Jan 6 5 Years Later: Invasions & Impunity | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joy Reid Show — “Jan 6 5 Years Later: Invasions & Impunity”

Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Episode Date: January 6, 2026
Main Guests: Bishop William Barber, Daniel Hodges, Harry Dunn, Michael Fanone, Paola Ramos
Theme: Examining the fifth anniversary of January 6th, ongoing lawlessness and impunity in American governance, and a deep dive into U.S. intervention in Venezuela, imperialism, and petrodollar politics.

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Overview

This episode marks the five-year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Joy Reid explores how the events and aftermath of January 6, 2021, shaped U.S. democracy and paved the way for continued lawlessness and impunity — particularly under a return of Donald Trump to the presidency. The episode features firsthand testimonies from police officers who defended the Capitol, sharp critique of political cowardice, and a robust segment dissecting the recent U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. January 6th, 2021: Five Years Later

• The show’s opening frames January 6th as “our Reichstag fire moment” which, left unresolved, cleared the path for further assaults on democracy.
• Reid asserts that Trump’s actions represent a continuation of autocratic traditions worldwide — noting parallels with the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping, who’ve refused to cede power.

Quote:

“Nothing is new. All these forms of autocracy repeat each other… January 6th of 2021 was behaving like arrest all of the other dictators throughout history.”
— Joy Reid (07:55)

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2. Personal Reflections: The Officers’ Stories

• Guests include D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, and former D.C. Metro Officer Michael Fanone: all attacked on January 6th.
• All three reflect on the emotional toll, ongoing trauma, and the lack of accountability in both politics and media.

Danny Hodges:

“Not to be dramatic, but for me, you know, it’s never far from my mind… it’s always relevant. It’s illustrative of what happens when we don’t hold someone accountable.”
— Daniel Hodges (17:35)

Harry Dunn:

“You have two officers suing Congress… to hang up a plaque that the law… says must be there… Hang up the plaque like the law says, or repeal the law. That’s simple.”
— Harry Dunn (19:11)

Michael Fanone:

“Donald Trump exists in his current form because Americans replaced the characteristics of integrity and honor and courage with cowardice… we’re still actively engaged in the same fight that began on January 6.”
— Michael Fanone (21:33)

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3. Political Cowardice and Failure to Act

• Critique of both Republican and Democratic leaders for failing to enforce consequences on Trump, setting a precedent of impunity.
• Sharp language against Mitch McConnell for his failure to convict Trump during impeachment, with Dunn launching a memorable rant:

“Fuck you Mitch McConnell… He alone could have ended this nightmare. But, like Michael said, he was more concerned about changing the landscape of this country through his judicial nominations…”
— Harry Dunn (32:50)

• Officers and Reid discuss how institutions passed blame and responsibility: Congress expects the DOJ to act, DOJ delays, the special prosecutor acts too late.

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4. Legacy Media’s Role & Historical Revisionism

• Fanone and Joy Reid lament how mainstream media have whitewashed or deprioritized January 6th, comparing current “miss-memory” with contemporaneous universal condemnation.

“We have an insurrectionist president… because no one will stand up to him. Outrages me.”
— Michael Fanone (41:11)

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5. U.S. Intervention in Venezuela: Empire & Oil

• Transition to incisive coverage of the U.S. military operation arresting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
• Reid critiques the media’s varied framing (NYT critical vs. Washington Post celebratory) and exposes the naked imperial and economic interests motivating the intervention.

“What Donald Trump said about Iraq — we should have taken the oil — and apparently, now, we have. We’re selling Venezuelan oil… It’s about oil, but it’s even more about empire.”
— Joy Reid (51:30, 62:03)

• Rubio, representing the administration, fails to articulate legal authority for U.S. actions beyond “court orders” and sidesteps questions about selective prosecution.
• Paola Ramos joins to frame the intervention as transactional, providing emotional “victory” for some exiles but merely entrenching power structures and U.S. interests.

“This is more about the petrodollar and preventing him [Maduro] from getting out of the petrodollar system… It was never about democracy.”
— Paola Ramos (82:26)

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6. History of U.S. Imperialism

• Joy Reid delivers a mini-lecture on U.S. expansionism — Louisiana Purchase, annexation of Hawaii, conquest of Mexico, and constant intervention in Latin America.
• She connects contemporary maneuvers in Venezuela to the U.S. tradition of resource-driven imperialism, illustrating with historical maps and cartoons.

“We don’t tend to think of ourselves that way, but the U.S. is an empire… What built those personal fortunes was oil.”
— Joy Reid (73:00)

• Explains the petrodollar arrangement’s collapse in 2024 and the implications of countries joining alternatives like BRICS.

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7. Moral and Political Call To Action

• Bishop William Barber provides a biblical and moral frame, calling for grassroots action, not only resistance.
• Urges micro-level (state-level and local) mobilization and vision-based organizing, referencing moral leaders’ historical failures to speak out.

“If there’s ever been a time we need to micro down to the state level… At least one time we ought to try putting all our power on the table.”
— Bishop William Barber (113:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Lawlessness:
  “We are seeing ICE behave like the 1-6-Rioters, behave like them, physically assaulting people in the street, wearing masks, which none of you were allowed to do. What do you make of how that kind of sense of lawlessness has bled into things like ICE?”
  — Joy Reid to Daniel Hodges (35:06)

• Bluntness on Institutional Failure:
  “Merrick Garland, you know, to me, is the ultimate coward in this story… we actually had to form a select committee to force the Department of Justice to act…”
  — Michael Fanone (30:11)

• Critique of American Exceptionalism:
  “We use the badness of one leader to justify more badness. And what happens is we don’t end up being liberators, just takers.”
  — Bishop William Barber (108:52)

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Important Timestamps

• Reflections on Jan 6 & Lawlessness: 03:00–12:00
• Officers Panel Begins: 17:07
• Dunn Rant Against Mitch McConnell: 32:48
• Discussion on Political Cowardice: 29:52–32:00
• Venezuela Segment Starts: 43:00
• Rubio Evasion and Oil Motives: 48:06–58:00
• Paola Ramos joins: 82:24
• History of U.S. Empire & Petrodollar: 56:00–78:00
• Bishop Barber’s Moral Monday: 101:01–116:00

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Language & Tone

• Joy Reid’s tone is sharp, direct, and frequently wry, blending passionate critique with historical explanation and personal reflection.
• Guests, especially the officers, are frank, often emotional, and occasionally profane — underlining their ongoing sense of betrayal.
• The overall vibe is urgent, forthright, and deeply skeptical of institutional narratives.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode:

This episode is an unflinching reflection on the fifth anniversary of January 6. It foregrounds the trauma and vigilance of frontline defenders of democracy, rips into political and media complicity, and builds a detailed, accessible case for seeing American actions — domestically and abroad — through the lens of empire and systemic lawlessness. The podcast’s second half shifts to foreign policy, exposing the imperial logic behind the U.S. operation in Venezuela, the manipulation of narratives, and the critical importance of petrodollar hegemony. The show ends with a call for collective, purposeful resistance and moral clarity in the face of deepening autocracy.

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Sectional Breakdown

1. Opening & Context (00:27–07:55)

• New year, ongoing lawlessness, Jan 6 anniversary, announcement of special guests and topics (Delta Sigma Theta, Venezuela).

2. Jan 6 Lawlessness and Immigration Scandal (07:55–17:07)

• Minnesota “daycare scandal,” right-wing media manipulation, Trump’s blaming and attacks on immigrants and critics.

3. The Officers' Testimony (17:07–41:29)

• Firsthand trauma, struggle for memorialization, legal fights for recognition, institutional betrayal.
• “It is always relevant… because it’s illustrative of what happens when we don’t hold someone accountable.” — Daniel Hodges

4. Institutional & Political Failure (24:14–35:06)

• Congressional and DOJ cowardice, McConnell’s duplicity, Democratic passivity.

5. Venezuela: Empire in Action (43:00–78:07)

• Media framing, Rubio’s evasions, clear linkage to oil and U.S. empire, petrodollar politics, BRICS, and risks to U.S. financial dominance.

6. Latin America, Intervention, and Narrative (82:24–97:14)

• Conversation with Paola Ramos, the emotional politics of exile, regime change history, U.S. strategy, and private profiteering.

7. Moral Monday with Bishop Barber (101:01–116:00)

• Morality and action for democracy, religious history, need for mobilization, and the “witches’ brew” of propaganda.

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Bottom Line:
If you want to understand the ongoing repercussions of January 6th, the stakes of unchecked executive power, and how U.S. imperial maneuvering in the Americas is about more than “democracy” — about oil, dollars, and hubris — this episode is a raw, comprehensive primer blending history, policy, and passionate advocacy.

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

It's a historically hideous season. It's our 100th ugly house.

[Donald Trump]

And if these walls could talk.

[Joy Reid]

Do you cry a lot? I do. Ugliest house in America.

[Donald Trump]

Season premiere Wednesday at 8 on HGTV.

[Marco Rubio]

Okay. Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

Hey, everybody. Happy New Year to everyone. If we haven't said happy New Year to you already, I can't remember. Yes, we've done a couple of sort of shows, mini shows, but happy official first Monday of the new year to everybody. Thanks for tuning into the Joy Reid Show. Welcome to everybody who is watching on YouTube, whether you're on Substack, hello, Stackers, Hello. As well as those who are listening through the audio podcast of your choosing, thank you all for being here. As, as folks are pointing out in the chat, yes, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority incorporated. Founders Day is coming up, but it's not today. But y' all are letting me know. Don't miss it. Don't worry. I will be on the lookout for that as well. It is a beautiful January. Lots of news going on. We've got a big show tonight. It is Moral Monday, which means Bishop Barbara will be with us in the second hour. That's a big thing. We are also going to get into this whole Venezuela thing. We're going to talk about it because I do believe that most of the mainstream media is kind of missing the story. And Jason and I were having this conversation about how different it is being outside of that bubble, how differently you're able to really look at things when you don't have the deluge of all of the networks sort of all covering things in one way. And you can sort of look at it another way. And I can tell you this story is not what you think it is. It's a lot different. We're also going to talk about the five year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, believe it or not, you know, six minus one, right, 2026, this will be the five year anniversary of that insurrection, that Reichstag fire moment that set the stage for Donald Trump to complete the insurrection with his reelection in 2024 to a second non consecutive term and all of the lawlessness that has flowed therefrom, whether it's ice, whether it is demonizing communities of color like the Somali community in Minnesota, whether it is unleashing hell on immigrants from Venezuela, from Cuba, from any brown country, letting in only white South Africans, going after the president of South Africa, lying about white genocide, you name it. But the lawlessness is the thing. And I think that our guests, who are some of the Heroes of January 6th Friends of the show, they're going to get to talk about that. So that's going to come up soon. But before we get to that, speaking of lawlessness, and we spoke on the last show about the trick that's being played to get people in the media to report on this story of Minnesota corruption, right? Of these daycare centers that were cheating the system during the pandemic and getting pandemic funds when there were no children in the daycare. And this big scandal in Minnesota which turns out to be a white lady who's already been indicted and is already being charged $5 million that she has to restore. And that was the ringleader of the whole thing. Something that's already been adjudicated, already been addressed by the government of Minnesota. And yet because of a right wing podcaster who seems to be everywhere where the right wants to have a scandal pop up that happens to deal with whether it's Ukraine or whether it's this, he shows up at daycare centers off hours and tries to open the door. The door doesn't open. He says, aha, I've caught the fraud. Or he shows up during operating hours, tries to open the door or look in the windows, tries to be a peeper. And because a random dude from Utah cannot go into a Minnesota daycare center and walk in and count the children, because he can't go in and personally care in this daycare center and count the kids inside, he's like, aha, I've caught the, I've caught the fraud. This 23 year old right wing YouTuber who's pulling a great deal of sort of scamology and scamation which makes the right very happy because it keeps them distracted from things like, I don't know, the Epstein files. They don't have to think about that, right? They can think about this so called rampant fraud that Somalis are perpetrating, which means it justifies them watching these cops style ISIS style videos of non white immigrants being tackled in the street because they can 1, 2, 3 it in their heads and say, well, there's all this fraud and it's all these immigrants and we have to get rid of them. And Trump is right, and let's not talk about the Epstein files. Well, with all of that happening, surprise, surprise, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls has announced he's out. He's not going to run for reelection. He dropped out of a bid for a third term, which is interesting. Donald Trump has been attacking Tim Walls. This is his tweet that he posted saying that he needs to focus on governing and not on running for reelection. And it would mean that due to the harassment of Donald Trump and maga, who's been personally blaming Tim Walls for this so called scandal involving literally like 70 Somalis out of 60,000 Somali adults and about 80,000 Somalis, Somalis and Somali Americans in Minnesota, because like 70 of them were previously tied to a crime that a white lady was perpetrating. As the ringleader, he's supposed to step down and he's responsible and he's responding to that, not by fighting back like so Many governors like J.B. pritzker and Gavin Newsom have. He's decided to fall back. So that means that Donald Trump has effectively defeated both parts of the ticket that ran against him in 2024. That's weird. And in my mind, what happened in 2024 really was just the culmination of what already was an attempted coup. One of the things we were not really allowed to say after a while at Miz now the Artist Formerly Known as msnbc. But it was a coup attempt, right? It was similar. And you know, we don't want to overuse the Hitler analogy, but that is what Adolf Hitler did. He attempted to foment a coup in Germany and then came back after being jailed. At least he was jailed for it. Came back after being jailed and then was elected chancellor. And we were off to the races with him running an autocratic form of government. And one of the themes of the show tonight is that nothing is new, right? All of these forms of autocracy repeat each other. They do the same kinds of things over and over again. And it's very difficult to sort of discern between the bad guys in these situations of autocrats. But they do all do similar things. They get into office, they change the rules in a constitution or just ignore the rules in the constitution and the judges, and they don't want to leave office. And what Donald Trump on January 6th of 2021 was doing is he was behaving like arrest all of the other dictators throughout history. And autocrats, they never want to leave office. You know, Vladimir Putin's still in office. He was supposed to leave office after a couple of terms. He stayed on. Nayib Bukele, the only Palestinian the right likes, who is the leader of El Salvador, supposed to stay for two terms. He ain't leaving. He switched up the constitution, got them bullied, basically his legislator to let him stay. Xi Jinping of China, supposed to be termed out. He ain't leaving. Right. But people who care about democracy, people like Tim Walls, they get a little hate and they fall back and they're out of here. The people like Trump, once they get a taste of power and the money they can accumulate personally, they never want to leave. And Donald Trump is really no different. And so I want to play for you guys a couple of clips, I think that sort of speak to what we were dealing with on January 6th. This is the first one that I want to play for you. And this is just a few clips. We're going to start with Jack Smith's testimony, that closed door testimony in which he's asked point blank by the House Judiciary members who are basically sort of trying to interrogate him on the right side and on the Democratic side just questioning him and trying to ask him if he really believes Donald Trump was responsible for January 6. He gives his answer and then we show some other video from that time. Here it is. So did you develop evidence that President.

