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- [00:00]
A
The Dispatch Podcast is presented by Pacific Legal Foundation. Suing the government since 1973. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's Roundtable, Venezuela, why did Donald Trump order the capture of Nicolas Maduro? What should we make of the administration's evolving case for the US Intervention and what comes next? And finally, and not worth your time, is it Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela or Nicolas Maduro in and Venezuela? I'm joined by my Dispatch colleague, Jonah Goldberg, as well as Mike Nelson, a retired Army Special Forces officer, a member of the Atlantic Council's Counterterrorism Project, and former COO of the Institute for the Study of War, as well as Gil Garra, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen center and the 2024 Rising Expert in Latin America with young professionals in foreign policy. Gil is also a Dispatch contributing writer. Let's dive right in, Gentlemen. Welcome. We assembled this motley crew to discuss the very significant events over the weekend, and I will summarize them this way. Early in the morning of January 3rd, a team of elite US special operators, supported by various pretty impressive air assets, raided the compound of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. They extracted Maduro and his wife with zero US casualties, according to the Pentagon. And by 4:30 in the morning, the man who ruled Venezuela since 2013 was aboard the USS Iwo Jima and headed to the United States to face weapons and drug charges. We have in the hours since had a lengthy press conference with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump talking us through the decision and what happened. Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff also walking through the military aspects of this. Marco Rubio made appearances on the Sunday talk shows to further explain what's happened. We've had confusing, interesting, disquieting back and forth with the remaining leadership in Venezuela in public. And I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk to the three of you about, A what happened? B, what does this mean with respect to both the US And Venezuela and then also the Western Hemisphere? And then what does this mean for Donald Trump's presidency in the way that the United States acts in the world and is perceived in the world? So, Gil, let me start with you. You have a terrific piece up on the Dispatcher's website this morning, sort of walking through the various cases that have been made for what we saw over the weekend. And this follows a terrific piece that you wrote for us a couple months ago, laying out the possibilities for regime change in a way that I think in Some ways turned out to be prophetic, and this exact scenario was not specifically one of yours, but what happened was sort of a combination of some of the things that you walked us through several months ago. So let me start with you on this rather extraordinary set of developments. And I have sort of three questions for you to start. Why did the administration say that the US had to do this? Why did the administration really do this? And are those the same things?
- [03:34]
B
I think one of the major analytic mistakes that is happening right now in the discourse in terms of other how other people are interpreting these events, is that they're imagining that these things all sort of happened in a vacuum and that the status quo imposed zero costs for the US and that if we had left all these things just as they were, that wouldn't actually make these issues harder to deal with later on. So I talk about in the piece drugs, oil, migrants, the democratic and governance factor, and also the factor of power and deterrence. So let's imagine for a moment if that we had just left the status quo as it was. Each and every single one of those factors would have been more difficult for the US to deal with at a later time. And in fact, the US Would have had to deal with those things at a later time if we had allowed Venezuela to continue on as it was in terms of the drug trade. It is true that Fenton fentanyl is not, for example, a major product of Venezuela. Venezuela is off flooding the United States with fentanyl. But it is true that because of the decentralized nature of the Venezuelan criminal state, you would have many more criminal actors in Venezuela that would be much harder for us to dismantle and actually dislodge later on because they would have more years to build up their drug trafficking practices. The longer we went allowing Maduro to evade oil sanctions and also to sell that oil to other actors, the stronger the Cuban regime would grow, the more countries like Iran learn from Venezuela in terms of how to evade oil sanctions. That doesn't happen in a vacuum either. The question of migrants is also a big one. This is my area of specialty at the Niskanin center where I work. And I think that there's a lot of fear about what removing Maduro means for a migration wave. But the truth is that has been the argument against regime change in Venezuela for a while. We didn't intervene in 2019 partially because of that rationale, and we got a migration crisis from Venezuel Venezuela. Anyway, the estimates that my colleagues and I have put out at the Niskanen center estimate that if we had just left Maduro in power and assumed that the same flow and rate of migrants out of Venezuela continued at the pace that it was without any increases for the next five years, that's 425,000 more people on the low end. If there are minor increases, it goes up to 1 million more refugees from Venezuela over the next five years as well. And that is not even counting the ways in which the longer you have the migration crisis continue, the more difficult it is for people to actually come back from the countries that they've settled in. The harder it is to convince really high capital and high human capital people who have left Venezuela to come back and rebuild the country because they've been out of it for longer. From the democratic governance factor, the longer the opposition is outside of the country and is exiled from the country, the less legitimacy they have one among the population to actually go back and rebuild it. This is why Cuba is far more difficult in this regard, for example, than say, Venezuela is. And also the more institutional control the Chavista faction has over over various parts of the country, the more the population there is dependent on them. Basically, the longer that they were in exile, the more difficult it would be to actually have any kind of democratic governance. The last election was in July of 2024. So we're already a year past the election of Edmunda Gonzalez. How long does it have to take for that election to no longer really be legitimate in the eyes of the Venezuelan population? I think obviously a year is fine, but if we had waited four, five, six, eight years, obviously that's a very different matter as far as your options are for democratic partners in the Venezuelan government. And finally, on the matter of deterrence, if you are only going to actually take kinetic action once you are forced to do so, let's say once Maduro had killed an opposition leader like Maria Karamachado or otherwise really forced the U.S. s hands in a way that we just had to act and had to actually do something in a kinetic way instead of just having negotiations and trying other tactics that you're not really establishing any kind of deterrence. You're not really actually showing that you have any kind of credibility in future negotiations. That was, I think, one of the main problems with why negotiations failed with Maduro beforehand was that they didn't think we would actually take this kind of action. And now as we have negotiations with the remaining members of the Chavisa faction, mainly Vice President Dulce Rodriguez, we have credibility that we are actually willing to take serious kinetic action in order to secure US Interests in Venezuela. So that's one of the main differences. I think various people in the administration have different goals. I think Marco Rubio is more concerned about securing regional stability and democracy in Venezuela. Trump, from his comments, is more concerned about oil. I imagine Stephen Miller is more concerned about migrants. There's really a hodgepodge and a mix of all of these different factors. We haven't mentioned other small factors, such as Trump apparently being enraged by the videos of Maduro dancing at rallies, which is one I personally sympathize with a lot because he's a terrible dancer and deserved to be taken out for that alone. But I think it's really a mix of all those things. All of those factors are obviously in tension with one another. They're not all necessarily compatible with any kind of cohesive narrative. I think that is why the administration has really struggled to settle on one simple reason or one clean narrative for why we took the actions that we did.
- [08:51]
A
Well, I wonder, Gil, if the answer is maybe at the end of your piece, and you walked through, I think, in a very compelling way, some of the stated reasons, some of the reasons that the administration has put forward as justification for what it's done. But. But you end the piece by talking about power and you start that final section with this sentence. There's a final reason lurking in Trump's rhetoric. The United States removed Maduro because it could. And I wonder if, stripping aside all of the sort of evolving case, I mean, I think we would probably all agree and correct me if I'm wrong, or challenge me if you disagree, that the original case was heavily focused on drugs. That was the argument the administration was making most prominently. Most often for the longest period of time, it has evolved. We don't hear much still about democracy. For the reasons that you suggest. Trump himself, in this bizarre press conference over the weekend, sort of shrugged his shoulders and said it was oil, didn't really make much of an argument to disguise that as his. His primary intention. But I will say, when I read your piece, it was that last point that really struck home with me. The United States did this because it could, and Donald Trump wanted to flex his muscles, and this was a way to do it. Is that too cynical of a view?
