← The Joy Reid Show
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:30]
B
Okay, The music, it gets me very hyped. Like, I know it's happening, I know it's coming. And so we realize it is time for the Joy Reacho. Welcome to the Joy Reach, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. The chat is already spicy. I love the fact that you guys get in early and start chatting. Hello to everybody in the chat. I got my sororis in the chat. We are almost a Founders Day, so big ups to everyone in DST, but also all of the different D9 fraternities and sororities. Big ups to everyone who, if you're me, find me. Thanks for tuning into the show. We have a big show tonight. We have a lot going on, so I'm not gonna wait too long to jump right into it, other than to say we have reached 388,000 subscribers on today. Jason, we can get a round of applause for that because it's a big deal. We have been only at this, it's hard to believe for like six months. I have my, I have my retainer in. So if I sound, if I sound lispy, that's the reason. And so in a very short time, we have gotten really, really far. That is unusually fast for a YouTube channel's growth. So thank you for that. Also, nearly 190,000 on the stack. Big ups to everyone who is watching right now on substack, 190,000 friends over there. The 388,000 who are members over here at YouTube. YouTube. Also to everyone who is listening on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, podcast, wherever that is. It's a big show tonight and so we're going to get right to it. But I want to start like and subscribe. Make sure that you do like and subscribe, even though you're already probably subscribed if you're in the chat. But please like and subscribe. Consider becoming a member. We're going to do our first members only chat very soon. We're going to try to do them at least once a month to have private chats just with our members. We're going to keep doing that. So we're going to announce that date very soon so we can have extra time with those of you who are members of Team TJRS and also readers who are members both here and at Substack. So thanks to everyone who is doing that. For those who have shopped in the shop, we appreciate you all. Please let us know what you think of your merch. Please feel free to give us feedback on that as well. But I want to just jump right in because this is a big news day and a big news way, not in a great way. I want to start with what I do believe is already, even though it is Wednesday, the sound bite of the week.
- [02:47]
C
But I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE to ice, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long term, Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized. And now somebody is dead. That's on you. And it's also on you to leave.
- [03:32]
B
Now, if you've not heard this and you're literally not on social media, because everyone is talking about this right now. That, of course, was Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry commenting on the murder, and I do call it a murder murder of a Minneapolis woman by ICE agents who shot up her car, shooting her in the head, and as you're going to see, shortly refused to allow a physician who happened to be her neighbor on the scene to render aid. We're going to have much more on that very, very shortly. Our friend Katie Fang is going to join us to discuss that. And also this next topic, which everyone is also talking about, and I want to start with what I think is kind of a mantra, and it is this. And sorry for the cussing. I didn't warn y' all that the cussing was coming, but y' all are all grown. These are grown folks, I assume, that are in the TJRS chat and listening to the show. And grown folks cuss. So apologies for that. We're not on cable anymore. We're not at Ms. Now, so we can cuss a little bit. But here's the mantra that I want you all to think about. The quicker you realize that most of the things your government tells you, particularly when they talk national security, most of those things are almost always pure, unadulterated bullshit. The quicker you accept that fact, and that is whether your government is run by the D's or the R's, if they're talking national security, they're likely bullshitting you. That's something you're not going to hear in mainstream media, but it's true. And the quicker that you accept that fact, the calmer you're going to be when bad things inevitably happen. People are always asking how do you deal with all of the insanity and bullshit that's happening from the government? That is how? Because I recognize maybe as somebody who has parents who are from overseas and from some countries that used to be colonized directly, this country was a colony too, but by Europe. So I grew up with parents who were fairly cynical about government. But the quicker you realize that when your government, whether it's run by the D team or the R team, when they're talking national security, the quicker you accept that they are probably bullshitting you, the calmer that you will be. Let me explain what I mean. The arrest of Nicolas Maduro has confounded a lot of people around the world, most with any legal training or understanding, with the exception of the COVID up General Bill Barr have declared his kidnapping, and it is a kidnapping, his abduction to be clearly illegal according to international law. But the question remains when it comes to US law, is it legal? So Maduro and his wife are facing court hearings, something that almost none of the people that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Tom Moneybags Homan have ordered deported or rendered to third party countries that were paying to hold them hostage. So they're at least getting hearings. So there's that. But at core it still remains to be asked was his kidnapping by the United States military legal, which took them.