[Daniel Hodges]

Trump.

[Joy Reid]

Was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th? So our, our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.

[Donald Trump]

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they're doing and stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede with his theft involved, our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore. And that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal.

[Joy Reid]

But you don't have any evidence that.

[Daniel Hodges]

He instructed people, people to crash and.

[Joy Reid]

Crash the Capitol, do you? As I said, our evidence is that he, in the weeks leading up to January 6, created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren't true. He made false statements to state legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts, and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.

[Donald Trump]

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down. And I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down.

[Bishop William Barber]

We'Re going.

[Donald Trump]

To walk down anyone you want. But I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol.

[Bishop William Barber]

And.

[Donald Trump]

We'Re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.

[Paola Ramos]

Did he go back into session? He did go back into session, but.

[Joy Reid]

Now apparently everybody on the floor is.

[Daniel Hodges]

Putting on tear gas masks to prepare for breach.

[Joy Reid]

I'm trying to get more information.

[Daniel Hodges]

They're putting on their tear gas masks.

[Joy Reid]

But the fact is, on any given day, they're breaking the wall in many different ways, quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the President of the United States. It is hard to believe that that happened and that if you look at polling now, a majority of Republicans do not believe that that was an insurrection, do not believe that that was even a crime, and do not believe that the people who ransacked the Capitol, looted the Capitol, committed burglary, in many cases, smashing equipment of journalists, smashing the windows, taking literal dumps inside of the Capitol, such that the people who clean the Capitol had to then clean up the human shit left behind by the insurrectionists. Most Republicans don't think that that was a crime. They think that, if anything, the woman that you heard speaking at the end of that set of tape, Nancy Pelosi, is the person responsible for January 6. They do not believe that the Capitol Police officers who got the hell beaten out of them, some of them who almost died as a result of it. Michael Fanone, who was a Metro Police officer, he wasn't even Capitol Police, he came over and responded with from the Metro Police Department, was tased multiple times and sprayed with bear spray and caught a heart attack twice because of what was done to him. But they believe that he was responsible for it, that Harry Dunn was responsible for it, that Aquilino Gonell, another Capitol Police officer, that they were responsible for that. Michael Hodges, who you saw in that video being squeezed in a door. Daniel Hodges, sorry, Daniel Hodges, who you saw being squeezed in that door, is that he was responsible, that they were responsible, that the police officers were the ones who actually perpetrated this, or that the FBI did it, that it was anyone other than Trump supporters, even though the people who were smashing in windows, taking shits inside of the Capitol, beating up police officers, hitting them with brass knuckles, carrying weapons where you're not supposed to carry weapons onto the Capitol, those people were the victims. Ashley Babbitt, who tried to throw herself through the Speaker's House barrier, that door smashing through a window after people smashed out the windows and tried to climb through it. On the other side of that door being members of Congress and their staffs who were sitting ducks for her. She was a military trained, military trained person. This is a person with military training. She would have been facing these unarmed. In many cases, 20 something year old staffers and members of Congress, they think she was a victim. She has a, her family has a major lawsuit happening, a wrongful death lawsuit. I believe she's already collected. Their family's already collected like $5 million or something. There's been talk that the people who smash through the Capitol should get reparations. I mean, they don't believe in reparations for anyone else. They certainly believe in them, these people that, that is the sort of bizarre world that we're in. Five years later. I want to note that Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn and and former U.S. capitol Police officer Aklino Gonell, they're advisory board members for something called Home of the Brave. It's a new initiative that highlights the harms of Trump's second term and urges people to speak out. Michael Fanon has written the following for his substack. He wrote a piece called I Defended the Capitol on January 6th. The rioters think they've won. Right now, Trump and his minions are destroying our democracy and wrecking the economy. For Trump, anyone who doesn't roll over for him, cops, prosecutors, politicians, anyone, is a deep state plant, a traitor, an anti American coward. They're expecting that everyone who opposes them will just shut up and take it, to accept their lies and roll over, to just go away. One thing you'll learn for being a cop for over 20 years is that you can't back down. A bully like Trump only responds to strength. You have to meet them head on or they just are going to roll you over. I don't face, I didn't face down the mob on January 6th just to back down now. I'm not going away and you shouldn't either. Aquilino Gonell has written the following. Rioters tried to kill me on January 6th. Trump pardoned them. Quote, in the end, I did my job. I did what was required of me and then some. I kept my oath and continue to do so, despite Trump's and the GOP's betrayals. I chose and continue to choose this country, just as I did when I arrived in America as a child, believing in the promise of this place. I put on two uniforms, first as a soldier, then as a police officer, because I believed America was special and worth fighting for. I fought, bled, and almost died at home and abroad against foreign and domestic threats, the ideals that our flag has long stood for. And for all of that, I was called a traitor by people committing actual treason. Danny Hodges is not formally a part of this project, but he's written in his own capacity for substack. For the substack quote, I'm a D.C. police officer. Here's what Trump's takeover is really about. Nothing is guaranteed in this world, and recent history should firmly illustrate that. That includes our country and way of life. Law and order are vital to any civilization. But Trump has somehow managed to convince a fraction of the country he is working toward these goals while actually subverting the Constitution at every opportunity. It's imperative that we understand the totality of what Trump is trying to accomplish with his deployment of the military and federal law enforcement into our cities. These are some of the voices of the heroes of January 6th. And joining me now are three of those voices. D.C. metro Police officer Daniel Hodges, former U.S. capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, and former D.C. metro Police officer Michael Fanone. I've been texting with Aquilino Gonell for the last several days, and I know he had some travel back and forth. He was going to join us tonight, but I'm just going to give him big ups in, in his app. Welcome, gentlemen. Good to see you, friends.

[Harry Dunn]

Hey, Joy. Happy New Year.

[Joy Reid]

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I'm going to start with you, Daniel Hodges. Are you. Do you prefer Daniel or Danny? Because you're Danny Hodges in the, in the, in the little clip that was sent to me.

[Daniel Hodges]

Danny's fine.

[Joy Reid]

Danny's fine. Okay. So, Danny, I want to start with you because I feel like the video of you has sort of, sort of so seared into our memory of that day. I wonder, five years later, how you feel about what happened. And people sort of miss memory of it.

[Daniel Hodges]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, January six comes around and it enters the public consciousness in a very severe way. But not to be dramatic, but for me, you know, it's never far from my mind. It's really, it's a, it's an everyday thing. It doesn't really go away. So it's, it's interesting to see and it makes sense because not everyone has that personal connection to the events of the day. But it is interesting to see how it's very secular for people that the, the sixth isn't something that really factors into their life that consciously, but it is always relevant it's, it's still relevant today. It's. It's relevant tomorrow. And it's because it's illustrative of what happens when we don't hold someone accountable for the incredible wrongs that they perpetrated and positions of leadership in this country.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Harry Dunn, also, when we don't properly honor the people who did the heroic work. I mean, I know that you are one of the folks that. I don't know if Daniel Hodges is also on that lawsuit that has a lawsuit against the Capitol architect. This is a bizarre story. I just learned about today that you all are having to sue. Now, there was a law passed. It was. It's. It's the law that there's supposed to be a plaque at the Capitol honoring you all that fought for your lives and for our country and for the restoration of our democracy on January 6, 2021. Why is that plaqued out there? And tell me about the lawsuit.

[Harry Dunn]

Well, that's kind of like what you talked about earlier in the beginning of the show is they're trying to rewrite what happened. Listen, everybody remembers where they were on January 6th. I would be willing to bet that majority of people listening remember what shirt they were wearing, what pair of shoes that they had on, exactly what they ate before. So the fact that people are trying to rewrite what happened or tell us, you tell you all. You didn't see what you saw. We're lying about what we went through. I mean, it's absolutely absurd. And now to the lawsuit. Think about this for a second. You have two officers. Two officers suing. Suing Congress or the establishment, the architect of the Capitol, to hang up a plaque that the law. That Congress passed its own law. Why, it's so. I'm getting flabbergasted right now because it's so frustrating to even think that you two officers are having to sue Congress or the Architect for not following the law. This. The lawsuit is simple. Hang up the plaque like the law says, or repeal the law like it's simple. If you don't want to honor the police officers, if you don't want to tell the truth about January 6th, then change the law that says that you are going to honor the officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th. That's simple.

[Bishop William Barber]

I mean, we.

[Harry Dunn]

We've tried all types of avenues about this lawsuit, Joy. We. We wrote letters to members of Congress. We went on news shows. Hell, we said please. When the hell does anybody ever say please in Congress or asking for something? We even said please. So now We've taken the necessary steps now to file the litigation to get Congress to just follow their own law. Sounds simple enough, right?

[Joy Reid]

You would think. You would think, but apparently it's a little bit too much for them. But, I mean, and Michael Fanon, you have experienced this firsthand how cowardly members of Congress are. I mean, I still remember having you having all of you guys on my previous show, but you talking about the fact that a lot of the members of Congress wouldn't even face you all, even though you saved their lives. Like, they wouldn't even have conversations with you all because they just were too scared of Trump. What do you make of kind of the state of cowardice versus bravery among the politicians who should really be defending you all and should be hailing you all today and tomorrow?