- [10:15]
B
I don't think that's necessarily too cynical. And that is one of the things I find the most concerning after this, you know, on Nats, I do think that this was the right call. I do think that this had to happen for the reasons I outlined which are that the costs that were being imposed by the status quo, in my mind, were just making it more difficult for what was going to be almost certainly an inevitable action in the future to actually occur. But I think what I find the most concerning, apart from the sidelining of Maria Corina Machado in that press conference as well, and really the dismissal of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, which has been putting its lives on the line now for well over a decade in trying to restore democracy to Venezuela. Is that just very kind of blustery appeal to power and to power without limits, which we saw? That's not just sort of a matter of taste or a matter of your own personal disposition. We are now seeing a similar kind of rhetoric being applied to Colombia, to Mexico, to Cuba and to Greenland. And obviously, that's a very wide range of countries with different kind of rationales for this. I think Cuba is justifiable. But the reason why I am defending this in Venezuela, but not even, say, in Mexico or in Colombia, is that we tried other peaceful options to secure our interests there. And really, I think we had no options left. And Maduro had proven himself to be a very untrustworthy negotiating partner. We don't need to take out Claudia Sheinbaum to get the things that we want for Mexico. We may not like Gustavo Petro in Colombia, I certainly don't. But we don't need to take him out in order to secure our interests in Colombia either, let alone any of the more distasteful things that are being said about just taking Greenland from people online like Katie Miller, who are obviously sort of tied to this. I think that that is something that the administration is probably more moved by at this rate. So for me, there is sort of a moral struggle there in terms of this was the right outcome. It was obviously done in part because of this embrace of American power by someone who is not someone who I trust to be very responsible with it. But occasionally it does have outcomes that I think are ultimately good.
- [12:33]
A
Mike, you wrote for the Dispatch's website today. We're recording this Monday morning, January 5th, a reason to celebrate and causes for concern. I want to start with you on that last point. What to you, as you sort of walk through or look back on the administration's arguments for doing what we did over the weekend was the most compelling. And is it too simplistic to conclude ultimately that really the reason for doing this was just because the president wanted to do this?
- [13:03]
C
I think that as Gil laid out, there were a myriad of reasons that the administration laid out in the lead up to this as to why we were interested in Venezuela and ultimately why we took the action and taking kind of a time pause on Saturday morning and the aftermath of this operation, everything was possible and everything was a reason to celebrate. As I said, this was a well executed operation with very few casualties and against a inherently malign actor, oppressive to his people, aligned with our adversaries, and a thorn in the side of Western interests within the Western Hemisphere. What's not clear going forward is whether we are going to build on that good news and that success into something that is viable or tenable in the long term for both the United States interest and the Venezuelan people. As much as there's talk of this being regime change, what we've seen is it's not. It's actually regime retention. You know, we removed Maduro, but we left his cadre, his cohort behind to administer the state of Venezuela. What is unknown yesterday, Secretary Rubio was saying what I think would be a good outcome or a potentially good outcome in the piece, which is that this is a transitory period until free and fair elections can be accomplished for the Venezuelan people. That was somewhat undercut last night by the President on Air Force One. That does not seem to be an interest, that it is primarily just leaving Rodriguez in place as long as she can enact what not even American interests or the President's interests in terms of access to the oil industry are. This is concerning because the President seems to think that everything is going to go smoothly, that because we accomplished this one thing of detaining Maduro, everything else will fall in line. And if it doesn't, it will be simple again, that something like this, like another absolute resolve targeting Rodriguez instead, but worse, as he said, will just bring everything back into line. And what we've seen is that's not normally the case. These things don't tend to go well. And if our interests are primarily just access to oil, then those malign actors and forces within Venezuela can continue to try to take advantage of the situation, oppress the Venezuelan people as long as they're keeping the President happy with access to their oil industry.
- [15:30]
A
Jonah, when you found out about this, I'd be interested in your initial reaction. And then I know I spoke to you over the weekend after we had both watched the President's press conference on Saturday, which was unsettling. I think it was certainly bizarre. We could say it was bizarre. For me, it was unsettling. I think you were probably a little bit more favorably disposed to the initial news than I was, but were also concerned after the president's press conference. What was your reaction?
- [16:05]
D
Yeah, you have to keep in mind I'm more dead inside than you are. So all of my reactions are more baseline. Yeah. So look for the reasons laid out by Gil and Mike and by others, because. Including often, Marco Rubio. I think there's a very good case for removing Maduro or for even actual regime change, which, as Mike says, we didn't get. And I've been saying this for a long time now, that you could. That there's an argument for it. But what I wanted from the administration was an argument, and we didn't get an argument. In fact, we got. I've been complaining about this for a very long time. About. About why one of the reasons why I'm so dead inside is that almost all political arguments these days, particularly those coming from Trump and the Republican Party, are pretextual, is that they're not actually making the arguments on the merits. They're making an argument that is beneficial for messaging for. And not necessarily just messaging to the MAGA base or messaging to the public, but also messaging to Trump himself. It's one of the reasons why it is so difficult to watch administration officials do interviews, because normally the goal is to reassure the public or get the opposition party to buy into what you're doing or framing the issue on favorable terms. And that's always part of it within the Trump years. But part of it is also this obvious discomfort they have because they know the boss is watching and they want to hear something else. They want to hear about how strong, like, bull Trump is, which is not like the messaging that you want to do necessarily at a moment like this. And so the real like. So if you just remove everything that Trump has said in the last 48 hours, this is. I don't love the idea that we're running the country, but that's something Trump said. It's not something Marco Rubio says. He says we're using our leverage to dictate policy. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Much more difficult, defensible framing. But if you could take everything out of the last 48 hours that Trump said and just go with, say what Marco Rubio said. I think, again, for the reasons already listed here, there's a pretty strong case for what the US has done, it's going to do is a different question. Right. I take a backseat to nobody in the era of zoom about the ability to effectively work remotely, but running Venezuela remotely strikes me as a stretch. And I find that getting back to the pretext part. So when Gil says this was a good outcome, I agree, this was a good outcome. But this is a chapter in a much longer story. It's sort of like if you take a snapshot of the Titanic leaving Ireland on the first day of its voyage, it tells you a very different story than the snapshot taken a short while later. I think I say, I'm so annoyed about the pretextual stuff we were told again and again and again. This is all about drugs, that every boat we blow up saves 25,000American lives, whatever. Then Trump goes out there and doesn't say a word about that. Instead it's all about oil. And everybody who follows politics remembers Trump talking about his most innovative policy idea in foreign policy in the last 30 friggin years was we should have taken the oil from Iraq. And that's the context people are hearing in this. People like us who supported the first Iraq war, we were told constantly this is a war for oil. And we said that's an outrageous slander against the United States. I don't think it's an outrageous slander here. Right. And because the public facing arguments were all about something other than the actual intent, and because they didn't make a real argument and go to Congress, people are misunderstanding a lot of the point about going to Congress. It is not necessarily about the inherent authority of Article 2 versus Article 1 and whether this is a war and police action. I mean, Rubio is very smart to talk about this as a law enforcement action, all that. I get it. But part of the reason why you want to go to Congress is that when, if this stuff goes belly up, you are not entirely 100% responsible for it. Other branches of government have buy in, they're willing to commit resources to save the project. And Trump has zero interest in that because he's got this theory that it's just much cooler to be the unilateral executive and pretend that you don't need Congress for anything. And that is a much makes this a much more riskier thing to do if it gets hard. And I think I completely agree that comparisons to Libya are kind of silly. But that doesn't mean it won't get hard. There's no political incentive among any Democrats who are about to take over the House, it looks like, to help with this in any way. And it just, it goes to a lack of foresight, political foresight about how to do this kind of thing. And so I celebrate the military success and I celebrate Maduro and Shackles but I just don't think the story is remotely over.
