright victory. Third, America needed to have clear political and military goals. Fourth, America had to be willing to adjust its strategy continuously. Fifth, public support had to be maintained. And sixth, all other options had to be exhausted. And the Reagan administration And the subsequent H.W. bush administration ended the Vietnam Syndrome with the Weinberger Doctrine. In 1989, the United States intervened in Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega, restoring democracy to that nation. We talked about that yesterday. In 1991, President George H.W. bush initiated Operation Desert Storm to eject Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That intervention was specifically designed to fulfill Casper Weinberger's criteria. And so the Vietnam Syndrome was basically dead. And then, of course, came the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War, which revived it. Both wars began with specific missions. The Afghanistan War was designed to depose the Taliban regime and prevent the installation of another regime friendly to Al Qaeda. The Iraq War was designed to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Both of those objectives were achieved in the early going. But then the aftermath in both countries turned into an exercise in large scale nation building, A project that lasted years and cost over a trillion dollars and cost the blood and lives of thousands of American troops. And ever since, critics of American foreign policy have basically revived the Vietnam Syndrome in the form of an Iraq Syndrome. The idea that every single conflict in which the United States is involved must become Iraq or will become Iraq. Not, contrary the usual definition, a justified skepticism of intelligence findings or fear of nation building, but again, a full scale restoration of the Vietnam Syndrome. Every single foreign policy intervention is supposed to become Iraq or, or Afghanistan. You hear this repeated ad nauseam from the horseshoe left and the horseshoe right. And unsurprisingly, just like with the Vietnam Syndrome, the Iraq Syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Predominantly, withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama, and Iranian proxies around the region grew, and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7, 2023. Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and prompted, at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China looked at the United States and the world and decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. Well, now, on the tail end of Joe Biden's catastrophic foreign policy presidency, again, an Iraq syndrome presidency. Just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq Syndrome to bed. Trump has done so with what could be called the Trump Doctrine. That's a term that I defined back in November 2024 with the following criteria. One, America's interests are paramount and they include a lot of things, from freedom of the seas to the strength of American allies in contentious regions to, yes, oil interests. Second, America's interests must be carefully calibrated. Two, our investment in them. So big interest means big investment, small interest, smaller investment. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America's interests are on the table, from diplomacy to military interventionism. And fourth, all of this should be made very public all the time. The threat should be on the table. The threat of the gun should always be on the table. Well, President Trump has done this again. I said this was his doctrine in November 2024 and now in the last year, he has done it twice. First, he did so with the June 22, 2025 B2 strikes on Iran's nuclear reactor at Fordo, reestablishing America's deterrence power in the Middle east, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion. Despite all of the caterwauling from his supposed allies declaring that World War three would break out because again, they had been captured by Iraq syndrome, President Trump is not well. Now President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In pursuing these actions, Trump has reestablished American deterrence globally. He's made clear Americans, America's enemies are on notice fafo. And he's demonstrating that such action doesn't need to lead to a quagmire or to a full scale nation building exercise draining America's attention and resources. Iraq syndrome should be dead. And if it is, it died at the hands of President Trump. America is indeed once again feared on the global stage, which is an incredible accomplishment given where we were just one year ago. This is what many of us voted for and at least those of us who actually would like to make America great again in the world. Well, meanwhile, a lot closer to home, J.D. vance's home in Cincinnati was apparently broken into and vandalized. According to the New York Post, the deranged hammer wielding alleged vandal is reportedly the son of a prominent millionaire family who is Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. Trans identifying. Oh, you mean that people who identify as members of the opposite sex might have other problems? Sometimes I am shocked. Color me absolutely shocked. William DeFore, 26, was arrested early Monday after allegedly shattering four windows Advance's home. Apparently he was attempting to break into the home around midnight. It's unclear whether this person identifies as transgender or non binary, but he recently appeared to be posting under the name Julia Defour. This person again appears to have some serious difficulties. He is the son of a pediatric urologist and apparently again again a fancy family. Longtime Democratic party supporters. The the reality of mental illness is quite shocking and pretending it away and also creating