[Michael Fanone]

Well, first of all, Donald Trump exists in his current form because Americans replaced the characteristics of integrity and honor and courage with cowardice. And that goes for Congress as well. We have the Republican Party, which is the party of insurrection, but also the party of cowardice. And we have the Democratic Party, which is also the party of cowardice. Now, in their failures to hold Donald Trump accountable and their failures to respond to the will of the people who are demanding that they stand up and fight against this lawless, unconstitutional, and immoral administration. And so, you know, for me, there's no reflection to be had on January 6, 2026. And the reason for that is because, you know, we're still, at least myself and Harry and Danny and Aquilino and many others, not enough, but many others are still actively engaged in the same fight that began on January 6, 2021. And when you're in the middle of a fight, you don't tend to step back and reflect on the origin of the fight. You just keep fighting. And so that's what we're doing. You know, we're continuing to bring the fight to the insurrectionist Republican Party. We are demanding accountability. But I'll be honest with you, you know, five years out, I'm starting to lose faith that we will ever see a political resolution to this administration.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I'm with you on that, because it's hard to have faith in it. Let's play really quickly because I want to show you all. It's also hard. There's a missed memory that happens where you sort of your memory gets dulled over time. As you said, I was sitting here literally. I know where I was literally sitting right here, praying that these goons wouldn't find the museums, because I was like, if they find the museums. They're going to ransack them. That's what I remember. I don't know how. I couldn't get that out of my mind as I saw them sort of marching like they're going to see that the museums are there. Luckily, they don't know anything about architecture and they didn't know what they were. And just thinking what, you know, what sort of mayhem they could do to things that are irreplaceable, but lives are even more irreplaceable. But on that day, we all agreed, whether it was Republicans or Democrats. This is a three days. If you could just play how Republicans reacted at the time.

[Kevin McCarthy]

There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. As Justice Story explained, the Senate upon conviction is bound in all cases to enter a judgment of removal from office. Removal is mandatory upon conviction. Clearly, he explained that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to someone who's left office. The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible. Impeachment, conviction and removal. Are a specific intra governmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system where individual accountability is the paramount goal. We have a criminal justice system in this country.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, wait. Go right there. Is. Count me out. Enough is enough. You're on the phone. Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, Kevin. I guess there's a question. When. When we were talking about the 25th Amendment resolution.

[Bishop William Barber]

Yeah.

[Donald Trump]

And you asked if you know, what.

[Joy Reid]

Happens if it gets there after he's gone. Is. Is there any chance. Are you hearing that he might resign? Is there any reason to think that might happen? I've had some few discussions. My gut tells me no.

[Donald Trump]

I'm seriously thinking of having that conversation with him tonight.

[Joy Reid]

I haven't talked to him in a couple days. Yep. Keep going. There's one more. From what I know of him. I mean, you guys all know him too. Do you think he'd ever back away? But what. What I think I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call him my. This is what I think. He will take it, but I don't know. All right, well, that's it. Well, we. The other one that was in there that we did not Play was Lindsey Graham saying that he was done, he was out. I'm gonna go in reverse order, Michael Fanon, because I think part of the consequence of Mitch McConnell went through a very long, slow, languid explanation, and he ultimately voted against convicting Donald Trump after he was impeached for doing this. It feels like the consequences of not removing him from the 25th Amendment, which was what Kevin McCarthy was talking about, their then speaker and what Mitch McConnell were talking. Who were the two most powerful men in the country at the time. What do you think were the consequences of doing nothing instead of something?

[Michael Fanone]

I mean, we're experiencing the consequences of doing nothing instead of something. You know, we're seeing an absolute collapse of the rule of law in this country. And we have a president who behaves as a dictator in that he does whatever the hell he wants to do, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the long term effects. And any. He's able to do that because no one and no institution is willing to stand up to him in a meaningful way and put a stop to this. You know, Mitch McConnell, he said the right things, what, 24, 48 hours after January 6th, because, you know, what choice did he have? You know, we all saw what played out in that moment. And, but ultimately, you know, Mitch McConnell, being the strategist that he is, realized that for him, you know, he hitched his cart to Donald Trump. He knows that for him, the path to victory is through the judiciary. And he figured, well, you know, Donald Trump is going to do these outlandish things that I disagree with, but at least I'll get to fundamentally change America as we are now all experiencing through the judiciary. And we have a judiciary that is not in line with mainstream America, with the vast majority of Americans. And that's going to have effects that last long beyond Donald Trump's tenure in office and, and long beyond, you know, the MAGA party.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, it feels like, you know, it also showed the kind of toothlessness of what's supposed to be the Article 1 power. The most important and most powerful aspect of our federal government was supposed to be Congress. That's how it was built. But the Congress laid down then and hasn't gotten up since.

[Michael Fanone]

They wanted to kick the. I mean, I also think they wanted to kick the can down the road. They thought the Department of Justice would pick up. And, you know, ultimately what we ended up with was that didn't happen. Merrick Garland, you know, to me, is the ultimate coward in this story. And we actually had to form a select committee to force the Department of Justice to act. And even then, they slow, slow rolled the investigation. And by the time Jack Smith, you know, developed the evidence that he recently testified about under oath, that his investigation determined proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump orchestrated, funded, and incited the January 6th insurrection. And that, to me is, you know, that's the message that should be, you know, resonating on this, you know, fifth anniversary of January 6th, is that we have a President of the United States, or at least someone who has assumed that office, that according to our Constitution, has no right to be in that office. You know, the Constitution says nothing about being convicted of insurrection. It says engaging in insurrection.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Michael Fanone]

And this career prosecutor testified under oath, you know, put his freedom on and his reputation on the line saying that we have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed these crimes in furtherance of insurrection.

[Joy Reid]

It could not have been clearer. And, you know, Harry Dunn, you ran for Congress at one point, and I feel like it hit, you know, I think Michael describes really what has been a slow dismantling, I think, of every structure that is supposed to make America work. Because if the Congress kicks the can of justice, but the Department of Justice kicks the can to a special prosecutor who gets the ball so late that the game is over by the time he's trying to do his fourth down, then there is no holding a president to account. No wonder Donald Trump thinks he can unleash the military in American cities. No wonder he thinks that he can personally profit off of the presidency. Emoluments, class, who gonna check them? Boo. Like, who's going to enforce it? There isn't any law. And I think January 6th, if nothing has ever shown us that the things we thought were structures of law aren't real, it was that.

[Daniel Hodges]

Yeah.

[Harry Dunn]

Fuck you, Mitch McConnell. That's what I got to say to, to this. Fuck you, Mitch McConnell. I watched that speech live. And not only that, Michael Fanon, myself, Mrs. Sicknick was going around lobbying members of Congress, excuse me, members of the Senate. And while we were doing that, Mitch McConnell was secretly rallying them and asking them to do a favor for him and vote against X, Y and Z. While we wanted to meet with Mitch McConnell, he was too busy. So fuck that speech and fuck him. Sorry, I'm a little upset. I despise that man with every fiber in my body. I hate him. And he, yes, there are a lot of people that are responsible for where we are now, but that sole individual had the, the ability, a sole person, one person. Now, there are a lot of people that vote. And a lot of people that Donald Trump there, but he alone could have had Donald Trump never be mentioned in American history again. He had the opportunity and he, sorry, I know you asked me a bunch of other stuff, but that's what I wanted to talk about because he alone could have ended this nightmare. And but like Michael said, he was more concerned about changing the landscape of this, this country through his judicial nominations and the, the judges that he's appointed in this whole Supreme Court. It's just so, it makes me so angry because how often can one person make that big of a difference? One person could have rid us from Donald Trump as we know it. As they all have said in the past, we I'm done with them. I'm done. Kevin Carter. I'm done with them. This ain't about conservatism. Speaking of insurrection, let's talk about the definition of insurrection. A violent uprising against an authority or government. It doesn't say guns, it doesn't say bombs, it doesn't say people killed. A violent uprising. Police got their ass whooped. It was violence. They were trying to kill the. Kill the speaker of the House, kill Nancy Pelosi. They're trying to hang Mike Pence. So get the hell people are. I get so Damn mad. Mitch McConnell. That's what you got.

[Joy Reid]

Danny, I think I need a T shirt that says that because I agree with you 100 and for the chat who are cheering for you in this moment. Correct. What he is talking about is that Mitch Mc McConnell, after that speech, that very grave and serious speech, lobbied members of Congress to vote no on conviction. The way it works is the House impeaches, the Senate is where the trial takes place. No president has ever actually been convicted. Three have been impeached. Nixon was never actually impeached. He resigned first. Had they convicted Donald Trump of those counts that amount to insurrection, he couldn't have run for office. He would have been ineligible per the Constitution. Now, let's just be clear. He probably would have appealed and gone to John Roberts and the other big villain here, John Roberts probably would have somehow read into the Constitution that that isn't real because he was charged with literal insurrection in the state of Colorado and they took that case to John Roberts and he and his friends on the Supreme Court built by Mitch McConnell said that Article 3 of the 14th Amendment doesn't mean Trump. It means somebody else, but not Trump. Daniel Hodges, I'm going to go ahead and give you the last word here on how in your mind because you did write a piece about Kind of the metastasis, the metastasis that has happened after that. In terms of the rule of law period, we are seeing ice behave like the 1-6-Rioters, behave like them, physically assaulting people in the street, wearing masks, which none of you were allowed to do. What do you make of how that kind of sense of lawlessness has bled into things like ice?

[Daniel Hodges]

Yeah, well, just to briefly talk about the Colorado case, I testified as a witness in that. And it's important to note that every single court that has ever grappled with whether Donald Trump engaged in insurrection found that he did so or otherwise sidestep the question completely. Even the Supreme Court, you know, had, as incredibly biased as they are, just refused to even try to defend the notion that he didn't engage in insurrection. They just said, well, the states can't determine that, so we're not even going to consider the question. Otherwise. Otherwise, everyone, everyone knows it. Everyone knows he engaged in insurrection. But with regards to ICE and how it's just a continuation of the lawlessness of Donald Trump, it's. Yeah, it's. He learned that day on January or after January 6, that he, no one, he, he truly is untouchable, that there, there's nothing, there's no one who can stop him. And he took that lesson to heart and he's. We're, we're seeing the effects of that lesson today, whether it's from him creating puppet states in South America or the beginning stages of ethnic cleansing here at home. We've got a couple more years of this, unfortunately, and I hope that midterms are successful for the Pro Democracy Party so that we can have some more force in trying to stop his horrible agenda.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I hope that the Pro Democracy Party wins and that they actually have the balls to actually do something. And don't be Merrick Garlands. Before I let you all go, I want to ask you each just how are you and how are your families? I'm going to go back in reverse order again. Daniel Hodges, how are you and how is your family?

[Daniel Hodges]

I mean, compared to so many of my other colleagues, I'm doing all right. I still have my health. I still have my job. My family is fantastic. They're always supportive. And, you know, that's, that's something not everyone can say in this country, let alone, you know, officers who defended the Capitol. So I'm, I'm grateful for what I have, and I will always use what I have to do what I can for everyone else.

[Joy Reid]

I love that. I appreciate that. Harry Dunn, how are You. How's your family?

[Harry Dunn]

I'm healthy. Everybody's fine. You know, all things considered. I always ask people, like, when. When you say, how. How are you doing in this day and age? It means, like, do you have any aches in your bones? Like, you know, are you hungry? Like, that type of stuff, because, you know, the world's on fire right now. Thankfully, there's. We're police officers, but we can be firefighters, too, I guess. You know, just continue to show up, especially when things. If it's not, people will say, it's not my problem. It's not my problem. Well, it will be one day. It can be. Empathy is free and, you know, just. I'm all right. I'm motivated. I'm all right. But, yeah, I'm all right.

[Joy Reid]

And you do. And I'm gonna give you a cut of that T shirt. If we get that T shirt, we're all gonna say it together. And now, you know, I'm gonna end with my friend Michael Fanon. You know, I'm partial to one member of your family besides you is your mama. So how is. How is Mom? How are your. The rest of your wonderful, beautiful family?

[Michael Fanone]

You know, my mom's doing well. You know, we all had a very quiet, relaxing holidays. I do that intentionally now because, I mean, I know what. What January 6th, what this week is like for me. Not so much. You know, like, I. I have largely, you know, resolved the trauma of that day. But, you know, it's. It's frustrating when, you know, you get inundated with media requests on one day of the year to talk about something that is relevant under this administration, literally every single moment of every single day. We have an insurrectionist president. We have somebody who engaged in insurrection and is by definition a traitor to this country who has assumed the office of the presidency because no one will stand up to him. And that, to me, is, you know, incredibly frustrating. Outrages me.

[Donald Trump]

It.