- [21:17]
A
Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. You know, every year when we hit December, I start thinking about everything in.
- [21:26]
E
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- [21:46]
A
It's the kind of stuff that eats.
- [21:47]
E
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- [22:56]
A
And we're back. I do want to spend a moment on the actual case because I think it matters. I think it matters that the administration spent as much time as it did not not only making to the extent that it made a case. I mean, I think I agree with, with Jonah that there really wasn't much of an argument made here. It was sort of, we can do it, so we're going to do it. But to the extent that there was an argument, it was an argument focused on drugs. And that was at the core of the case that the administration made. I want to play for you a clip from a podcast that Juan Cruz, who was the National Security Council special assistant to the president under Donald Trump in Trump won 2017 to 2019, participated in a podcast with CSIS center for Strategic and International Studies here in D.C. at the beginning of December. And I want to play a clip that is Cruz talking about Venezuela. Venezuela's role in the international drug trade.
- [24:00]
F
Venezuela's role with the U.S. venezuela is a transshipment point for drugs. And what that means is that it's not a source country and it isn't significant in any fabrication of drugs or laboratories. And the drugs that leave Venezuela either go to the Western Caribbean, hit somewhere in Central America on its way up to North America, or it goes straight up from Venezuela to the Caribbean. Mostly think of straight line to Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or even the Eastern Caribbean and then most commonly outside the region entirely. So it's going to Western Africa and Europe. That's where the Venezuelan drugs go in.
- [24:42]
A
Again, this is a comment from Juan Cruz, worked for President Trump in the first term, is supportive broadly of Trump policy toward Venezuela. I'd love to get your reaction to this, that Gill, you wrote about drugs in your piece. How do you react to that assessment of Venezuela's role in transnational drug trade?
- [25:06]
B
That's correct. And what I've written in other outlets. I had a piece for the Royal United Services Institute a few months ago that's the UK's military associated think tank that made the argument that having this much of an emphasis on drugs one struck me as being being a bit disingenuous. It seemed to me very clearly, given the specific kind of military buildup that we had in the region, that we were going to do something like this that was not a drug related operation at some point. But two, I do think many of the parallels with Middle Eastern conflicts are overblown or simply don't really have enough in common to have any merit. But I do think that there is something to be said for the similarities in terms of having a narrative that the public is given that for whatever reason it was given that narrative that that letter gets proven to be untrue, that the public is undisillusioned by so in Venezuela. What I've been concerned about with overemphasizing the drug angle is that it seems to me that the way that the Republican Party and that Donald Trump in particular and the administration have presented this to the American people is more or less portraying it as being directly tied to the lives and security of the American people. The comment about saving however many thousands Americans per drunk boat bombed, for example, really leads people to believe, I think, that once we topple Maduro, once we take them out, we are then going to basically stop or halt a lot of fentanyl drug deaths. And I think we're going to continue seeing fentanyl drug deaths here in this country for the reasons you outlined because most of the drugs from Venezuela 1 are not fentanyl 2 do not have the actual eventual destination for the United States. So apart from just even thinking on a moral level that the government lying to the public about what it is actually doing and also what the actual implications of its actions are or wrong, as Jonah said and pointed out, this isn't even sort of a squishy moral point of you shouldn't lie. It's also as a matter of fact of if you want your policy to succeed, you need to actually have, I think, buy in from the public and from other sectors of society. As far as what you're doing, you can't say that this is about drugs and then switch it around and actually say that, no, no, it's about oil. That being said, I do think Marco Rubio has defended this point by saying one, that yes, cocaine, it's not fentanyl, but cocaine is still bad. I agree. I'm sure that will come as a shock to some of the young GOP staffers I have seen on nights out in Washington. D but I agree that cocaine is bad and two, it is true that this does fuel illicit revenue that goes to the regime anyway that they then put towards other acts, actions that are harmful towards the United States, such as oppressing civilians, enriching various criminal actors in Venezuela, etc. Those are all fine arguments. I just one wish that they had made those arguments at the outset instead of retroactively. I think we're hearing a lot of great arguments from the administration now that we've actually already done this action. Those his arguments were not made in the follow up to this. And two, I find it a little bit outrageous that the administration acts surprised they act or at least from what I've seen on Marco Rubio's television appearances yesterday, it seems like the attitude is I don't understand why people don't get these arguments or I don't understand why people don't understand what we're doing. And it's like, well, that's your responsibility, that's your job. That's, that's on you if you have anyone to blame for the public understanding what you're doing. It's not that the mass media was lying to them about it, it's that you were not making these arguments before we actually took the actions that we did.
- [29:02]
A
And one place that Marco Rubio had a very tremendous difficulty, I would say, explaining the policy in his appearances on the Sunday shows was when he was asked about Donald Trump's pardon of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who's the the former president of Honduras who was convicted, sentenced to 45 years in US prisons for his role in facilitating the international drug trade. I mean, in many ways, very similar to what the case is against Maduro here. Here's A comment from U.S. attorney Damian Williams on Hernandez. When Hernandez was sentenced, Williams said Hernandez helped to facilitate the importation of an almost unfathomable 400 tons of cocaine to this country. Billions of individual doses sent to the United States with the protection and support of the former president of Honduras. Now, after years of destructive narco trafficking of the highest imaginable magnitude, Hernandez will spend 45 years where he belongs, in federal prison. Hernandez might have spent 45 years where he belongs, but for Donald Trump, who intervened, he said in an interview on Air Force One, when he was asked about this a few weeks ago, with a shrug of the shoulders, he heard that the Biden administration treated him very unfairly. And so this former head of state was involved in the international drug trade, facilitated shipment of of cocaine to the United States, was convicted in US Courts, is now walking free. But we are conducting extraordinary renditions of other heads of state for almost the same points. Gil, to you quickly on that first, and then, Mike, I want to get your thoughts right.