moral structures whereby if you quote unquote challenge the identity of a person who is clearly engaging in his illusion, you must be threatening them in some way and thus counteraction is justified, which has been the sort of excuse making with regard to everything from the murder of Charlie Kirk to the assault on Covenant Catholic. That entire thought process has to be ended. It has to be curtailed. The thought process is wrong and it is damaging and it is dangerous. In bigger news, apparently Tim Walls has now dropped out. We reported this late breaking news yesterday. According to the Wall Street Journal, Governor Tim Walls has dropped his bid for a third term amid a massive welfare fraud scandal. A remarkable fall for a politician who had ascended to the national stage in 2024 as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Once again, it is astonishing to me that Kamala Harris chose the goofball from Minnesota who is presiding over legitimately hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud over, for example, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. Jessica Shapiro happened to be Jewish. Pretty astonishing move by Kamala Harris. Worked out well for her. Senator Amy Klobuchar is seriously considering running for governor. She would be the front runner, obviously. Speaking to reporters Monday in St. Paul, Wall said it became clear to him he could not run a 2026 campaign and do the work needed to respond to the crisis. He of course claimed that he is a victim in all of this. Here he was. He did a press conference yesterday at which of course he took no questions from the press after presiding over hundreds of millions of dollars in bilt taxpayer money. Here he was yesterday ripping the people he calls conspiracy theorists. Now again he can focus in on the Nick Shirley video and say that it was not substantiated well enough. But there were large scale contemporaneous reports from cnn, from the New York Times, from Chris Ruffo, from a wide variety of sources pointing out the extraordinary fraud taking place in the Somali community in Minnesota. Here is Tim Walls trying to chalk it all up to conspiracy theories. If it were that much of a conspiracy theory, Madud, you should debunk it and continue to campaign. The reality is you're a terrible governor. You never should have been a vice presidential nominee. And it just goes to show you that hanging out with Kamala Harris doesn't put much of a shine on you. As it turns out, we've got conspiracy theorist right wing youtubers breaking into our daycares demanding access to our children. We've got the president of the United States demonizing our Somali neighbors and wrongfully confiscating fun bonds that Minnesotans rely on. It's disgusting and it's dangerous. And, well, again, this is very, very industrial scale fraud. According to the Wall Street Journal, we are talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars in fraud nationally and certainly hundreds of millions of dollars inside the state of Minnesota, ranging from food programs built to child care programs built. Here was Tim Walls attacking President Trump for all of this. Again, it wasn't Trump who did it, my dude. It was you. You're the governor. I want to mince words here. Donald Trump and his allies in Washington and in St. Paul and online want to make our state a colder, meaner place. They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in the country to raise a family. They've already begun trying to withhold funds that were meant to help families afford child care, and they have no intention of stopping there. Now, again, it is not just Nick Shirley. Okay? The Minnesota Star Tribune documented more than $200 million in fraudulent meal and housing programs, Medicaid services and more. Federal prosecutors and President Trump say that the number could be actually in the billions. And they have frozen a bunch of child care funding to Minnesota after those allegations of fraud involving daycare centers that were highlighted in Nick Shirley's video. Now, again, not everything in the Nick Shirley video is fully substantiated. Some of these places presumably had kids in them, but an enormous number of them had massive violations. And again, they are still awaiting further investigation on a lot of these childcare facilities. According to the Associated Press, Minnesota officials have until next week to hand over information on providers and parents who receive federal childcare funds the Trump administration contends have been fraudulently used or risk losing their own federal funding. Now, there's some state officials saying that some of these places have been operating as expected. But an enormous Number of them also have gigantic failures in terms of their compliance issues. Quality Leering center, for example, as we discussed yesterday, is a child care center that had something like 121 different problems with it over the past three years. Here, in fact, is the manager of Quality Learning center who said that Nick Shirley came outside operating hours. They've been, they've been open for eight and a half years. You don't come outside of. Outside, outside of operational hours and then say they're using taxpayer money. That was completely false. As you can see, we're open Mondays through Thursdays, 2 to 10pm he was here earlier. I don't see him right now. So it's like, are you trying to record that we're doing fraud or are you trying to put the Somali name and the fraud in the same sentence? That's what really hurt us the last couple of days. We're open. We've been open, we haven't closed. We've been open for eight, eight and a half years now. We haven't closed once during that period. Okay. With 121 violations in three years. Okay. Which does raise the question of how many violations does