[Michael Fanone]

It angers me to, you know, to the 10th degree. And so, you know, I'm. I'm trying to compartmentalize this, and then I've got a nice, relaxing weekend planned coming up. And, you know, put. Put it. Put it behind me.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And I mean. And you dealt with as. As did I, the sort of perils of also trying to deal with the media's framing of it. I mean, you did the CNN game.

[Michael Fanone]

Where's legacy media? I don't have any legacy media hits. I think I got one hit on. On msnbc. I just had Anderson Cooper cancel on me because they. They're doing all Venezuela all the time, like Venezuela is going to be there. Anderson, just giving you a heads up, buddy. You think you could take 15 minutes out of your, you know, broadcast and talk about the anniversary of January 6th on January 6th, but unfortunately, that's how, you know, news outlets like CNN have gone. They've capitulated to this administration and they, they want to ignore January 6th. And they are just as much to blame for where we are today as a country as those who. Who've really had the authority to do something about it.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Amen. Well, I know where I can find you. As on the Michael Fanon show, we follow all of you guys, everything you're doing on substack. We're going to make sure we put all of those links below this broadcast so that everybody can find you guys. And we'll put it out on Substack as well so everybody can follow everything that you all are doing. Thank you all for your service. Thank you for your heroism. Look, I cover a lot of policing. We give police a really hard time for the way that policing operates in this country. But when police are heroes, they are heroes and they deserve to be lauded for it. You all did exactly what this country asked of you and you weren't thanked for it. So permit me and the chat here to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you, heroes. We appreciate you. Thank you.

[Harry Dunn]

Appreciate you, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you.

[Daniel Hodges]

Thanks for having us on.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you Daniel Hodges, Harry Dunn, Michael Fanon, and big ups to Aquilino G who was not able to be with us on today. And look, if we had a live show tomorrow, this is what we will be doing. We would be in all January 6th show if we had a show tomorrow. But of course, we are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But we wanted to make sure that we, at the top of this show, put everything else aside and took the time to give those men their flowers. Because these are our heroes and we have to support them. I want to note that this podcast is supported by the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. Now, across this country, immigrants are facing family separation, wrongful detention, and deportation without due process or even access to legal support. Just listen to this. In 2024 alone, there were more than 2.5 million immigration court cases with zero legal representation. That means millions of people were denied the most basic protection that we expect from our justice system, the right to a fair process. So powered by people like you, the Defending Our Neighbors fund is providing access to, to life saving legal aid to families in crisis. But they urgently need Your help to meet the unprecedented demand. The government is pouring billions of your taxpayer dollars into enforcement while slashing funding for legal aid. That makes your support more urgent than ever. So help defend your neighbors and keep families together in this country. You can donate now at defending our neighbors.org/fun. That's defending our neighbors.org fund. Thank you all very much. Okay, so let's get to the other big story. As Michael mentioned, there is a little crisis happening in Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro, who is the dictator of Venezuela, is now in custody. We have some video of him. He and his wife were arrested. He did manage to do like three outfit changes during the course of being kidnapped, as he has claimed as he pleaded guilty today in Brooklyn in federal court saying he was kidnapped. He and his wife, they have now been indicted. It's a sealed indictment, basically claiming that they are narco traffickers, they are drug traffickers. They pleaded not guilty. And he is right that he was kidnapped. Right. There is no one that I've heard. I listen to the Daily, I tried to listen to a bunch of legal analysts. No one has said that what the United States did is legal under international law. It was illegal. And yet Donald Trump wants to be portrayed as if he got Osama bin Laden. He wants the kind of laudatory coverage that President Barack Obama got. And he wants the iconic images to be streamed across mainstream media. He wants everyone talking about the daring raid. He wants this kind of just sort of awestruck coverage for himself. And because our media is so broken and compromised, how this Venezuela attack has been covered really depends on who owns the outlet. So I want you guys just to take a moment and peep the difference between the Jeff Bezos Washington Post and the New York Times. Look at the way they covered the same issue on the left side. This is both of their editorial pages. New York Times says Donald Trump's attack on Venezuela is illegal and unwise. That's true. But look at the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos in quotes. President Donald Trump's decision to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro on Saturday is one of the boldest moves a president has made in years. And the operation was an unquestionable tactical success. The next step is ensuring that this triumph, this triumph sets Venezuela up for stability rather than chaos. Same issue, very different coverage. Now, this is according to Judd Legum's popular info. Here's a quote from popular info. Unfortunately, the military raid on Venezuela shows that some of our most storied journalistic institutions are not serving as a check on the Trump administration, but rather as collaborators. The Washington Post learned of plans for the raid in advance, but withheld them from publication at the administration's request. After it was over, the editorial board, which was recently overhauled to reflect the ideology of owner Jeff Bezos, praised the illegal raid as a major victory for American interest and a reason to celebrate. And CBS News under Bari Weiss didn't do much better, with Tony Ducopel as the CBS Evening News anchor, reporting on the raid in a very breathless fashion, just breathlessly reporting on the daring raid. It was pretty gross. Now, much of the coverage centered around one question in particular, and it's still sort of centering on that. And the question being, well, who will be running Venezuela now that the titular president is in U.S. custody? Secretary, who is in charge? Are you running Venezuela right now?

[Marco Rubio]

Yeah, I mean, I keep people, you know, fixating on that. Here's the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes in Venezuela.

[Donald Trump]

We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in. And we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country this morning.

[Joy Reid]

President Trump was pretty clear yesterday. He said the United States is going.

[Donald Trump]

To run Venezuela under what legal authority?

[Marco Rubio]

Well, first of all, what's going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met. And that's what we intend to do. So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing and we expect that it's going to lead to results here. We're hope so hopeful that it does positive results for the people of Venezuela, but ultimately, most importantly for us in the national interest of the United States. We will no longer have, hopefully as we move forward here, we'll set the conditions so that we no longer have in our hemisphere of Venezuela. That's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narco trafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia, going through the Caribbean and towards the United States. And obviously, we want a better future for the people of Venezuela. We want them to have an oil industry where the wealth is goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals and stolen by, you know, pirates all over the world. That's what we're working towards. And we intend to use the leverage we have to help achieve that.

[Joy Reid]

Let me ask the question again.

[Donald Trump]

What is the legal authority for the.

[Joy Reid]

United States to be running Venezuela?

[Marco Rubio]

Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we're going to use the leverage to make it happen. As far as what our legal authority is on, on the quarantine, I'm very simple. We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats. And we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions. So that's, I don't know. Is a court, not a legal authority?

[Joy Reid]

So is the United States running Venezuela right now?

[Marco Rubio]

Well, I've explained once again, I'll do it one more time. What we are running is the direction that this is going to move, moving forward. And that is we have leverage. This leverage we are using and we intend to use, we started using already. You can see where they are running out of storage capacity. In a few weeks, they're going to have to start pumping oil unless they make changes. And that leverage that we have with the armada of boats that are currently positioned allow us to seize any sanctioned boats coming into or out of Venezuela loaded with oil or its way in to pick up oil, and we can pick and choose which ones we go after. We have court orders for each one. That will continue to be in place until the people who have control over the levers of power in that country make changes that are not just in the interest of the people of Venezuela, but are in the interest of the United States and the things that we care about.

[Joy Reid]

That's what the president was asked.

[Marco Rubio]

Legal authority is the court order when the.

[Joy Reid]

Well, Mr. Secretary, let's talk about the mission now, because there are questions about what happens next in Venezuela. The president said today that the US Is going to be running the country. What does that look like? Does that mean we're going to see Americans on the corners of Venezuela, in the government of Venezuela? Are you prepared to have troops on the ground in Venezuela?

[Paola Ramos]

Venezuela?

[Joy Reid]

Well, it means we set the terms. President Trump sets the terms, and ultimately he'll decide what the iterations are of that. But it means the drugs stop flowing. It means the oil that was taken from us is returned, ultimately, and that criminals are not sent to the United States. It meant that foreign countries don't have a lodgment inside our hemisphere. So ultimately, we're going to control what happens next. Because of this brave decision, President Trump has shown American leadership and he'll be able to dictate where we go next. The countries that negotiate with Venezuela for.

[Donald Trump]

Those that illegal oil are already starting to suffer.

[Joy Reid]

What do you see as the future.

[Donald Trump]

Of Venezuela's oil industry? Well, I see that we're going to be very strongly involved in it.

[Joy Reid]

That's all.

[Donald Trump]

I mean, what can I say? We have the greatest oil companies in the world. The biggest. The greatest. And we're going to be very much involved in it. We can't do something like this. And we're prepared. You know, we were prepared to do a second wave. We were all set and very. This was so lethal, this was so powerful that we didn't have to. But we're prepared. We're out there with an armada like nobody's ever seen before. We're prepared and we're prepared. And frankly, probably thought we were going to have to do it, but we were prepared for a second wave going in countries that want oil. We're in the oil business. We're going to sell it to them. We're not going to say we're not going to go. In other words, we'll be selling oil probably in much larger doses because they couldn't produce very much because their infrastructure was so bad. So we'll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries, many of whom are using it now.

[Joy Reid]

So we're going to be selling oil. We. We're going to be selling oil. So the answer to who's running in Venezuela, apparently it's us.

[Harry Dunn]

We. We. We. We.

[Joy Reid]

We are. We are selling oil. It's our oil. Now. Donald Trump said about Iraq, we should have taken the oil. And apparently we've. And let me just back up for a moment. I'm going to back up for a moment because Rubio said a lot of things there. He mentioned Hezbollah note. That's weird. Hezbollah. What does Hezbollah have to do with Venezuela? It's all the way on the other side of the world. Hezbollah is in Lebanon and. But he says Hezbollah is involved. He says they're going to stop Venezuela from narco trafficking. Okay.

[Harry Dunn]

He also said he hopes a lot. So the word hope was in there. So that means they don't know what the f. They're doing.

[Joy Reid]

They don't necessarily have a plan. But let's just go back for just a moment. Nicholas Maduro, just so that you understand who he is. Okay. Nicholas Maduro, he was first elected, I'm gonna put that in scare quotes in 2013. And I think the first time he actually was legitimately elected, because he is the successor To Hugo Chavez and the sort of chavismo government are a left wing, left wing, sort of radical socialist government. And when Hugo Chavez first came in, this is the most oil rich country on earth. He becomes present more oil than Saudi Arabia, more oil than the United States, more oil than Russia, more oil than Nigeria. It is the most oil rich country on the planet. Okay, let's just start there. And when, when Julo Chavez comes in, he goes on this very, very socialist sort of plan of, you know, the idea at least behind it was that it was going to accrue to the benefit of the people. Now he's, you know, being. It didn't always work out that way, but that was what he said he was going to do. He's then succeeded after he dies of cancer. Nicolas Maduro then becomes a president. Becomes a president in 2013. In 2014, there were a wave of protests in Venezuela because there were food shortages, there were nationwide marches. Maduro's popularity plummeted. He was never as popular as Chavez, who tried to do a lot for the poor when he was president. Maduro, not so much. His popularity plummeted. There were protests in which people actually died. But Maduro continued to rule Venezuela through powers that were granted to him by the ruling party's legislature. He sworn in for a second term in 2019, despite international calls for him to step down and a devastating economic crisis. I'm reading from AP right now. 17 Latin American governments, United States and Canada, rejected the legitimacy of Maduro's second term at the time. Then there are protests in 2024 after he's declared winner a third time in another presidential election that most of the world believed was illegitimate. He had promised there would be free and fair elections, but the process was marred by by allegations of foul play and also him essentially forcing the opposition to flee the country. Relations between Venezuela and the US have been strained for decades. In 2017, the US Treasury Department. This is the sanctions that Rubio is talking about. In 2017, the US Treasury Department sanctions Maduro's personal assets and barred US citizens from dealing with him. This came a day after elections in Venezuela. So he personally is under sanctions. In 2018, there were widespread reports of U.S. officials and Venezuelan military officers planning a coup against Maduro. And the US imposed sanctions on Maduro's wife as well as well as other members of his inner circles. This all happens in 2018. Who's president at the time? Trump. Once Maduro was elected again in 2019, the US said it's not recognizing his legitimacy. Instead, the US recognized a guy named Juan Guaido who was the opposition leader at the time. He was the national assembly opposition leader. They say Guaido is the legitimate president. Now, this is important because it's not just Republicans who regard Mr. Guaido as the real president, because Maria Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was forced to flee. Guaido ran in her place, and according to the us, he really won. But Maduro supposedly stole the election. Okay, now in 2020, again, we're all this is. I'm talking about all of these things happening when Trump is president. The first time in 2020, the US Justice Department announced that they were charging Maduro with narco terrorism and other criminal charges, himself and senior leaders of his government. Narco terrorism is the involvement of terrorist organizations and insurgent groups in drug trafficking. So that is what they're claiming. Then you fast forward to Trump being president again. Now you go, then you have Biden, president for four years. They too, do not regard Maduro as a legitimate president. Then you get Trump back in office and they start bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea, supposedly to get at him. And then suddenly they act on this indictment, go in and arrest Maduro. That's not legal. If someone is indicted as a foreign leader, you can't just take the military and go in and get them. But I'm going to tell you in a little bit that this has been done before and the whole question of drugs and narco terrorism actually really isn't the question right so far. Because while Trump, right, has been clear that this is about the United States controlling Venezuela's vast oil supply, I'm going to play him again. Sorry, I know, but he's the. We're the baby monitor. Let's play Trump again, saying what we want. We want the oil.