- [30:51]
B
I mean, the defense that I've heard of that from administration figures essentially boils down to, okay, so you disagree with that pardon. Does that mean that we should have just let Maduro get away with it, get away with drug trafficking perpetuity, which I think is a horrible defense of it, because it's really a very indefensible policy. And that to me has really been sort of the shifting goalposts that the administration has. And part of the reason for why this does matter on the ground. Obviously, we've been talking about it here in terms of what it means for domestic support, for domestic politics. But I think that what the administration perhaps doesn't realize is that for various governments in Latin America who have to also answer to their publics, who are very sensitive to being portrayed as basically just being US puppets, it does actually hurt them with their publics, and it makes it more difficult for other countries to cooperate with us. These are not things that have absolutely zero cost for us in that regard either. Part of the reason why you need a legitimate and coherent reason is not just because it makes us feel less dead inside, but it is because it actually makes it easier for our partners in the region to justify those decisions to their populations and to work with us and to not then lose elections to governments going to be more hostile towards us, at least Block what we're trying to do to whatever capacity they can, if not outright work against us because they think that we are hypocrites on the drug policy front.
- [32:17]
A
Yeah, well, that was touching show of tenderness for Jonah's mental state. Appreciate that, Gil. Mike. On Gil's point about sort of the, the evolving case for war and the echoes potentially some people are hearing of the case the Bush administration made for Iraq, I guess the distinction I would draw is the Bush administration made its case. If you look at Colin Powell's presentation to The United Nations, 80, 85% focused on WMDs. They do include some, some other things. But I think there was an overwhelming consensus that Saddam Hussein, I mean we knew that he had had weapons of mass destruction and most people believed that he still had these stocks, piles of weapons of mass destruction. To include the US Intelligence community. To include people like Ted Kennedy, who in his speech on the Senate floor opposing US action in Iraq warned that one of the reasons we shouldn't do it is because we know that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and could use them against our troops. With this, I think I can understand why people would see the parallels. But in this case, the administration seems to be making Maduro something he's not in terms of his role in international drug trade. Which isn't to say that he doesn't have a role. It isn't to say that the things that are in the indictment. There has been an indictment on Maduro on drug charges for years are not true. But as sort of the main Casas Bella, I guess it's. I think it's damaged. Damaging to us reputationally. I think it's damaging in terms of the case. I think it's damaging in terms of Congress the way that Jonah laid out. But it's understandable that the administration would pivot away from that as the central argument because it's not very strong. Setting aside the contradiction with Juan Orlando Hernandez and Honduras.
- [34:10]
C
Yeah, I think part of the problem that the administration has is this is all built on pre existing conditions that they had made arguments for that led from one situation to the next. This started with the drug boat campaign, as you said earlier, earlier that something that the President can do, relatively easy strikes, you know, no Americans in harm's way, very, you know, the least sympathetic targets, so to speak. And it's something that Pete Hegseth can so video and feel really good about. And the argument for that was obviously drugs. Then they tried to make the tenuous argument that trend was working as a state actor or as a proxy of the Maduro government. And Tulsi Garrett Gabbert went all in on that assessment, even though her own IC didn't agree with that. So now with this soft transition from the drug boat campaign to the soft regime change, regime modification, they've retained that argument about the drugs being a major part of it. And that's why he's obviously being indicted in the Southern District of New York. Now, to some extent, this could be like Al Capone. You get him on what you can get him on. So we can't indict him for. For being cooperative with Iran, but we can't indict him for his role in the drug trade. And that's all well and good. The problem, a lot of military conflicts have multiple justifications. We all remember Iraq as the argument about wmd, and you are correct that we all genuinely believe that there were WMD. I remember sweating in MOP4 on my way to Baghdad because I genuinely believed I was going to get struck by chemical weapons. It wasn't make believe for me. And there are multiple, really valid justifications for why we should have removed Maduro. And Gill lays a lot of them out in his piece. To me, one of the key ones is one of the indictments of why we didn't go harder to depose Assad. When one of your adversary's allies is in crisis, you should take the opportunity to take that chess piece off the board for them. And Maduro was well in line with the axis of resistance, and we had an opportunity to take that. That the axis of resistance, who's taking a string of losses across the globe over the past several years, and we've just inflicted another one on them. But the president is not making that argument. And this goes to kind of what is the nature of the Don Roe Doctrine? Is it that we are going to exercise American power in advance of American and Western values and interests, or is it we're going to do what we can? Which seems to be kind of his argument, even if it's not. Secretary Rubio.
- [36:45]
A
Yeah, Jonah, let me pick up on the point that you made a little earlier where you said that if we remove everything Trump says in the last 48 hours and just go with Rubio, he makes a pretty strong case. You can feel more comfortable with what's happened here. Your point, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that we can't do that. That's not really possible here because Donald Trump is president. But I'm struck in just the conversation over the past 48 hours. And in particular, looking at the reaction from Republican office holders, people like Senator Tom Cotton, who's chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I think is a smart guy. Even when I disagree with him, I think he has a good head on his shoulders, served in the US Military, knows these issues very well, makes this very robust case in defense of Donald Trump, in defense of these actions. And it's as if Donald Trump. Trump isn't the president. When we hear some of these arguments. I mean, this is the same guy who tweeted out a conspiracy theory about, you know, Tim Waltz sponsoring the assassination of a Minnesota state legislator less than 48 hours ago. This is a guy who I think is reported to be sidelining Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader in Venezuela, in part because she won the Nobel Prize he wanted. Can we have this conversation not acknowledging that Donald Trump is President of the United States? And shouldn't that matter more than any of the other things that we're talking about in terms of what the United States has just done?
- [38:14]
D
Yeah. So, like, this is where I have a little bit of a stylistic disagreement with Gill's piece, because as you pointed out at the end of the piece, it's Trump did this because he could. Right. And just the display of power. Power. And so one of the problems we've got is we've got Rubio with a good set of arguments. We've got Steve Miller with another. A different agenda. We got other people with other agendas all whispering in the ear of Trump making the case for what they want done. But what is the reason why Trump himself does these things? I don't think it's for any other major reasons that Marco Rubio wants them done. And there's also gets to another. I mean, I think your point about how the pardon of the Honduran signals bad things to our allies in the Americas. I think it's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that part of it. The part of it that I think is most disturbing is it demonstrates the degree to which there are no real plans in this administration that involve the President himself, where they still stay on message and they take things seriously. Because if you knew that this operation was in the works, if you knew that you were going to have the pretext of the war on drugs, you would not listen to Roger Stone saying, hey, help me out with this client of mine who's a massive drug dealer.
- [39:40]
A
Which, by the way, we should point out, just to point out, to support your point, it's been reported that this has been in the work works for that long that they have been talking about this for that long and they've been making specifically the drug case about this.
