Buck Sexton (18:44)
There is something that is percolating out there that I think we should talk about, my friends, a little bit of a departure from the political stories of the day for a second here. Although this certainly has a lot of politics involved, the possibility, which is now starting to look more and more like a probability that there will be strikes by our military inside of Venezuela. This would be something. As you know, we have already had about a dozen kinetic strikes, missile attacks, really, on drug vehicles of one kind or boats, but also submarines. Right. So different kinds of nautical vessels. So that's going on already. And international waters are getting blown up. Senator Rand Paul is very upset about this. It is quite aggressive. But you have to look at this as we don't want people dying from fentanyl overdoses anymore. That fentanyl gets to US Shores, people take it, they die in large numbers. Enough is enough. I am not seeing a lot of outrage from the American people over this. And we have set a precedent in the past where executive action for counterterrorism has resulted in strikes, including in countries, sovereign nations with whom we are not at war, Pakistan being the most of, but also Yemen and Somalia. So we have been striking enemies in countries without a declaration of war for a long time. And those are essentially terrorists involved in ongoing plotting, and that's enough to take them out. So in this case, you look at the transportation of massive amounts of a very lethal drug. I understand that People can take it for a while and not die, but they can take it one time and die. And a lot of people are going to be addicted to it and take it until they die. And it's horrendous and it's a scourge. It's destroying families and communities and it's awful. And so I have not seen very much in the way of pushback by the American people. I've seen Senator Rand Paul and a handful of others. Well, the Trump haters don't like it in Congress because they don't like anything Trump does. Like we say Trump could cure cancer and all of a sudden Democrats would be pro cancer. But this would be an expansion beyond just the strikes against vessels in international waters to attacks in Venezuela. Miami Herald, a left wing paper here in my hometown, but does some good reporting on occasion. Here's what they write. At a military base in eastern Venezuela's Caribbean coast, radar screens sit mostly dark. Generators hum sporadically. Parts are stripped from grounded aircraft and officers communicate on personal cell phones because the army's radios no longer work. Just a few hundred miles north, the Caribbean Sea is bristling with U.S. warships, stealth jets and high tech drones. In what analysts describe as the region's largest show of force in half a century, Washington has deployed one of the most powerful naval forces the region has seen in decades. An aircraft carrier, several destroyers, a submarine, F35 fighter jets, and swarms of armed drones. On the other side, Maduro's war machine struggles to stay alive, undermined by corruption, neglect and fear. So here you have, lining up across the battlefield from each other, the most formidable military on the planet under the auspices of the Department of War, no longer the Department of Defense. It's gonna take me a while to be able to make that switch, so you don't have to keep reminding me. I promise I'll try. I guess Secretary of War is, is now the title as well. I did see a funny meme going around that, that Hegseth didn't want to be called secretary because that's too wimpy. But that was a joke, is my understanding. So here we have the Maduro regime in the weakest military position it has been in perhaps in the 20th century. The socialist destruction of their economy and the elite's reliance on illegal drugs just to keep it all, you know, the importation of legal drugs in the United States. Essentially Venezuela is a failed state and anarcho state. And this administration, the Trump administration, has had enough. And there's a lot of reporting coming out now that the Trump administration has identified targets in Venezuela that smuggle drugs, that these are part of the international cartel activities that lead to the deaths of large numbers of Americans through overdoses, through poisoning, and the Trump administration is preparing to take action against them. There is very little that Venezuela would be able to do to even defend its most important military facilities. Essentially, Venezuela is hollowed out as a regime already, so this would not be difficult. And now it's interesting because we've had a Trump administration that on the one hand has always stayed very clear in its philosophy of non intervention. In Trumpian terms, no stupid wars. No stupid wars. But no stupid wars under Trump has not meant no military action against our enemies. These are different things. It is in fact possible, say, to take part in the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities without starting World War 3, as some were saying. It is in fact possible to take out a terrorist mastermind in Qasem Soleimani, among many others, to take him out with a strike by the