[Bishop William Barber]

Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

What was that?

[Donald Trump]

Getting land, oil rights. Whatever we had, they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't watching, but they're not going to do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there, as you know. They threw our companies out and we want it back.

[Joy Reid]

They took our oil rights. We sanctioned the president of Venezuela, when he was president, sanctioned anyone saying they cannot do business with them. Limited, essentially anyone, and including any American oil companies ability to do business in Venezuela. Therefore, we're not at. We're not players in the Venezuelan oil economy.

[Harry Dunn]

Sorry, do not own Venezuela's oil. They own themselves.

[Joy Reid]

It is Venezuela's oil. Okay? Now, Rubio, Marco Rubio has also, as Rick Wilson mentioned on the show when he was on last week. He's also been pretty clear and transparent that it's not really about arresting a drug cartel leader or even, you know, regime change. He's got his own underlying goals of, of getting rid of not just this left wing dictatorship in Venezuela, but also the one in Cuba. But here he is losing his cool. When he did the full Ginsburg, that's when you go on all the different Sunday shows. He went all around abc, cnn, cbs. He did them all, right, so here he is on CBS's Morning show on the weekend, going a little off tilter kilter when Margaret Brennan asks him, well, what about the other people that were.

[Margaret Brennan]

Indicted, described the regime as still in place essentially. I mean, I'm curious why the Trump administration decided to leave it intact and only arrest Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The person who controls the police, the chief thug, DS Cabello, he's the interior Minister. He's been indicted by the United States States. He was in that indictment. The administration released. He's a narco terrorist. There's a $25 million price on his head. He's still in place. The defense minister who has deep ties to Russia, $15 million price on his head. He is still in place. I'm confused. Are they still wanted by the United States? Why didn't you arrest them? If you are taking out the narco.

[Joy Reid]

Terrorist regime, you're confused.

[Marco Rubio]

I don't know why that's confusing to you.

[Margaret Brennan]

They're still in trouble.

[Marco Rubio]

I mean, it's very simple. You're not going to go in and wrap up. You're going to. But, yeah, but you can't go. You're going to go in and suck up five people. They're already complaining about this one operation. Imagine the howls we would have from everybody else if we actually had to go and stay there four days to capture four other people. We got the top priority. The number one person on the list was the guy who claimed to be the president of the country that he was not. And he was arrested along with his wife who was also indicted. And that was a pretty sophisticated and frankly, complicated operation.

[Joy Reid]

It was.

[Marco Rubio]

It is not easy to land helicopters in the middle of the largest military base in the country. The guy lived on a military base. Land within three minutes, kick down his door, grab him, put him in handcuffs, read him his rights, put him in a helicopter and leave the country without losing any American or any American assets. That's not an easy mission. And you're asking me why didn't we do that? In five other places at the same time. I mean, that's absurd. I do think this is one of the most, you know, daring, you know, complicated, sophisticated missions this country has carried out in a very long time. Tremendous credit to the US military personnel who did it. It was unbelievable and tremendous success. And today, an indicted drug trafficker who was not the legitimate president of Venezuela, who we don't recognize, the Biden administration didn't recognize, recognize 60 something countries don't recognize, the European Union doesn't recognize and many countries in Latin America don't recognize. He was a convict, he was a indicted drug trafficker. He was arrested, his wife was arrested.

[Margaret Brennan]

Right. The others who are also indicted are.

[Marco Rubio]

Still a system of courts.

[Margaret Brennan]

The others who were also indicted are still in place. So that's the point of my questioning there. But you talked about not being the legitimate.

[Marco Rubio]

You wanted us to land in five other military bases.

[Margaret Brennan]

No, I'm asking why you chose that. This was the limit of the military operation. But to your point that you just made that Maduro was not the legitimate president.

[Marco Rubio]

He was, the guy was claiming to be the president.

[Margaret Brennan]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

So let me just get this straight. Marco, first of all, Marco is a crash out. First of all, he's an asshole. That's just his personality. But the sort of thing, thing about Maga and Trumpism is that they actually get points for Trump. I'm surprised he didn't call her piggy because, you know, they get sort of points for being as dickish as possible to members of the media, especially women. And you know, so he's getting to be his full crash out self. But if you go through what he said, he's admitting that the goal was not to end the narco terrorism operation that was running Venezuela, if that is what is happening. Because some of the key players are allowed to stay, leading to lots of speculation that the goal was to lop off the leader but allow the rest of the group to stay in place.

[Harry Dunn]

Because it's not about drugs, it's about.

[Joy Reid]

The oil at all. And the reason, you know, it's not about drug trafficking and somehow the US being shocked and appalled by narco trafficking and drug trafficking all of a sudden is that when he does his full Ginsburg and goes to abc, George Stephanopoulos tried to ask him, well then if Maduro is a narco trafficker, then why did your boss pardon the convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez, who actually was convicted literally in the United States of being a drug cartel leader and Trump just pardoned him.

[Marco Rubio]

Look, it's Very simple. This guy was indicted. No one ever did anything about it. And he, he didn't think he was under threat or that the night was ever going to be forced. It was enforced yesterday.

[Donald Trump]

Hernandez was convicted by a jury.

[Marco Rubio]

I understand you're asking me. The pardon authority is something that, you know, I'm not involved in, in my role. I'm not criticizing it. I can't just comment on it because I just wasn't involved in those deliberations.

[Donald Trump]

Do you support it?

[Marco Rubio]

I wasn't involved in the deliberations. I haven't looked at the case file. I haven't looked at the arguments made by. You know, I've got a bunch of other things going on that are within my purview of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, but pardons aren't one of them. So I just, I can't comment on a case that frankly I'm aware of, but not deeply and familiar with. And I don't want to comment on something that I haven't had a chance to be involved in. Reviewing the file and the rationale behind it.

[Donald Trump]

Mr. Secretary, thanks for your time this morning.

[Joy Reid]

Honduras, Diana. Oil. Let's just see is this thing on. Honduras does not have oil. I just looked up their. Their net oil reserves. Zero. So the arrest of Maduro and his wife, they're not about drugs, clearly. Right. Fentanyl isn't even made in Venezuela. Although I have to note in 1993, in a Peabody winning report, 60 Minutes confirmed that cocaine does come out and through Venezuela. And guess who was facilitating bringing it into the United States and distributed right here in order to fund their covert operations in Central America, including lining the pockets of the Contras, the paramilitary group in Nicaragua that the Reagan administration wanted in and spreading that cocaine throughout the United States, such that it kicked off the crack epidemic that destroyed black communities throughout the country. Just like the late Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Gary Webb said it did. Guess who did that? The CIA. So Venezuela has a long history of narco trafficking of cocaine. And the CIA used to be in bed with them in Conflado, as it were, because they wanted to facilitate the sale of cocaine inside the United States. Literally working with the Crips in la in some of whom were turning evidence and then distributing that crack cocaine throughout this country. And when Mr. Webb, Gary Webb, discovered that, he was ridiculed and said he was a liar and despite having a Pulitzer Prize, was essentially driven into isolation, lost his job and wound up committing suicide with not one, but somehow two gunshots to the head in the 1990s. So there's been drug trafficking coming out of Venezuela, and the US had no problem with it. But the other issue is that Venezuela, by the way, oil was discovered there in 1908, and by the 1930s, it was the biggest global exporter of oil in the world. So this isn't about drugs. It isn't about protecting the American people from drugs at all. It's certainly not about caring about crime. It's kind of about oil, but it's even more about empire. And while Americans are very skittish about owning up to the fact that we are an empire, we've always been an empire. Look at this cartoon from the year 1899. It's an American empire cartoon, and it shows the sort of growth of the American empire over time. And you can see when in the 1700s, it's a little baby and it only has a few little countries, and then it starts to grow bigger and bigger as it eats other countries, it grows bigger and bigger and bigger. In the second little thing there in 1803, it's now grabbed Louisiana from France after Toussaint Louverture and the Haitians kicked the ass of Napoleon Bonaparte, and France ran scared and sold us all of their holdings. And so the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, in which Thomas Jefferson buys up 40% of what's now the United States out west. And in 1819, you have the acquisition of Florida from Spain after Spain hightails it out of here, and we end up grabbing big chunks of what was Mexico. 1861, the union consisted of 34 states. Texas is then grabbed. The former slave republic of Texas is added. 1898, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger as they invade the sovereign nation of Hawaii and depose the queen, eat that up, and then start eating other countries even further out into the Pacific by 1899. Look at big, chunky America. He's got a big belly. Now. In 1899, we've eaten Cuba and the Philippines and Puerto Rico, made them into colonies, and voila, by 1899, we're officially a big old fat, chunky empire bent on stealing natural resources and exploiting them worldwide. Now, cotton, of course, was the first resource that we exploited in the ground here using slave labor and exported it worldwide. But also gold. Also gold. Remember when Robbie Jones was on the show and he pointed out this beautiful painting by the artist John Gast that is hung in the US Capitol, showing the angelic spread of the American empire to the west in land that used to be controlled by France and Spain, but which was stolen from the indigenous tribes. What triggered much of that theft were the various gold rushes that took place in the west in the 17th and 18th century. So essentially, every time one of these gold rushers, these prospectors, would discover gold, they would break treaties with the indigenous people that were there, kidnap indigenous people, mass murder them, kill their women and children, grab their children and cart them off into slavery or whatever. In many cases, simply sell them to slavery. And we're going to show this one. This is B10. It's going to show you how quickly the discovery of gold caused the United. Oh, it's not loading. Okay, well, that one won't load, unfortunately. It's a really great map, but it shows how quickly the United States began to just eat up. Oh, there it is. It just begins to eat and eat and eat and eat. Those are the gold rushes, and that is how the United States is built, by grabbing and eating up indigenous land. And much of that theft was prompted by the discovery of gold, such that the. The territory held by indigenous people shrank to almost nothing. And that is the American empire and how it was built. I want to show you another one. This is 10A. Jason, look at this map. This is one of my favorite maps to show because it is really fascinating to me. Look, first of all, and if you can squint and see it, how freaking far Hawaii is from the United States, look how far away it is. The American empire stretches between the United States and the Pacific, Where Columbus thought he was going, he was trying to get to the east, but he wound up in the Caribbean. He never got further than the Caribbean. But peep how freaking far some of these places are. The Philippines is really far from the United States. And the United States was out there eating and eating and eating and creating this empire that stretched almost all the way to China. That's a map from 1900 of what the American empire looked like. Now, by the turn of the 20th century, the US had a global empire no different from what Great Britain had at one time, if slightly smaller or no less expansionist than the Ottoman Empire, or no less aggressive. Now, we don't tend to think of ourselves that way, but the US Is an empire. And if exploiting territory and populations is what built this country's physical empire, and gold is what built the financial empire, what built up the personal fortunes of individual American oligarchs over this period of time, particularly during the Gilded Age, and after all the way up through the wars, when we suddenly needed things like planes and tanks, we what built those personal Fortunes was oil. Oil. So take a look at this Puck. You know, there's a Puck magazine now. It's named after an old Puck magazine that used to exist back at the turn of the century. This is a 1909 cartoon of President Teddy Roosevelt wrestling with the monstrous beast. That was J.D. rockefeller of Standard Oil. Now, Standard Oil was a massive company that J.D. rockefeller controlled. It was so wealthy that essentially was wealthier than the federal government. And it was so big that when it was finally broken up, when the trust busters finally got to it, it broke into pieces so numerous and vast, it included like, I don't know how old any of you are, but if you grew up with companies like Conoco, used to be something called Conoco, Texaco, Gas, dupont, which doesn't even make oil. It's a company that makes things that are made with oil. If you pull up B12, you can see there it is. This is what when you. Standard Oil was just one company that metastasized and birthed all these companies. Like back when I was a kid, there used to be some, you know, Texaco used to be a very common gas station in Colorado, but also Chevron. Chevron, the company that's about to really eat off of Venezuela. And whenever oil would be discovered in nearly any other country, again I mentioned Venezuela's first oil discovery was in about 1990. And anytime that you. That oil was discovered in your country, some division of Standard Oil was right at your doorstep offering to help to help you develop that crude into sellable oil. Now ask Saudi Arabia how that generally went. Meaning that you had this locked in partnership because Chevron or some company. Aramco. Saudi Aramco was the company created to exploit Saudi Arabia's oil. But then just ask Iran, which got stuck with the British version of it, bp. Or ask Iraq or Libya or Nigeria or Venezuela. You know how that generally worked out. You generally sort of were made into a colony. You became dependent on these American companies or these British companies to help get the oil out of the ground. And your country needed oil to survive. So you need lights to turn on in your country, but you need Chevron or Aramco or Texaco or one of these companies to come over and help you get the oil out of the ground, right? So that even if you have oil, you have to still sell it through the Americans in order to buy back the things you need to keep your country going. But ask what happens if you ever try to stop letting us help? Or if you, as a global south country, what we used to call the third World, try to nationalize your oil for the benefit of your own people and not us. It usually involves the use of the other big thing that the US developed at a higher level than anyone else, our military. But the really big development in the US becoming to oil what it had been to cotton, was linking the sale of oil anywhere in the world, even in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, was getting every country, starting with Saudi Arabia, to sell oil only in dollars. It was a deal that literally changed the U.S. economy at one point, seemingly for good forever. So I want you guys to take a couple minutes, just two minutes, to watch this explanation of something called the petrodollar.