- [39:53]
D
Yeah, but so like, my point. But my point is, is that Trump does things for his own reasons. And I am now going into my 11th year making this argument that anybody who tries to impose a rational, coherent, ideological or philosophical orientation on Donald Trump will eventually be made a fool because he himself says that he does things on instinct. He likes to defy expectations, he likes to zig when everyone expects to zag. He thinks that kind of maneuvering is justifiable in its own regard. And his narcissism wins most arguments. And so it drove me crazy, all three Sunday shows I watch where they talk to Marco Rubio. Rubio and asked him about the pardon. They all basically asked, how do you justify it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Rubio has a very unpersuasive answer. I haven't looked at the specifics of the file. It's not my portfolio. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, talk about. He sort of morphs into Munch's scream.
- [40:58]
C
He's got four portfolios, it falls under one of them. At least the archivist would have seen the pardon for sure.
- [41:04]
D
Yeah, because he has to record it. Right. But my point is, I wish one of these hosts would ask, okay, let me ask you this. Does the pardon make your job harder? Right. Does the pardon make it more difficult for you to go around explaining administration policy, forget whether it was justified or not? And I'd just be curious to know what Rubio's answer is to that. And so when I listen to, when I see, it's not just on, on Venezuela, it's on tariffs, it's on, on, on National Guard stuff, he wants, I'm, I don't know that he actually wants to do the work of being a strongman, but he wants to appear like a strongman. I think he has got, you know, a patrimonial sort of mob like attitude about spheres of influence, that the Americas are our turf and Europe is, you know, contested turf. And that's why he, you know, I talk about this mob comparison a of lot time. It's why he's perfectly happy to crap on allies because they're under bosses who should be paying up more tribute and are not showing them the right deference. But Putin and Xi and those guys, those are bosses of other families and they deserve the same respect that he expects of them. And that's, I think, the way he sees the world. And There are reasons for that, going back to his youth in Queens. But I think that larding on different reasons for why this was a good move, which I agree with, almost all of of them is useful and it's important and it keeps people from attacking, making bad attacks on the policy and all the rest at the same time. They in some ways are pretextual too, in the sense that they are post hoc rationalizations for why the latest mercurial, narcissistic strongman action by this president. These were pretty good because they had a good reason result, but they didn't come from a desire to restore democracy in Venezuela. They didn't come from a desire to do all the good and right things. You listen to his conversations on Air Force One. He just thinks it's really cool to say that we're in charge of Venezuela now. And he thinks it's really cool to talk about how maybe we'll be in charge of Greenland soon enough. That's gross. And it makes it very difficult when the Republican Party will, will goes into turd polishing mode and says, but here are these good reasons for doing this. It reminds me of Adam White, our, my, our friend and colleague, my colleague at AEI who says, you know, it used to be don't take them literally, take them seriously. And it's become, take them hypothetically. So we get to this point of if Trump meant to do, do it for these reasons, it was the right thing to do, which is a complicated messaging point and, and lot analytical critical point.
- [43:48]
A
Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And we're back. So on your point, Jonah, about geography, we've seen, I think it's become virtually an obsession of the administration. Geography and the Western Hemisphere, they're in our backyard. You saw this in J.D. vance's defense of what the President did. You saw this elements of the national security strategy laid out several weeks ago. Why does that matter? Isn't the lesson of the past 20 years, 50 years, that the world is becoming a lot closer regardless of actual geography? I mean, does it matter that it's 1500 miles from Miami to Caracas and 5000 from San Francisco to Beijing and 4600 from New York to Moscow? I mean, when you look at what can be done with cybercrime capabilities, when you look at what can be done with weapons of mass destruction, all these other things that present a threat to the United States in the homeland, why are they so focused on geography? Jonah?
- [44:51]
D
Well, this is an example of what I was getting at before about how all these public arguments have to be made with reference to what sells with Donald Trump. I think this Monroe Doctrine stuff, Donro Doctrine stuff, appeals to Trump because it appeals to his worldview. I don't think he's a close student of Carl Schmidt and spheres of influence theory from the 19th century or any of that kind of crap. I think he likes this idea that this is our turf that he can flex here. You're hearing his envoy to Greenland saying, well, Greenland's in the Western Hemisphere, so it falls under the Monroe Doctrine, which is just playing with matches at a gas station. And so I think it's literally less that I don't think all of these guys at the America First Institute or wherever they came from were huge. You know, let's bring back. You know, let's put muscle into the Monroe Doctrine, guys. I think they grabbed the Monroe Doctrine argument precisely because it was the kind of thing you could sell the boss on. It fits his intuitions in a way that that's why it's policy. We saw this in the national security strategy. Strategy is they. We have so much policy making that is done not just in foreign policy, but in domestic policy, because they think it's performative, because they think the old man will think it's cool. And I just think that that is not strategic thinking. Strategic people are trying to make the, you know, make the. Make lemonade here for sure. I mean, I got my problems with Elbridge Colby and all these guys, but they're trying to do serious things, things within the worldview that Donald Trump is imposing on his administration. But I just. I think it is retconning to say that Trump is motivated by these sophisticated theories of anything. It's that the people who are interested in sophisticated theories have to figure out how to message to the boss to get him to sort of do the stuff he wants. I think Rubio wants to topple the Cuban regime. I think that be kind of awesome if we could do it the right way, if we could pull it off. And so that's his agenda. But how he sells his agenda to Trump involves. This is your turf, this is the backyard. You're making this imprint. It's now the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. That's really cool. And it limits the spheres of action for all these guys and for the ability to defend the policies, because anybody who goes out and tries to defend Trump as a consistent political actor gets beclowned eventually.
- [47:26]
A
Gil, I see you nodding your head. Seems right to you?
- [47:29]
B
Yes, I would say So, I mean, I think that one of the smartest things the Latin America hawks in this administration did was coin the term Don Row doctrine. Because I do think that directly appeals to the kind of personalistic ego that Trump has within the hemisphere. And I think that part of it, as far as why Trump cares about geography, I don't think it's insignificant that Greenland is very large for certain maps because of the distortions that are produced whenever we create globes. I think that part of the reason why he has latched on to the oil points and given up the points about drugs now is because someone told him that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. And he really likes. Basically, I think common thread between these two things is that he wants to have the largest territory, he wants to have the largest world reserves based on the United States. He does have a fixation on size that we can leave to the Freudian podcast and to also DeMarco Rubio in the 2016 primary as to why he has that fixation on size. But I know Mike has a point as well, so I'll pass it over to him.
- [48:36]
C
To Jonah's point about the various reasons that exist within Marco's mind or Stephen Miller's mind and the President's fleeting justifications for this. The reason why it's important and dangerous that we have these various explanations. But note one consistent narrative about what we're trying to accomplish in Venezuela is this is going to get complicated. Even if it doesn't get kinetic, even if it doesn't get deadly the way that Iraq did, there are going to be competing tensions for what happens with the future of Venezuela. And keeping our eye on what the desired end state is, what we are actually trying to accomplish is going to be important because there is going to have to be compromise. We're not going to find a perfect solution. And what we give into or what we are willing to assume risk, risk towards is going to be determined by what is most important. Right now, we can't answer that or it's literally just oil infrastructure and that's the only thing we care about. If that is the case, that is going to be where we put our weight of effort. And it's going to be another example of banana republic gunboat diplomacy that we've been blamed for so many times now. As far as the geography goes, I do think to a certain extent, I'm not the first person to say that Barack Obama looked at the United States as just one among many countries in that we are all inherently flawed and we should not impose our will on the world, that he took a different view, that we were not a benevolent controller of the international order. I would say the President probably looks at us in a similar way, but not that we are inherently flawed, but we are inherently powerful, and therefore we should be able to do what we want, like other powerful countries, Russia, China. He admires the other strong men who are able to do these things as primary executives who don't need to seek approval. So I do think, to a certain extent, while he may not be a scholar of the theory of spheres of influence, there is this natural stasis that is forming where we do what we want within our backyard, because we can. And that doesn't matter that it's against treaty allies or countries that are lesser down on the totem pole of drug threats than Venezuela was, and Russia and China can do what they want. I also think there's a simple. Anybody who's played risk knows if you control Greenland, Alaska and Venezuela, you control the choke points in North America. So it could be that simple.