it take to get you canceled off the welfare programs in the state of Minnesota. Meanwhile, one of these Somali run daycare centers came out and said that they did have documents demonstrating their legitimacy, but they were broken into and stolen. Which seems kind of weird why that would be the thing that a thief would steal. Yesterday morning I was called by the owner because unfortunately someone came in to our daycare. We looked and saw what happened and we saw that the suspect came in from the back, broke in from the back kitchen, and he also destroyed the wall to come in. As we walked around the daycare, we saw that our office doors was broken into as well. We saw that, unfortunately, we saw that there was important documentation, enrollment of the children and also employee documentation that was gone. There were also checkbooks that were ripped from our check papers that were from our book. This is devastating news and we don't know why this is targeting our Somali community, as one video made by a specific individual made this all happen. Again, not. I have questions like, if you're a thief, is that the first thing you go for is the employment records at a daycare center? Is that really what you, what you go for? Again, this is a major ongoing problem. The New York Times had a piece back in November 2025 titled How Fraud Swamped Minnesota's Social Services System. On Tim Walls's watch, Walls answered zero questions as he walked out of his presser tomorrow, I'll be back with you. I'll give you an update on America's best paid family medical leave program that is now a week into it. And at that time, I'll take all your questions. Thank you all. Just we'll slide out the back door without answering any questions. Well, I do not think that that is the end of the Tim Wall scandal. I do not think that Tim Walls declaration that he will not run again is going to end all of this. You might call some of this the warmth of collectivism. It turns out that when you confiscate vast amounts of taxpayer dollars and you redistribute them to all of your friends, when you regulate people to death, but then for your friends, you alleviate those regulations, you might call that the warmth of collectivism. I'm using this phrase because, of course, last week Zormandani was officially sworn into office in New York City and gave an astonishing speech in which he announced that socialism was the order of the day in New York City. The Reds are in charge here. He was promising the end of rugged individualism in a city about which Frank Sinatra once sang, if you make it here, you can make it anywhere. Now, I guess the slogan of New York City is, if you can stay here, we'll give you free stuff on somebody else's dime until we're all bankrupt. It's a little longer and doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. Here is Mamdani talking about the warmth of collectivism, by which I assume he means the warm embrace of big Brother. There's a great ex post, I can't remember who put it up, talking about the actual warmth of collectivism, referring to Moscow's centralized heating system under the Soviet Union. They built this gigantic centralized heating system under Moscow in the early days of the Soviet Union, and it was utterly inefficient because it turned out they tried to set the temperature for hundreds of thousands of people. And so if it was too hot in your apartment, you open the windows, wasting energy. And in other parts of the city, you couldn't get heat. But there was the warmth of collectivism. You did feel the collectivism. Apparently the cost of heating in Moscow, thanks to this idiotic centralized heating system, was greater than the cost for heating all of France. So we can look forward to more of that sort of wonderful policy under Zoran Mamzani. Here he was. And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Well, I'm really excited about the death of rugged individualism in a city that is mostly famous for Wall Street. That is exciting stuff. We'll see how it works out for him, Cotton. Meanwhile, Mamdani also added that the era of big government is here and it's here to stay. I have to admit I'm kind of eager for this. I would love to see all the institutions of New York government be allowed to run their full course under Zoram Hamdani. I want to see what his socialist utopia looks like. I want to see all the promises that he's making made manifest. If people vote for dystopia, let them have their dystopia. Democracy is the theory that the people ought to get what they voted for, good and hard. And Zoramdani looks like he's ready to give it to the people of New York, good and hard. And they did vote for this. And listen, I have a lot, a lot of friends living in New York. As I have suggested, Come on down to Florida. Weather here is nice. Here's Mamdani. To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this. No longer will City hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers lives. Wow. So the Arabic government is here and City hall is here to help. He's from the government, he's here to help. And he's going to govern as a democratic socialist, which is exciting for everyone. Again, you guys broke it, you bought it. Congrats to you. And man, look at that lineup. Oh boy. Now I'm Kathy Hochul and Tish James and AOC and some lady I don't recognize. Maybe that's Bernie's wife. And then Bernie Sanders, looking increasingly like a meme of Bernie Sanders. These are your leaders, gang. Choose your fighters, New York. Here is Mamdani. I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical. As the great senator from Vermont once said, what's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life. Well, I guess that he will. We'll see how that works for them. Bernie Sanders is very excited. He says, don't worry, he's