[Michael Fanone]

The petrodollar is actually a device invented by Kissinger and Nixon. US President Richard Nixon sent his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia for a secret meeting.

[Joy Reid]

That meeting took place on a battleship called the USS Quincy. And very few records were kept of that meeting. But. But Roosevelt promised the King of Saudi Arabia weapons and protection in exchange for the United States to have the exclusive right to develop oil from Saudi Arabia using dollars. Meaning if countries wanted to trade the most important commodity of all, oil, they needed to get their hands on dollars. And from that point on, oil would be priced in USD. And if a country tried to get their hands on oil without using dollars dollars, that country historically needed more freedom in their lives. Suddenly, countries that try to walk away right from the petrodollar, it gets a little dicey for you. So this is the part where I tell you that, remember we talk a lot about on the show how that 2024 election really was a critical election for a lot of reasons, right? One of them, of course, being the expiration of the massive tax cut, which is what the people who really own the country got from Donald Trump when he was president the first time. A tax cut they had wanted forever. A giant, enormous, unprecedented tax cut that mainly went to the super rich. They wanted that extended. It was going to expire last year on New Year's Eve, and they weren't confident that Kamala Harris would push to extend it and that Democrats, if they control the House and Senate, would extend it. That was one big thing. But the other big thing that we missed in mainstream media was that that deal between the US and the Saudis expired on June 9, 2024. It was the other big shoe to drop that year that impacted the election in ways that none of us in the mainstream media reported on because it really wasn't on our radar. But it really should have been that petrodollar agreement which stipulated that Saudi Arabia again would only price its oil and exports in US dollars and use the extra money, this is the key part from those oil sales, to invest in U.S. treasury bonds. So they would sell all the oil that was sold out of Saudi Arabia was priced in dollars. And then that money gets reinvested back into purchasing U.S. treasuries. It actually keeps the U.S. economy afloat. Every country was doing that. Even Russia was selling in petrodollars. Now in return, what the US provided the kingdom was with military support and defense. The end of that agreement in is a huge significant geopolitical, economic and financial big deal. Saudi Arabia, which is a petro state, similar to Venezuela, which is a petro state, meaning you don't really sell much else and do much else. Russia is a petro state. Petro states are countries who 90 plus percent of their economy is based on selling oil. And they call it a curse and a blessing. When you find oil in your economy, you have the blessing of having a very rich resource, but you have the curse of getting our attention. Because being a petro state leaves you vulnerable to US bullying. Because in order to make any move you need dollars, or at least you used to need dollars. And Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and they learned, just like President Mossadegh of Iran before them, that the US will overthrow your government and have you killed and arrested if you try to leave us. It's giving Fatal Attraction. Strange girl being a naughty boy. I don't think having dinner with anybody's a crime, Daddy. I'm not gonna be ignored. Which is why the video that the media really should be playing today is not Trump suddenly switching from being anti war and anti dumb wars or whatever it was to or him, you know, rambling on about how we're going to sell oil. No, no, it's this clip a few weeks ago when he issued a threat to a group of global south countries who call themselves brics.

[Donald Trump]

Brics. The BRICS nations. I think that's breaking up rapidly. We said that if they're going to go and do anything to undermine the dollar, that includes China. I don't even know that they're a member of brics, but they had a few, few nations get together to try and play cute. And I said we're going to put 100% tariff on every one of those nations. And at the mere thought of saying that, I think that's all broken up. That idea has no longer sailed. Now that would be a Terrible thing for our country. It would be bad for the world. They wanted to undermine the dollar. Six nations, Aha.

[Joy Reid]

They wanted to undermine the dollar. Now you getting it. Let me show you. We're going to really quickly throw up this picture of the largest oil producers in the country. You see any BRICS countries on there? BRICS was originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but it's now been expanded to include Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. You see that? Look how big Brazil is on there. Look how big Russia is on there. Okay, you're getting where I'm going now. You picking up what I'm putting down. As the kids are saying, BRICS is the thing that could break the US dollar and the US economy. Because the only thing BRICS is lacking currently is a way to trade amongst themselves without using dollars at all. And because that Saudi Arabia agreement is broken, people are trading in yuan, the Chinese currency, they're trading in rubles, the Russian currency. And guess who was looking, on looking at building. And guess who's working on building that, that system? A new system that's not us, that's going through the blockchain. That would be Russia. In response to the US sanctioning them and locking them out of the global payment system to punish them for invading Ukraine so they can't use dollars to, to sell their oil, they started using something else. And the big question is, what if the Global south didn't need to be under our thumb anymore? If they didn't need to trade in dollars and they didn't need to then invest the profits back into buying U.S. treasuries? What happens if the age of free money for us plus cheap oil and no consequences ends? And what if we can't just kill any leader who tries to stand against us because they're standing alone? Because the countries that want out of our global financial empire team up. We can't kill them all. The big mistake that was made by people like Libya's, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein is that they were standing by themselves. But if a bunch of different countries join brics and decide to have a different payment system based on the Russian model, and they go around us and leave our treasuries all alone. And guess who was playing footsie with brics? Venezuela. Maduro. And let me play one more clip before we bring our guest in. His predecessor, Hugo chavez, back in 2006 at the UN General assembly had this to say about an American president who was very much in favor of regime change. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil. The devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today. This table that I am now standing in front of. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here talking as if he owned the world, truly, as the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement. Okay, we can leave there. Let's note that Hugo Chavez, by the way, did not rig the election in 2020. He was very much dead. But he did call a previous US President the devil. Joining me now is journalist Paola Ramos, our good friend, the brilliant Palmos. Thank you so much for being here, Joy.

[Paola Ramos]

Thank you for having me.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely.

[Paola Ramos]

So.

[Joy Reid]

So my working theory is that this arrest of Maduro and his wife is more about the petrodollar and preventing him from getting out of the petrodollar system and about making sure that oil isn't sold in yuan. What are your thoughts?

[Paola Ramos]

I think so. I think we've spent so much time trying to rationalize this and trying to kind of come up with some cohesive story. It is a democracy. A lot of Venezuelan exiles want to think that. Is it just about oil? Is it regime change? It is. To your point. It is about what Trumpism has always told us that this is about, which is about expanding the power, expanding the sphere of power. And that's what it is. And I think right now the fear that so many of these Venezuelan exiles have is that the worst case scenario may be playing out in front of their eyes, which is some type of functioning chavismo with an American stamp that benefits the United States and that it seems like it's kind of unfolding in front of eyes. And truly, I think that was the worst case scenario in a scenario that no one was predicting.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, let's play really quickly of Venezuelans in Miami and also in Caracas. I mean, this country when I was 10 years old, and ever since I was born, every single person in power of the country has abused us and abused of their power. We have been living in a dictatorship for about 20 years. So I can tell you this feels like a breath of fresh air.

[Michael Fanone]

Did you feel this was the only.

[Joy Reid]

Way to get him out? 100%. 100%, yes. He will not leave. He's not the real president of Venezuela.

[Bishop William Barber]

No, it's not an act of war, it's an act of freedom.

[Joy Reid]

You know, and I lived in south for a long time, so I think we both, we are, we can guess how people in South Florida are feeling right now. Like people are very happy. They were angry at Trump for all the deportations. They were upset at Marco Rubio who seemed like a traitor since he was allowing Venezuelans to be mass deported and in some cases thrown into seot. Like those were mostly Venezuelan. They were being targeted. How are people feeling now?

[Paola Ramos]

I think, look, I think it's. And I think that that's the question that I keep getting, right, because I, I too have, have shown those videos and, and the main question is how is it possible that those Venezuelans that you were, that we were just seeing on the screen, Venezuelans that believed and voted for Trump, that are part of Trump's space, the very same Venezuelans that then have loved ones that witnessed the Trump administration that revoked their tps, that revoked humanitarian parole, that threw Venezuelans into alligator Alcatraz, then to sea cots and then to, to the middle of nowhere. How is it possible that they are celebrating? You and I have talked about this extensively, right? And I always like to point to the nuance and show all of the different facets. The nuance there is very simple at the end of the day that the political trauma that many of some of these Venezuelans are feeling, it's an emotional one, right? And that's what they're celebrating. It's this emotional response that many times outweighs and overrides any logic. So that I think two days ago you were feeling that excitement in that celebration that was an emotional one. 24, 48 hours after that excitement, that happiness is now kind of morphing into skepticism because of what you and I were just discussing, which is that suddenly they see that Sherry Maduro is out, but they see Rodriguez is still there in the very same Maduro machine that was in charge of the repression, that was in charge of the political prisoners, the very same Maduro regime that the Trump administration is, is somehow insinuating that as part of this big drug trafficking machine, they're still in power. Yeah, right. They are still in power.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Ruby couldn't answer why. He said, why are you confused about that? The guy who's heading the secret police, the one who's tormenting the literal people that the folks here are afraid to get deported back to, all those people are still there. And there's a lot of Chatter that the plan is just to lop off Maduro and his wife, but to leave those people in place, because I have to tell you, Machado, Ms. Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who I think everyone expected, okay, she sucked up to Trump Jr. She said, come and take the oil. I got you. I'm going to put the oil. Trump is like, yeah, I don't know if she has the respect to be the president. So it's like, he's not even supporting her.

[Paola Ramos]

Look, it's ruthless, but at least it's very clear. At least we don't have to debate it anymore. It is that that symbols and reinforces exactly what it is, which is this is transactional for them. It was never truly about democracy. It was never truly about change. It was never truly about Venezuelans. It's transactional. It's pragmatic. And the most pragmatic thing to do is without boots on the ground, it seems like to run the country from afar. And again, the most effective and efficient way to do that is to have a puppet. And in their eyes, the least chaotic way is to, to allow for the infrastructure to remain in place and to have Delsey Rodriguez, along with the other commandants, which are is her brother Jorge Rodriguez, who's still in power, which is, to your point, the Minister of the Interior, Cabello, who's still in power. They're all still there. And so what's so interesting today, I was talking to some of the Venezuelan migrants that I, that I have been following for months. Some of them left Venezuela under Maduro, self deported. Some of them reached the southern border and are now back. When you talk to them right now, Joy, they still whisper because they're still scared. They still don't really know what's happening. And they're mad. They're mad because they're like, okay, so you guys came here and Maduro's out. But the. Today one of the migrants told me, Edin said, he said, but the worst people are still in power. So what is this about? So I think you're right. There's a lot of fear and confusion, but at least we know the answer. It was never about democracy, but it.