Trump administration in Baghdad, in Iraq, and not have Iran erupt into some broader Middle Eastern conflict. These are things the Trump administration has done and has done effectively and successfully and for which there has not been some price that we have paid. So now we look at the case of Venezuela. It is one thing to go after these military, these Venezuelan military facilities. Remember, the military and the regime are part of the drug trafficking. This is now a state enterprise for Venezuela. And it is such a reminder for the American people right now of what socialism really does, what social justice, economics and politics results in. What the obsession with class envy. When you put bad faith, left wing populists in charge, what do they do? They destroy like a plague of locusts. They destroy your society. Venezuela has crazy inflation. It has empty store shelves, it has horrific crime. There's essentially no meaningful law enforcement. It places a mess. This was the third wealthiest country in the Western Hemisphere after the US and Canada into the 90s. This is a country that has. Venezuela has larger proven oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. I know that sounds impossible, but you can, you can just grok it. I'm going to start saying grock it instead of Google it. I got to make that switch. No more. No more Google Grockett. They have largest proven oil reserves are larger than Saudi Arabia. So this should be, for all intents and purposes, this should be a wealthy, prosperous country. And it has been that in the past, relatively speaking. But people took over who said, your life, you the peasants, you the have nots, you the poor, your life will be great. If you just put us, the left wing radical socialists in charge, we will take from them and give to you. Now, to do that, we have to be able to violate our own laws, we have to violate property rights, we have to violate contracts. So you're really you, meaning the Venezuelan landless and the peasants. You have to be willing to create a monster. Chavez, then Maduro, you create a monster, but the monster promises it will be your monster. You're going to empower this government in the case of Venezuela, to be able to run roughshod over decency, fairness, its word contracts, the law, morality. It'll do whatever it has to do, but it's going to take care of you. Just create that monster. Give it power that one time. This is the story we've seen play out in all of these socialist dictatorships. This is the story we've seen play out everywhere. That's really communist in its ethos. Guess what happens? The monster is in charge. And then the monster doesn't care about the silly poor people who voted for it. In fact, it makes them poorer, it makes their lives worse. It enriches itself and then it eats and tears down and destroys everything else to keep itself in power. It is only self interested. The socialist, the revolutionary elite, all of these places, including Venezuela, they become entirely self interested. It's supposed to be all about other people. And guess what? As soon as they have the power, the elites, the new elite, after railing against the old elite, all they care about is staying in power and their own perks is exactly what has happened in Venezuela. And I also want to remind you because I've been following this story. As you can tell, I get passionate about it. I've been following for a long time. I had, my daddy had a family friend of ours who found out that his family was being dispossessed and all their property was being seized by watching Chavez do his TV show. The dictator Chavez, now the dictator Maduro would do this, I think it was called like hello Mr. Presidente or something. And they would do this long, like almost like a, like a long form radio show, but it was on tv. They would take callers and my dad did this guy who was watching like, yeah, oh, that family. We're going to take all their stuff. You know, they're, they're capitalists, they're pigs. We're going to take all their stuff. They had to flee the country. Like I said, create the monster. Because it's going to be your monster, right? The people who are upset, the people who want more stuff Never works. Never works. In fact, it makes, that makes them worse off. And they've traded their own decency, they've traded their own ethics to get something that they never end up getting. And then the populace just become even more desperate and angry. And this is the story. It plays out over and over again because it's really, it's not about socialism, it's not a social or political science. It's really about manipulating human emotion and human envy. And that's why they've destroyed Venezuela. Now, what's Trump going to do about this? Well, it looks like we're about to take out anything that's involved with the drug trade. Can the regime stay in power with all of that gone and destroyed? And won't it also show everybody, hey, not only is the Maduro regime corrupt and criminal, but they're inept, they're weak, they're not even good at being dictator, they're not even good at trampling on all of your rights. They're pathetic. And then does something rise up and replace them? Is it better?