not a communist. Also, everything will be free. Yes, yes, you should definitely trust a man, the most useless man in American politics for decades upon decades. You should trust him. When it comes to governance. A man who has never produced a single thing of value his entire life. His entire life, this man has never produced a single thing of worth that he's going to tell you how the greatest city on planet earth ought to be run. All of us have heard how Iran's opponents have called the agenda that he campaigned on radical communistic in the richest country in the history of the world. Making sure that people can live in affordable housing is not radical. Providing free and high quality child care is not radical. And making sure that every family in the city, regardless of income, has access to decent quality food at an affordable cost is not radical. One of my favorite things about these socialists is they just declare that people should have a bunch of free stuff and it's not radical. Ok? Your declaration in and of itself is quote unquote not radical. It's the things you have to do to try to effectuate that that make it radical. Because it turns out the best way for people to get widespread health care is called capitalism, which has increased the longevity and lifespan of human beings on planet Earth by decades, while socialism has killed literally hundreds of millions of people. Why not free everything? In fact, free World cup tickets. Zormadani said yesterday. I'm not even kidding, this is hysterical. He said yesterday he was going to work to ensure that everyone in New York got a free World cup ticket. Why the hell not? Why not? Let's just do this thing, man. I had a New Yorker the other day come up to me and ask me if there was any way I could help him get World cup tickets because he was saying that the cost that he saw for a game was $600. Right? This is increasingly out of reach. We have made what used to be a working class game into a luxury experience. And there are too many for whom it doesn't matter where the World cup is being played in the world. They know where they're going to watch it. It's TV and we want to ensure that there are more experiences available. What in the world? What he's. Huh? He's going to get rid of free World cup ticket. Okay, all right, sure. Why not? Also, he's going to apparently be holding rental rip off hearings within the first 100 days. Now, it's hilarious about all of this is that a huge percentage of New York real estate is rent controlled. One of the reasons that people are not getting the sort of services they want from their landlords is because of rent control. When you reduce the profit margin down to zero, it actually becomes ineffective for landlords who take care of their tenants. You want to know why service is really great at luxury apartments? Because people are paying an awful lot of money for the luxury apartments. So he both wants low rent forced by the government, and to force the landlords to do things at loss to them. And then he's going to yell at them a lot, man. Again, New Yorkers, you. You did this. It was you. You were warned. I am also proud to announce that I will be signing an executive order directing HPD to work alongside the Department of Buildings, the newly invigorated Mayor's office to protect tenants, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and our newly created Office of Mass Engagement to hold rental ripoff hearings across all. We will hold these rental rip off hearings across all five boroughs within the first hundred days of this administration. New Yorkers will be invited to participate and to share the realities that animate their daily lives. I want these hearings to expose the ugly underbelly of our city. Man, this was so much better in the original Russian. You know, what if. What if we just had people's courts? That'd be great. We could set up some people's courts. People could bring their landlords in, the kulaks. They could question them about their rental practices. And then if they're really, really bad, I mean, we got a wall in the back. I mean, we could. We could make some things happen. Zormandani bringing the best of the 20th century back. Wow. This is going to be fantastic. And lest you think that I'm exaggerating the ideology of Zaramdani, let's meet C. Weaver, who is now going to be in charge of the New York City office to protect tenants, which is going to be great. Let's meet her. So she says the property is a collective good. Yep. Yep. Can't imagine why so many real estate magnates I know pulled out of deals at the last minute in New York City and thinking, hey, I'm not sure I want to work in this crazy hellhole. I think the reality is, is that for centuries, we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good. And we are going to. And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have. A different relationship to property. That's so exciting. What will that relationship be well, according to her Twitter feed, which is now scrubbed. Quote, I don't know why we white people keep procreating. Passing really strong rent control is a more effective way to shrink the value of real estate than reducing rezoning applications. I wish I believed in God so I could believe that all men who take credit for women's work and all white men who take credit for the work of women of color would one day burn. This seems like a delightful person. I cannot imagine how things are going to go wrong here. Quote, this country built wealth for white people through genocide, slavery, stolen land and labor. White supremacy built both the north and the South. In fact, private property, including, and kind of especially homeownership, is a weapon of white supremacy. That lady is in charge of Senate policy. Congrats, New York. So glad