[Joy Reid]

Never has been, by the way, from the Monroe Doctrine on, it was about keeping Europe out of playing in our sphere of influence. And I just want to go through really quickly for the audience, just to remind y', all, if you're not familiar, and this is one of my other issues with mainstream media, we really don't talk about our own region. Right? We don't talk about. I had a guy on who said something I thought was so brilliant. He said, US is a Latin American country. Our history is just like all the histories of Latin America. Our population is like their populations. We're a Latin American country that's pretending to be European, Right. But where the US has played its game of, of, of, of expansionism and imperialism has been in our backyard. So in 1973, you have the US go in and foment a coup against Salvador Allende to put Pinochet in place. Because we wanted control, right? So we did that. And that was in Salvador Allende, we kick him out of Chile. So we did that. We've got obviously the attempts to throw out Hugo Chavez and the attempt on Maduro as well. We went into Panama, the United States, Nicaragua. Like we've done regime change over and over and over again. And when Bush 1 did, was Bill Barr, who was his, then, his then Attorney General, who said, yeah, it's legal, we can go in and we can take over other countries and arrest their president and charge them with narco trafficking. We do it all the time.

[Paola Ramos]

Exactly. We do it all the time. And that is the storyline. No, that is, it seems like it's a new chapter in American history. It's not. It is history repeating itself. It's us building on a very, very long legacy of intervention, to your point, through Chile to El Salvador, to Nicaragua, and, and more than anything, it is, it is us doing what we've, what we've, what we always do, which is trying to condition us and condition Latin Americans to believe that the strongman rule is necessary. Know that when, and you and I have talked about this, that when, when things feel messy, particularly when you have communism. No, that, I mean, that's the, the Red scare is, is, is. It's, is our oldest story. When you have communism, when there's an illness, the United States comes in and, and we try and convince people that we condition them to believe that this is necessary. And that is why there are so many still Latinos in this country and many Americans and even some, some people in the manga base that are now kind of turning and saying, ha, he's right. Because that's the story. It's the oldest story that we sell ourselves and that story works. And to, to then see Marco Rubio and this is what he's trying to do. No, he sees a Latin America that is again, always in the midst of playing this game between the populist left and the right wing. And he sees a momentum in the right. He sees Chile, he sees Argentina, he sees El Salvador. And he finally sees that if Cuba comes down. No, Cuba that is supposed to be sort of the, the birth.

[Joy Reid]

No.

[Paola Ramos]

Of communism in his eyes. No. If Cuba comes down, then there's this kind of immense shift that he wants in the Western hemisphere where finally, finally the west comes back to the center and to the right. And that to me that is what someone like Marco Rio is really craving for that final ideological shift that ties us back to a Monroe Doctrine. And I know that you began the show talking about January 6th. That's the through line. Now, the through line between January 6th and Venezuela is an American government that believes that it is taking back what belongs to them. No, what belongs to white America. And that is taking back America or taking back their backyard in the West. But it's all about that. It's about taking back and bringing us back to that old world order.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And I will note that one of the people who's going to benefit most from this is a very close ally of Marco Rubio, whose name is Paul Singer. If he doesn't sound familiar to you all, he owns a company called Citgo. He bought it in November of 2025. It's the US subsidiary to Venezuelan state run oil company. And Singer through his private investment firm Elliott Investment Management bought Citco for $5.9 billion. And the sale was to his. Elliott Investment Management was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments. Citgo owns three major refineries on the Gulf Coast, 43 oil terminals. You see where I'm going, 4,000 independently owned gas stations. He is going to be Paola, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this. So Marco Rubio. Yeah. He believes in a different kind of Latin America like the one that Pinochet was in charge of. A dictator who answers to us.

[Paola Ramos]

Yeah, I think, look, I think for, for someone like Trump and most people in Trumpism, there's no personal incentive to this. To believe that Trump ever really cared about Venezuela or anyone is, is, is foolish. No, there's the, the incentive there is economic. The incentive there is to try and you know, the corruption would, will be everywhere. Marco Rio, I do think, Joy, that there is that kind of emotional response to this. I, I think for him to, to be, to be able to cast himself as a person that brought down sort of the, the Castro regime. Like I, I think that's something he's been dream since his time in South Florida. So I do think for him There's a personal ideology there. But of course, who will benefit more from this?

[Joy Reid]

And them, well, that is the Viceroy of Venezuela. So he can. Trump has already threatened Colombia. He says he's coming after them. The Colombian president has been very, very forthright and being like, f you, he's threatening Cuba, as, as you mentioned, he's, they think there's a domino effect that's going to happen. But didn't George W. Bush think that about the Middle East? Like, this domino effect thing generally doesn't happen.

[Paola Ramos]

It doesn't happen. But, but again, we're, we're so, we're very close. And I, I, at the beginning was one of those people that, again, maybe I was naive. I, I didn't think, I didn't think that they would do this. Just like many Americans didn't think that Trump would enact these mass deportations. I was foolish enough to believe that they wouldn't do this. However, they've been telling us that they will do this, right? That November 2025 national security memo that they release in which they, they tell us very clearly what, what their version of the Monroe Doctrine is. This is it. No, maybe they will do it through economic, you know, incentives. Maybe they will pressure, maybe through controlling Venezuelan oil. That is going to have a huge ripple effect in Cuba. I mean, no, Cuba and the Cuban people are suffering. Cuban people are hungry. Cuban people can't even access basic foods. Like, there will be ripple effects. And I think they're looking into doing that. And so I wouldn't underestimate how far he's willing to go. And also, I think they feel very cocky right now. No, I think, I think, I think they're, they're kind of, they're kind of seeing the MAGA base. And again, maybe I'll be wrong in two to three weeks, but I think there's kind of the shift because they're very, they're very brilliant at the storytelling. They feel great when they're on top. They feel on top. They feel on top.

[Joy Reid]

Right now the America first thing is bullshit. And they never believed it. They don't believe in it. They just believe in whatever Trump wants. Exit question to you, Paula. Are people that you're talking with, particularly in South Florida, concerned that now that Marco Rubio is the Viceroy of Venezuela, it seems to me there's no reason to give any Venezuelans tps. They'll say, well, we're in control of Venezuela now. It's safe to go home. And as you mentioned, the head of all of the terrifying and let's just be clear. Maduro is a bad guy. And the people who were running the most horrifying and terrifying parts of his regime are still there. Are people concerned that now Donald Trump is going to feel free to continue the ethnic cleansing of brown people from Florida because he's going to say, hey, we run your country now. It's safe. Go home.

[Paola Ramos]

Look, I think, I think people are still, and I'm talking about this specific group of Venezuelans, right? Like you, and I always say, Latinos are not a monolith. Venezuelans are not a monolith. There's all sorts of different feelings. This specific group of Venezuelans that is celebrating, that has fled. I think they're, they're still in the, in the celebratory momentum. And I have even some distant family members that are still so hopeful and believe that Trump, in their eyes, the liberator, will follow through. And so I don't, I think, you know, I think once, once you get through that phase, then I think we'll, we'll come back to the reality, which is that, you know, Venezuelans and Cubans that once believed that they were untouchable found out very quickly that they were not untouchable. And that reality remains. That will not change. The problem is that they will not have a home to go back to or, or at least it'll be, you know, business as usual. And they will look in their own backyard and people that look just like them will be targeted, deported, and detained.

[Joy Reid]

And there you have it, as it always is. I'm Paolo Ramos. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you.

[Paola Ramos]

Thank you so much.

[Joy Reid]

And just for the chat, just a reminder that Donald Trump's eyes are on a very, very big imperialist prize. In his mind, he is McKinley. And he will cause the United States to control the giant oil and resource rich countries of Canada, Greenland. We will control the Panama Canal. And remember, remember, Manuel Noriega. The US Went in, kidnapped him, and put him on trial for narco terrorism, too. So we, if we go in and grab Panama, control their government using our military, the United States can literally, at least as far as Trump and Maga are concerned, go in and put together our own customized Central and South America and control all the oil and make sure all of it, all of it is sold in petrodollars. Happy New Year. There you are. You see that map? Think of the world as just a giant group of oil companies situated around the world. These aren't nations, these are companies. Companies that are looking to profit off of the control of resources. They really don't care about humans.

[Harry Dunn]

You see how the continent kicked most of them out of there, though, right?

[Joy Reid]

There you go. And at this moment, BRICS is the alternative. And we weren't able to do it as much as I wanted to @miss now. But I'm telling y', all, BRICS is what we're going to be talking about a lot on this show because the global south is sick of being bullied. They're tired of being colonized. And so you're seeing African countries tell France, Britain and the United States exactly what Harry Dunn told Mitch McConnell. Fuck you. Fuck off. And if they. And the only fear and last thing I'm doing before we bring in our next guest. And yes, it's moral Monday, so we have to keep our cousin to a minimum. He's a cussing pastor, hopefully still. Is that the reason Muammar Gaddafi got got? And it's sad for me that it was done by a black president, but once you're president, all that stuff you said before about no more war goes out the window and you start to work on the project. And the project is ensuring the financial and fiscal viability of the United States. And if the petrodollar falls and people start feeling like they could just use any old currency, not the dollar, our economy collapses. All this cheap living that we've been doing, the inflation rate is high partly because of this and the mistake Muammar Gaddafi made because he had a socialist state in which they were giving free school, free health care, all of that good stuff with all the big time oil. But his goal was to have Africa, the 52 nations of Africa, all trade in one currency, a gold dinar. And that. That one gold dinar, that currency would replace the dollar, the euro, and they would trade amongst each other in their own currency. He got yapped. So did Saddam Hussein, who thought he could trade in Euros. What was the first thing that the United States did when our viceroy took over? Iran, Iraq. We forced them to flip back and put in their constitution they have to trade in dollars. This is about dollars. It's about dollars. To Moral Monday, though. And let's go ahead and bring in our Moral Monday captain of our Moral Monday ship, Bishop Will William Barber of repairs of the breach. Bishop Barber, apologies for all of our cussing on this Moral Monday, but sometimes, my brother, it's so bad out here that you gotta cuss a little bit.

[Bishop William Barber]

Well, what the hell you gonna do when all this damnable stuff is going on? I mean, really I told you I knew all five of the legitimate cuss words that Jesus used. So let's get at it.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Let's talk about this right now. Let's first talk about war. We're supposed to study war no more. Donald Trump was supposed to be the peace president, and now it appears that he is the take over other countries and control their oil. Your thoughts?

[Bishop William Barber]

Well, first of all, Joy, the sad reality that we don't talk about is what you just did in linking the history. But then going back further, this is not contrary to a certain part of the American history. Remember, it was Abraham Lincoln who stood against the Mexican War and called for a spot amendment. He said, prove to me the spot that the Mexican people attacked us and it couldn't be done. The war went on anyway, and we stole land from them. Texas, New Mexico. There's been this history of thievery, and it's always been over resources, oil, land, wheat, food. And the sadness is it continues, right? We see it biblically when I talk about it biblically, the pharaohs, the Caesars, were always taking from those they felt like they could take from. The danger of this is this apocalyptic politics where you'd say things are so bad that anything goes to justify the change. And so you take someone who's a bad leader and you say, but we can break all the rules. We don't have to. Well, first of all, you pardon certain leaders that do drugs. See, if you're on a certain side, you play with a certain group of folk, you pardon. And if you heard Trump, he said the Honduras president was persecuted like him. Yes, he compared himself to the Honduran leader that he pardoned. But in this other case, he's saying, this guy needs to be prosecuted. I want this oil. He said it, what, 22 times in 1:1. But, but there are reasons why the UN set rules about not being able to snatch leaders out of country, even if you don't like them, and to allow the people in that country to rise up and, and to have their own democratic ways because it's dangerous in the nuclear time. It's, it's different back, as you said, McKinley's time, or even back in Lincoln's time. But we're talking about, what if somebody decides this is the way to go? And if they've got to use nuclear weapons to accomplish it, let's shoot them, let's use them.

[Joy Reid]

Well, what if, what if the, you know, in the China and Beijing, right, a federal court there issues a sealed indictment of Donald Trump.

[Bishop William Barber]

Exactly.

[Joy Reid]

The Chinese military lands on the White House and says, well, we indicted you, bro. You gotta come back here for trial and kidnaps his ass. Then what do we.