- [50:53]
A
Exactly. So I'm willing to entertain that theory, I suppose. I mean, I don't buy the broader argument. I think the threats are the threats, whether you're talking about actual threats to the homeland, whether you're talking about threats to our geostrategic positioning, they are where they are. And it doesn't matter that much that we are strong in our own backyard, in my view. But even if I accepted the argument that I think the Trump administration is making, that they laid out to a certain extent in the national security strategy, it isn't the case that we're just looking to be strong in our hemisphere, in our. In our backyard. I mean, if you look at where we're involved from this president who said, you know, sort of we're going to take a step back, no more foreign entanglements. You know, we can't be the world's policeman. He's made these arguments rather consistently over the past 10 years. But we, of course, struck Iran in June, struck Iran's nuclear sites in June. In December, late December, we launched Operation Hawkeye Strike 1, what we call the massive strike on ISIS targets in Syria. Five days later, we struck ISIS targets in Nigeria and what President Trump called a Christmas present. This press conference, that press availability that I think all three of you have made reference to President Trump flying back to Andrews Air Force Base on Sunday evening. He said, we're in charge of Venezuela. We're going to run it. He was asked about potential regime change in Colombia and he said, sounds good to me. He talked about Iran and the protests that are taking place there, the sort of ground up protests that are taking place there. And he said if the regime starts killing people like they have in the past, they're going to get hit very hard by the United States. He said we absolutely need to take Greenland because it's crucial to our security. He said that Cuba is ready to fall. I mean, where is the United States not poised to take action, to step in, to project power? I say this as somebody who's sort of an unapologetic defender of a stronger US presence of the US leveraging its might to shape outcomes that are in our national interest. But this seems to me there's a smart way for the US to extend its influence and to shape outcomes and to shape the world in a manner consistent with our interests. Much stronger than I think the Democrats have demonstrated both under Barack Obama and under Joe Biden, where we seem almost afraid of our own power. But this isn't it, is it? I mean, is it just sort of willy nilly, hey, we're going to hit here and we're going to hit here. It's like it's not even whack a mole because it's not that you have places and threats that are rearing their heads. It's like we're enticing the moles to come up. That's a horrible analogy, but I hope you understand what I'm saying. Jonah, is this sort of what we should expect from the rest of the Trump presidency?
- [53:59]
D
The fact that you're pointing out inconsistencies to Trump's behavior proves my point about his consistent inconsistency. It's who gets the he changed his position on TikTok. He changed his position all sorts of things because someone tells him something in Mar a Lago or because someone breaks through to him and he grabs. I mean, Eli Lake wrote, did this wonderful podcast and essay borrowing from this famous the name of the philosopher. I've lost it for the second but wrote this famous essay called called On Bull and the difference between a bull and a liar, sorry, if you have kids in the car, is that the liar is paying tribute to the truth. The liar knows what the truth is and is trying to persuade you of something else. The bullsh does not care what the truth is. The bul just says whatever they need to say to get you to buy this condo to today. And that is Trump's approach. The consistency thing is him desiring to be seen as strong and as Powerful. You hear it in his rhetoric all the time about how we've never been more respected. You hear it all the time. He's a very. To Mike's point about how he may not be a student of Carl Schmidt, I agree. There's a lot of stuff in Trump that you can find analogs from romantic nationalism in, right? He thinks he is the personification of the nation as a whole. And so when he is personally, quote, unquote, betrayed, he calls it treason. Because to defy him is to defy the nation. Right? That's how he thinks about things. His will is sanctified in his own mind. This is very much a 19th century romantic way of thinking about things. His will is sanctified in his own mind because it's his. His will. And if he's inconsistent, that's his prerogative because he is the president. He is the avatar of the Volksgemeinschaft, or whatever you want to call it. He is, you know, the embodiment of the national will. This is like a big inherent thing in nationalism. I don't think he's read Johan Ficht or any of the early nationalists either. That mindset fits him really, really well. And the people around him have faith, figured out how to appeal to it. I mean, that's one of the things that makes it really hard to game out politics anymore, is that even our allies have figured out that if you suck up to Trump and heap praise on him, it works. This is why what the head of NATO is calling him Daddy. I mean, the ass kissing that we have seen from friend and foe alike is a tell about how he actually makes decisions. That's how you make decisions. You're going to be inconsistent. And so if you start Steve complaining, but this isn't even in our hemisphere where he's flexing muscles. Well, yeah, because he doesn't really care about that. He likes the arguments about the Monroe Doctrine stuff because they fit his worldview and they give him a sense of even more freedom of operation in our hemisphere. But he'll grab any argument off the shelf if it suits his ends. And what worries me is that that Marco Rubio, and I'm open, and Doug Burgum, I mean, I'm open to nominations are the last sort of. You can still see their souls, right? You can still see that they have some sense of patriotic integrity to them. Rubio sometimes has to really scrounge for it, but he has it. And he pays tribute to actual serious policymaking when he talks. Who are the other people who are even the slightest check on Trump's glandular appetites about all this kind of stuff. I don't know who they are, which is why you're gonna see this whack a mole stuff and inconsistency all over the place. He's, you know, he, he uses force a lot for a guy who says he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
- [58:05]
A
Mike and Gil, I'm tempted to ask you, if you were in the Oval Office advising the president right now, what are the next three or four steps that the United States should take? But I'm not going to ask you that because he is the president. He makes decisions in the manner that we've discussed. I think a more useful question as we wrap up here is what are the potential positives, sort of recognizing that Donald Trump is Donald Trump, that this is likely to be a zigzaggy and very bumpy path forward. I do think that you can make a case that there are some potential deterrent effects. Effects here on bad actors. Elsewhere. The reports in the New York Times and elsewhere today that the Iranian regime is sort of taking a second look at the way that it's conducting itself. You wouldn't know that by looking at how it's behaving on the streets and the attacks that it's conducting on its own citizens, but there are at least reports that they're paying careful attention. I think that's a valid argument to make. But what are the main pitfalls as we're watching this unfold over the next week, over the next four weeks, over the next several months? Where are the areas that you all are going to be looking most carefully at to say, okay, this is headed in the wrong direction. And I'll start with you, Mike.