that you decided to do this. How, how will it possibly go wrong now? This sort of insane leftism is meeting its match on a horseshoe right now. The horseshoe right has not taken power. The horseshoe right is sort of a splinter movement inside the right. It has sort of an outsized punching weight online, but not in real life. But there is one piece I want to focus in, particularly for a moment, that is a piece called Tyrannical Centralization by a person named Curtis Yarvin. So Curtis Yarvin is a, is widely read on sort of the fringe right. Vice President of the United States apparently has, has been a fan of Curtis Yarvin in the past and he is a representative of, of a philosophy that is effectively a sort of right wing fascism, a sort of right wing response to left wing centralization. So you have the reds, people like Zoramdani, and then you have their right wing fascist opposition, people like Curtis Yarvin. And I'm using that terminology advisedly because in his latest piece, he basically just says the quiet part out loud, criticizing the Trump administration for not simply dismantling the American Constitution. Quote, in an American regime change. Take the American version of this. L. Ron Council, kabuki, tricorn hats, Davy Crockett or Harriet Tubman Declaration, Constitution, even the ancient and holy Administrative Procedure act of 1946 and treat it like an Arkansas miscarriage. Chuck the plastic bag out the sunroof, the possums will get to it. First, just assume the sale and act with the energy of an occupying army. Nationalize and rationalize. Quote, Besides absolute power, everything else is just a way to lose. That's just where we are in history now. The energy says Curtis Yarvin, that made Trumpism possible is the energy of this illusion breaking down and conservatives breaking free from the cult of the Constitution. He recommends the creation of a new kind of political party, which is actually an old kind of party, a hard party. A hard party, says Yarvin, is a party designed to take unconditional control of the state. A hard party is a party in which all members delegate 100% of their political energy to the party's command. Joining a hard party is a political marriage, not an election night hookup with any random politician whose name on a lawn sign catches your eye. A Hard Party is a legal, private organization whose goal is to become the ruling party of the next government, like the CCP in China. A one party state? Yes, we tried not having a one party state. We ended up with a one party state right down to the DEI commissars in every office, public or private. Neglecting of course that President Trump has been elected. Republicans control a majority of state houses across the country. He suggests that we can't have a paramilitary 1930s style street militia. Instead, get everybody organized on an app. You should vote at the party's direction in every election for which you are eligible. You don't need to pay attention to the names, platforms, ideas, etc. You are not even supposed to. Everyone in a hard party, says Kurvitz Yarvin, member officer donor, delegates all their political party power to the party. As a member, you vote at the party's direction in every election for which you are eligible. You don't need to pay attention to the names. Sorry, he says quote they do not need to follow the news. This would be the citizens. They do not need to read about the issues. They do not need to know about the candidates. Voting is not some time consuming, stressful Norman Rockwell exercise of deep moral choices. They made one big vote joining the party. Eventually they will be relieved from the duty of filling out ballots. So the reactionary right wing response to the Zor Momdani Communism of New York City symbolized by the right wing authoritarianism of Curvis Curtis Yarvin and it is worth noting only because again, Curtis Yarvin does have his devotees are mainly in the online space on the right or people who sit around pondering whether their chair exists. At the same time they ponder about how to establish an integralist state in America absent the Constitution of the United States. In the same way that the left ought to divide off from its communist leaning splinter faction, the right needs to splinter off from this ridiculous neo fascist trash. It is silly and humoring. It is incredibly silly. Not only silly, dangerous, because humoring authoritarian nonsense from people who are purportedly on your side is a great way to be co opted by those splinter groups. Alrighty. Coming up, we'll get into a pseudo controversy over Hilton Hotels, which took up a lot of online space yesterday. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God? Is that who you think I was alone with? Martin? I knew your father. I am yet called convinced that he was not of this world. All men know of the great Taliesin. You are my father. That the gods should war for my soul. Princess Garrus, savior of our people. I know what the bull God offered you. I was offered the same. And there is a new pirate work in the world. I've seen it. A God who sacrifices what he loves for us. We are each given only one life. Singer. No. We're given another. I learned of Yazu the Christ and I have become his follower. He's waiting on a miracle. And I think you can give him one. Trust in Yezu. He is the only hope for men like us. Hate to prison never rests in the hands of the great light. Great light, Great darkness. Such things mattered to me then. What matters to you now, Mistress of lies? You, nephew. The sword of a high king. How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield, Suckling to the promises of a God who has abandoned you? I cannot take up that sword again. You know what you must do. Great life, forgive me. The time has come to be reborn, Sam.