[Bishop William Barber]

That becomes. That's. What is this kind of reckless Congress. Unchecked militarism. And see the Congress, we gotta talk about Trump. But Congress is at so much fault in this because they've allowed and allowed and allowed. And right now is for them cute. Right now is for them rolling in dollars right now. They say, oh, we're gonna get the old oil. But you always have to think about the what ifs, because history can turn ugly quick. It already is ugly. The same thing you do to others can turn on you. What if China starts just grabbing up other countries?

[Joy Reid]

What.

[Bishop William Barber]

How do you stop them? Right now you tell them, don't go to Taiwan, don't go here, don't go there. But what happens? But now we understand why, Joy, Trump could not really stop what was happening in Ukraine because he actually wants to act like a Putin.

[Joy Reid]

That's right. You see, he wants to do the same thing Putin is doing and is.

[Bishop William Barber]

Doing it and is doing it. Now. The moral issue is, you know, During World War II, Harry Emerson Fosdick said one of the great failures was the silence of the pulpit when, when, for instance, Jews were being just crushed in the, in the, in the camps and burned during slavery. The great failure was the silence of the church, the silence of religious bodies. If I'm continuing to say to folk, this is a time that moral leaders must call out authoritarianism, call out apocalyptic politics, call out technological feudalism, call out this war, call out the greed. We shouldn't have to go all the way back to Dr. King, and we shouldn't just do it on King Day to remember when he told us the three evils, militarism, poverty, and racism. And today is five is racism, is poverty. It's ecological devastation, denial of health care, and it's the war economy, the unchecked militarism and the militarization of our cities.

[Joy Reid]

And.

[Bishop William Barber]

But the third one is the false moral narrative of religious nationalism. Because right now, Joy, there is a whole theology being pushed that says empathy is bad. Yes, but it embraces. And then. But it embraces this kind of messianic warrior. And, And Trump is seen as this King Cyrus, if you will, from the Book of Isaiah, who. Who has this authority.

[Joy Reid]

And he.

[Bishop William Barber]

And he. And he's okay to do it because he's saving us from a future fall when actually what's happening is going to create future falls. And economic downfall. And we don't know how much more unchecked militarism, not just from us, but, but from other countries. We sometimes forget our last thing. We think. We can't imagine somebody saying, okay, since you did this, we're going to do this, we're going to go come grab your president. But in this world in which we live in and the nuclear power, we don't know what could happen. Particularly when you started.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Bishop William Barber]

And the sad thing about it, the people who are starting it now, they won't be in office when the boomerang happens.

[Joy Reid]

And the reality is, is when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, he, in his lengthy long speech, used the Iraq war in 2004 as a justification. And so it is like Supreme Court precedent. You do it and then it becomes precedent. And so we set the precedent. And to be honest, when Putin, who is a horrific human being, when he talks about the imperialism of the United States and the imperialism of that we've done throughout the Caribbean, we showed that map of what our empire was. It reached almost to China. Hawaii is not even near us. If you fly to Hawaii, it's like flying to California from New York, like three times. It's so far because it's, it's way out in the Pacific. It was another country. We just took it. Puerto Rico, we just took it. We've been taking. And, and, you know, putting the Philippines and all these countries under hammer, putting Cuba under our thumb, putting Haiti under our thumb. Nowhere have we walked away from those countries and left them better, left them more poor and more in the, in the grip of a few handful of oligarchs. So it's never worked out.

[Bishop William Barber]

Well, it's almost like a kind of military oil colonism going on. Right. And, and that's the thing. We use the badness of one leader to justify more badness.

[Joy Reid]

That's right.

[Bishop William Barber]

Right. And then we go. And what, and what happens is we are not. We don't end up not being liberators, just takers. Just takers. Whether it's in Africa, whether it's in the global south, just take, take, take, take, take. And then, interestingly enough, when the people want to come here because we are now benefiting from what we stole from them, we let them in at certain periods of history, particularly if we want them to work and help us stay in a war or help us grow our crops or pull our crops out. But then at some point, when they begin to develop political power and their children begin to develop political power, we.

[Joy Reid]

Want to ship them out that's right. We started the show talking about two things. I want to get your comment on both of them. One of them, Tim Walls is stepping down. He's not gonna run for reelection. Some in the chat were saying they understand he's just tired of fighting these demons. But to me it sends a message of defeat against a Donald Trump that is attempted to pin him with these falsehoods against Somali residents of his state. What do you think of him stepping aside?

[Bishop William Barber]

Well, you know, one of the things I'm deeply concerned it is tough out here and anybody that thinks that these folk won't come at you and will do everything they can to push you and probably probe you and as you said, they're trying to connect him now to Somalians actually that morally speaking what's so bad about this? We should be worrying more about helping the Somalians and stopping the genocide that's there instead of trying to use them in some way to politically diminish and stop someone. But in this moment we're going to have to strap up and I mean strap up morally, not with guns, strap up morally. And the people are the only hope in mobilizing ourselves politically. And Joel, one of the things that I want folks to know is that Bannon said in a video that the reason they chose to run Trump when they did, the reason they chose to act when they did, they looked at the non participation of the electorate and they looked at the weariness of the so called Democratic leaders that they couldn't keep pace with a constant barrage. But inside of that joint is a hope. And what I mean by that is I was looking at some numbers. Today for instance in Georgia, Trump wins by 115,000 votes. 400 some plus thousand black people didn't vote or 2 million poor and low wage people didn't even vote. Numbers went down. Every place that we call battleground, it is a battleground because of non participation, not because of they overwhelmed.

[Joy Reid]

That's right.

[Bishop William Barber]

And I want to tell you a quick story. I know we there's a story in the Bible. People don't, don't talk about it much. When Jesus was alive there was an industry that was the economic driver like oil. It was called pace fish paste and, and, and the, and the Caesars and all wanted to control it and they wanted to control the fishermen, that fishermen then in that industry was like the oil industry and they would take that from the people. But Jesus said I got to organize a people's movement, a people's movement. And in this moment what I want to say to folk, morally speaking, if there's ever been a time we need to micro down to the state level. And I'm at a different point, Joy. I'm not so much talking about resisting Trump. I want folk to start fighting for what you believe. What is it that you would pursue? What kind of world do you want? Whether you get it or not, when is it that you decide resistance is not enough? In fact, I'm not going to keep on just talking about the authoritarian. If you love abolishing poverty, if you love health care, if you love stopping unchecked militarism, if you love addressing racism, if you love voting rights expanded and undenia, when are we going to turn to that moral case? Because in this moment it is purpose and vision and, and that, that must get us up to fight back, not just resistance. You know, there's a part that you have to say the Caesar ain't gonna change, but I'm not going to accept this world as it is. And, and, and I might die doing it, but I'm at least gonna die headed toward freedom. I'm not gonna die just sitting here criticizing the slave master, if you will.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Amen.

[Bishop William Barber]

That's the part that I'm trying to get us where, you know, here in North Carolina we've decided in February 11, 12, 13 we're gonna march from Wilson to Raleigh right in the middle of early voting, same day registration. Then we're gonna have a massive on Valentine's Day and Frederick Douglass's birthday, we're gonna have that. It's time to love, forward and mobilize our power. And we're saying, I don't care what party you in, if, if you believe in certain things, it's time to mobilize in these states, go down to the micro level and, and at least one time we ought to try putting all our power on the table. At least one time we ought to say to hell with what the posters say, to hell with what they say about what happens at a mid year election. It doesn't have to happen that way. It doesn't have to be only 20 or 30% participating. We can actually change that and we ought to do it and shift some power in this country and see what happens when we do that.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. We have a flyer here just if you put up C1 so everybody can see that, you guys take a picture of the screen, grab a picture of the screen and this is what's happening. I'm also going to put it in the substack. We're going to also put it on IG so that you guys can find it everywhere, that you can find the Joy Reed show, where you can find me. Save the date. Make sure that you guys are in it to win it. Because we need a positive agenda, not just negative resistance against the demons in Washington, D.C. because there's so much more to talk about than them. Thank you so much.

[Bishop William Barber]

30 seconds, real quick.

[Joy Reid]

Yes, you can.

[Bishop William Barber]

I sent you something in your text. It's called the Witch's Brew. There's a young man called the Street Genie. Freddy Freddie Jones. Freddie Green. And he put together this song. I wrote some lyrics to it that we're working on called Don't Drink the Witch's Brew.

[Joy Reid]

Oh.

[Bishop William Barber]

But it's a serious jazz piece. He plays all the instruments.

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

[Bishop William Barber]

You ought to listen to it and tell other folk. Because what he's saying is, you gotta understand the ma. The. The witch's brew that they're trying to make us drink, Right. And you gotta resist it. He puts it in music. The instruments are speaking in this song. It's one of the most powerful pieces I've heard from a jazz artist in this moment. You ought to take a listen to it, and if you like it, push it out there. I'm gonna try to write a piece of poetry to it, and I'll send that to you later.

[Joy Reid]

Send it to me. And then what I need you to do is get this brother to give us a good license so that YouTube will let us play it. Because YouTube gets real weird when you start playing music. So let's work on it together. We're gonna get a license. Let him play it on the Joy Reid Show. We will debut it here. Let's try to do that next week, Bishop. Let's do it.

[Bishop William Barber]

Don't drink the witch's brew.

[Joy Reid]

Don't drink the witch's brew and don't. And don't let the vampires in your house. Y' all saw sinners, Y' all know it is Bishop Barbara Moral Monday. Thank you, my brother. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Repairs of the breach. We're gonna make sure we put all the links there as well. Thank you so much. Before we exit out of here today, we got to let you all know that tomorrow evening, though, we don't have a regular show. It's not a regular show night, but we are going to be debuting our interview. We had a cute little sit down with Zorhan Mamdani, and here is the promo.

[Daniel Hodges]

Combat these other costs across the board.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Daniel Hodges]

So that this can be a more affordable city.

[Joy Reid]

Okay. We don't have a ton of time with you, and I want to make sure that we can wrap your food and let you take it. But I have to. I'm going to keep eating while you please eat, but I have to ask you this question. Incredible food. Isn't it great? No, it's amazing. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you. So we all remember when you went in and met with Trump. We need to know, how did you tame Donald Trump such that when you came out, it was like he had fallen in love with you? I mean, did you give him a gold bar? I mean, he does like gold. Did you bond because you're both from Queens? Like, what did you say to him? It's just you and me here. There are no cameras.

[Daniel Hodges]

You know, I think people spoke about that meeting in the days before it was going to happen and in the context of the President meeting the incoming mayor of New York City.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. In another way, it was two New.

[Daniel Hodges]

Yorkers having a meeting and.

[Joy Reid]

But one is a fascist.

[Harry Dunn]

Yes.

[Daniel Hodges]

And the other is me.

[Joy Reid]

The other is you. One is a fascist and the other is me. Sorry, Mom. Donnie, we had a really great time. We ate at a really fabulous restaurant that is so much fun. One of our favorite restaurants in New York City. So we're going to show you all that. And before we let you go, let's get in very quickly. Our moment of joy here.

[Marco Rubio]

It is about, you know, when the President speaks, you should take him seriously. Suffice it to say, you know, Cuba is a disaster.

[Joy Reid]

It's.

[Marco Rubio]

It's run by incompetent, senile men. And.

[Joy Reid]

The volume was a little low. Yeah. Rubio saying that Cuba is run by incompetent senile old men. And I said, yeah, just like America. Thank you all for watching. We went a little bit over. Thank you guys for watching the Joy Reed Show. Be sure to hit like and subscribe. Hit that share button, hit the little bell thingy so that you will know when we're going to go live. Definitely hit that little alert button, a little alert bell so that you'll know what time it's 6:00 clock PM Eastern Standard Time tomorrow on the Joy Reed Show. Thanks to everybody who has patronized the Joy Reed Shop. That is shop.joyanread.com. thank you for that and your stuff, your 15% off that I snuck and didn't tell Sean about that goes all the way till midnight tonight. So don't tell Sean, but you can still get the 15% off all the way to midnight tonight. All right, y', all, thanks very much. Oh, my merch has arrived. Yes. Thank you. I'm glad your merch has arrived. Definitely hit wearing joy. Throw it up there. You got to get your blanket. The blanket is super soft and cushy. I'll show it on the next show. Thank y' all for watching the joy. Reo so you on the next one. Peace, love, and hair grease. Good night.