- [59:24]
C
First of all, as far as positives go, there are a lot of people like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, the vice President, including, who've tried to paint the president as an isolationist. And you've pointed out that he's not. Not only is he not, but oftentimes he take bolder action than even the hawks would assume. Striking Soleimani, the two punitive strikes against the Syrian regime when they used chemical weapons, Midnight Hammer and this, this was bolder than we thought. Everybody was gearing up towards maybe land based strikes against drug labs in Venezuela and that would pressure Maduro. So you are correct that this probably has a deterrent effect. That his tweet or truth from January 2 saying that he was could strike Iran to protect the protesters became much more valid on January 3rd when they saw that we had just gone after Maduro. The other thing, there are some potential, well, maybe not intended by his plan. There are some potential benefits within Venezuela. While I'm not necessarily a big fan of the fact that Maduro's party is still in power, what this does prevent to avoid too much of the Iraq analogies is we're avoiding the problem of de Ba'. Athification. The functions of government are still in place and that means we have something that can transition to the next step. And when, as Secretary Rubio has pointed out, we transition to the next step in an orderly fashion, we do have a viable and organized and popular opposition movement that is ready to assume control, assuming after elections, or as Gil said, if we just retain the validity of the last election. These are not Ahmed Chalabi, right, who claims to have the ability to fleet in and take over. They do have those functions. Where the danger lies, however, is as we run the country from afar or translates that really to we're going to put our policy prescriptions on what we expect Rodriguez to do. And going back to the point of what is it that we actually want, the more limited those options are. And if they are just around oil, then I think there is the potential for the Rodriguez government or malign actors around her, including the cartels, to take advantage of this new, new structure that's going to form a new stasis that will not be viable or beneficial to the Venezuelan people, that will potentially still continue to facilitate the drug trade, that will still potentially continue their relationships with malign actors from outside the Western Hemisphere and only answer what is the limited basis that the President is asking of them, which is access to the oil markets. So I think there's a real the options, the outcomes are wide open here. There could be a very positive outcome for Venezuela and the United States States and there could be an incredibly negative one where we extract resources and leave everything else to go to hell.
- [62:10]
B
Those are excellent points and I'll try to make distinct ones, not distribute them. But I agree with all of those. I think one of the things I've been the most concerned about and I think a lot of other people in the Latin America policy space have been the most concerned about, is that we're essentially just going to have Chavismo without Maduro. Delta Rodriguez is going to step up, give the US More preferable access to the oil sector, but otherwise the regime will essentially continue, continue in perpetuity. I don't necessarily think that is the case based on what we've seen so far. For two reasons. One is that from what we know of the negotiations that were occurring before the United States rejected offers from Maduro that would essentially have this outcome itself. Now, it's possible that we wanted to just show that we could take him anyway. And so we weren't rejecting those offers because of the policy implications, but of what all the United States was wanted towards Venezuela was just having better access to the oil sector while leaving the government in place. That I don't think necessarily makes sense that we did this operation. Of course, as we've said ad nauseam, a lot of what is being done doesn't make sense. So that's not the strongest argument to be had there. But also the people who I think have disproportionate leverage and influence on Venezuelan policy, like Marco Rubio, while not coming out and fully endorsing either Edwin Gonzalez, the winner of the 2024 presidential election, or Maria Corino Machado, the most popular opposition leader, have come out anyway and said basically that there's going to be some sort of transition, that there is going to be a replacement of the government at some point down the line, even if they're not the most concerned about that. I do think it has very positive implications for the hemisphere in terms of the impact that it will have on Cuba. It's not just that there's going to be one less authoritarian ally that Cuba has. Cuba was heavily dependent on Venezuela for oil. Those supplies have been dwindling already. Cuba in recent months has been really pivoting towards Mexico to try to get more of that oil supply that it has. And from what we learned this morning, at least 32 Cuban operatives who were Maduro's bodyguards were killed in this operation as well. So I think that for a long time there has been this obscured role as far as what role Cuba has played in Venezuela. That is now coming to light because now we know for a fact that Maduro's inner circle, as you know, we've known this for years. But now, now it's just much more apparent to the public that Maduro's inner circle was heavily guarded by, say, Cuban bodyguards and Venezuelan ones. So even from a propaganda perspective, in terms of the information war between the democratic and autocratic forces in the hemisphere. I think that what is going to come to light about a lot of this and a lot of Cuban involvements, about Iranian and Russian involvement, for example, is something that will be good. We know that we struck also an Iranian drone facility, it seems, on Islam or Margarita during the strike as well, which means that there are going to be fewer Iranian drones that could be used in a number of different conflicts, let alone their own domestic security forces for us. But as far as the pitfalls, I think that not having a plan is something that for me is really the major one I was sort of shocked to see again during Marco Rubio's press tour yesterday, he was asked about this comment of running the country. And he said, I don't know why everyone's so fixed, fixated on who's going to run the country. And I mean, that's like if I told my girlfriend I'm going to run the dishwasher, and then a few hours later she is like, hey, how come you haven't run the dishwasher? And I say, I don't know why everyone's so fixated on who runs the dishwasher. You could obviously see the logical faults and gaps here, right? So I think not really having a commitment there. So far from what we've seen, one of the major problems and challenges is how decentralized Venezuela is for me. There's a great book written by one of the leading Venezuela experts who's at the U.S. naval Academy and Institutes, John Polga Hisimovic. It's called Authoritarian Consolidation in Times of Crisis. It has several different chapters by different Venezuelan experts on basically how Maduro has managed to consolidate state autocracy in Venezuela during this time. One of the most important chapters for me is the chapter on decentralization, which goes through the ways in which Chavez initially, like many autocrats, tried to centralize a lot of the institutions and forces in Venezuela as autocrats like to do. But Maduro, realizing that he was in a much weaker position than Chavez because he didn't have the charisma or the cult of personality in a more unstable position. His solution to a lot of the challenges to his authority was just decentralize everything in the country. So he increased the number of generals very significantly, for example. So he's made now hundreds of generals. He devolved a lot of powers to local states and to basically local figures, as long as they were loyal to him, allowed them to participate in these illicit features. So if you're actually trying to basically turn the country into more of a democratic regime, the fact that it's so decentralized has made the government itself weaker and easier to essentially topple or overthrow. But it's made it much, much more difficult to govern. And I think that's been really the conclusion that we, we have seen from the latest Operation Venezuela Can't Stand up to us militarily. We have a lot to be proud of for the efficiency and skill of our armed forces. But as far as actually governing the country, one of their hedges against intervention and one of their hedges against the democratic opposition has been to make it extremely difficult to actually take over and govern as something that can serve as kind of a bulwark for them and kind of a safety valve for them. I think that's part of the reason why we have left them in place. And. And that's part of the reason why we didn't actually have a full regime change operation and had one that was more of sort of a regime transition or pause at the moment. But I think that decentralization factor is going to be something that you hear a lot more of in the next few months.
- [68:08]
D
The two things I'm wondering about, and I would love to see more reporting on, is this claim that the oil company, American oil companies, are going to go in and do all this stuff. Oil, I'm open to correction, is about 60 bucks a barrel right now. That is not a great price point to spend billions of dollars with an unclear return. I'd like to know, how much did the administration work this out with these alleged oil companies, that this was going to be done, Right? I mean, Trump has his ideas about trade that go back to the 1980s, right? You just replace Japan with China. He has ideas about taking the oil to go back to the first Iraq War, not the second one. So he may have just had in his mind all along, of course the oil companies are going to want to do this because that's what oil companies want to do. But I know some people in the oil industry and they're like, huh, we have questions, right? And so what happens if, other than Chevron, which is already there, what if no oil companies step up and do the expenditures that they're counting on to get this infrastructure up and running? And if that doesn't happen, does he compel them?
- [69:22]
A
Does the taxpayer foot the bill?
- [69:23]
D
Yeah, there's a lot of industrial policy stuff. Does he take golden shares in an Exxon or something to make them do? I'm not saying he will. I don't know. I haven't seen a lot of great reporting on this stuff yet. But what it does domestically is a concern of mine. Which brings me to the second, second thing, which is just that I want this, for the most part, I want this to succeed. I certainly want it to succeed for Venezuela. Venezuela has been treated horribly over the last decade, two decades. And I Don't want to see America embarrassed or ashamed. But there is something to think about. What if this is successful or deemed successful insofar as what is the lesson that this administration takes, takes from a quote unquote, success, right? I mean, the Katie Miller tweet, we've been alluding to it. Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, she tweeted out a picture of Greenland colored in with the American flag with just the all caps word soon. It was grotesque, right? And like, I don't think even this administration on its worst day would send troops into Greenland to seize it as effect. But the Danes have every reason to worry about that. The idea of building on the success, like if Trump thinks this makes him look great and he's getting, he's only watching the Fox coverage of it or whatever, what, what is the next domino to go in Trump's mind? And what are the, at that point, what are the possible arguments to be made other than, than we did it because we could. How do you oppose that? How do you deal with that? That's something that I think has real consequences long term for the United States of America. I don't think the US Military wants to be in the oil field acquisition business, But the kind of officers who might like that or are enticed by that are going to get promoted in this new era. I mean, like, so there are a lot of cascading, sort of dynamic scoring things that could come from success that aren't great, not just from failure.
- [71:40]
A
On that pleasant note, I want to get your input on how we talk about Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro by playing a clip from, from a Saturday Night Live skit many, many years ago featuring Jimmy Smits, a US Actor of Puerto Rican origin, a mock up of NBC News.
- [72:04]
D
The fighting for now is over, but.
- [72:07]
C
For the people of Nicaragua, that is small consolation.
- [72:11]
A
This is Robin Fletcher for NBC News reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.
- [72:16]
C
What do you think? Wow, it's a nice report, but is this the week to cover Nicaragua?
- [72:23]
D
Well, I think Nicaragua is important.
- [72:27]
C
And not just Nicaragua, but also Honduras, especially El Salvador.
- [72:32]
G
You know, I'm sorry, I've just been noticing that you guys really are up on your Spanish pronunciation.
- [72:38]
C
Thank you.
- [72:38]
G
But if you don't mind, if you don't mind me saying so, sometimes these Spanish words, when you take them and you sort of kind of over pronounce them and it's kind of really, really.
- [72:51]
B
Yeah.
- [72:51]
C
Give us an example.
- [72:53]
G
Okay. What do you call the kind of storm you get with high winds and a big funnel cloud?
- [72:58]
A
A tornado. Why?
- [73:02]
G
Never mind, never mind. You know, on second thought, I think I will have an enchilada.
- [73:09]
C
A what?
- [73:11]
G
An enchilada. I'll have an enchilada. I'm sorry, an enchilada. Oh, ok. Antonio Mendoza would like an enchilada. It would be very muy bueno because Antonio is very hungry. Yeah, it would make him feel really good to have an enchilada. Hey, this guy's all right.
- [73:41]
A
You don't have to give long or very serious answers here. But I will just ask. Is it in fact act kind of annoying?
- [73:48]
B
You've hit on a very personal note for me because my parents are both Mexican immigrants and I speak Spanish fluently. I learned it before I learned English. And people oftentimes when they, especially if I'm doing podcast approach or something, they'll go gilguera, right? They're all the R's to show that they took high school Spanish. I always want to tell them, listen, my parents named me Gilbert. They did not want me out here saying, you know, my name is, you know, Gilbert Guerra. Right. Like it, it sort of sounds ridiculous to me whenever this is happening. I think it's, it's, it's from a good place oftentimes, but, you know, it's, it's always very funny to me whenever I, I also meet very well meaning kind of English dominant audiences and they, they roll the R's. And then they asked me introduce myself and I'm like, my name is Gilbert Garo.
- [74:35]
A
So you, in fact, you are Jimmy Schmidt Smiths in that?
- [74:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's one of these disconnects, I think, between Hispanic Americans and kind of how we're portrayed in mass media and part because so few of us go to college and get higher education and wind up in kind of careers like the one I have in think tanks that the very few that do are extremely progressive oftentimes and have very progressive sensibilities about culturally what people want and how they act and how they're treated that are just wildly out of touch with, I think, actually how the vast majority of Hispanic Americans both act in their daily lives. And also, as the clip says, you know what you find annoying and what you find kind of obnoxious and weird.
- [75:14]
C
The good news is we won't have to deal with this when we launch Operation Inuit Freedom. No one's going to be trying to do the native Greenlandic names with a heavy accent because I don't think any of us will know how to pronounce them.
- [75:24]
A
Jonah should I stop saying Ribera del Duero and just say ribera del Duero.
- [75:30]
D
Yes, Via. On Gill's point, it is sort of a derivative of. It's adjacent to like the Latinx stuff. Like the kind of people who go on who in seminars think, oh, we'll just degender the Spanish language. Don't really talk to a lot of normal Spanish speaking people about these kinds of things. And it's also for me, like, you know, there's this guy at the Economist, an Indian correspondent in India who refuses to stop referring to it as Bombay. And I have a certain amount of respect for that kind of thing, at least from an Indian. Like, I don't have the cojones to do that.
- [76:23]
B
But.
- [76:27]
D
And I think we can all agree that Leopoldville deserves to be in the dustbin of history. But like, this desire to always, like, I have no problem calling it Burma. Right. But there is this tendency of sort.
- [76:41]
C
Of.
- [76:43]
D
Low confidence in a lot of people that you can actually use the language for the speakers of our own language. And it's a weird cultural thing that really plays into the developing world more. I mean, it's like, no, I never heard anybody say, how dare you call it Germany? You have to call it Deutschland. But the number of people who say you have to use like the indigenous names for things in these other developing countries, it's a weird tick in, I think, Western culture, American culture at least.
- [77:12]
A
I mean, President Obama often referred to Pakistan as Pakistan. Pakistan, yes, more authentic. Well, thank you, thank you for your thoughts on that and thanks for a terrific conversation about these, I think, most momentous developments over the weekend and what we might expect from. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtabledispatch.com we read everything, even emails from people who insist that we use the Spanish pronunciation. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey and Victoria Holmes. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Lifestyle.