- [06:43]
A
From a detention center in Brooklyn to Manhattan. It's where they made their first court appearance Monday before 92 year old federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein facing narco terrorism, drug trafficking and gun charges. Maduro told the judge through a translator, I'm innocent, I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the President of my country. Flores, facing three drug and gun charges, also pleading not guilty, not guilty, completely innocent, she said. Former Attorney General William Barr helped form the original indictment against Maduro in 2020.
- [07:15]
D
This was a criminal organization that used the instrumentalities facilities of the state to to make Venezuela hub of drug trafficking.
- [07:25]
A
There are many parallels being drawn to the case of former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, who at the orders of President George H.W. bush was captured by US forces exactly 36 years to the day before Maduro, also on drug trafficking charges. Noriega's trial began 21 months later and lasted seven months, ending in a conviction.
- [07:48]
D
This is a long process. People can strap in, but at the.
- [07:51]
B
End of the day, there'll be a.
- [07:52]
D
Lot of legal maneuvering.
- [07:54]
A
Already Maduro's attorney, Barry Pollack, who also represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, making a similar argument that Noriega's legal team made decades ago. Pollock tells the judge that Maduro as head of state is entitled to immunity and says there are questions about the legality of his military abduction. The US and more than 50 other countries do not recognize Maduro as Venezuela's legitimate leader. The judge affirms Maduro and Flores have the right to meet with a Venezuelan consulate and says Flores must get medical care because her rib may have been fractured during capture. Their next court appearance is scheduled for March 7.
- [08:33]
B
So the US kidnapped Maduro, who again is a dictator who most of the world does not recognize as the legitimate president of Venezuela. But he was the sitting president. He was in office and his wife kidnapped them supposedly to serve a court order because they were indicted. Okay. Broke the wife's ribs in the process. Okay. And they're in court and you heard Noriega mention. So yes, there is a precedent. But one issue though. Manuel Noriega, even before he was the president of Panama, was on the CIA payroll from like 1959 when he was a member of that country's military until Jimmy Carter's CIA director took him off the payroll in 1977. Only for Ronald Reagan, when he became president, to put him back on. That is from the FBI online archives, which is still available. You can still bring that down. That's an old article about Ronald Reagan literally putting Manuel Nordiega back on the payroll of the CIA. Now at that time, according to subsequent investigations by the pre billionaire oligarch owned media, Manuel Noriega, on the payroll while he was the sitting president of Panama, was allowing drugs to, to flow through Panama to the American streets, to the American people. So when we use the military to kidnap our own CIA informant and charge him with drug trafficking in the US Court system, it was kind of an inside job, right? Since we also now know, as we discussed on this show on Monday, thanks to a 199360 Minutes investigation at a journalist named Gary Webb who, who was ridiculed and called a liar, but he turned out to be right in 60 minutes won a Peabody for the exact same reporting. We now know through all of that reporting that Ronald Reagan with former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush as his vice president now allowed cocaine to flood into the United States from Venezuela specifically in order to fund a militia that the US wanted to overthrow the left wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, thus fueling the crack epidemic that devastated black communities in the 1980s. So that's three countries that the US is allowing to flood the streets of the United States with cocaine. Panama, Venezuela. Right, and you could also add Colombia, which was a part of that kind of triad. But we were kind of allowing it because one of the big suppliers was a guy named El Chapo who was supplying a lot of the cocaine that was passing through Venezuela. And the US and the CIA were allowing planes full of cocaine to land in Miami and to get to California where the Crips and the Bloods were distributing them as crack. The cocaine for the Contra scheme was at the heart of the Iran Contra scandal that nearly got Reagan impeached. Of course, the other part of that scandal was the illicit sale of military arms to Iran to also fund the CIA backed Nicaraguan rebels. And the same Herbert Walker Bush supposedly the good Bush brokered also during that scandal, delaying the release of our hostages from Iran in 1979 after Iran rebelled against the dictator we put in place after overthrowing their democratically elected President Mossadegh because he tried to keep Iran's oil for Iran instead of for bp. It was George Herbert Walker Bush, the same guy who was running Noriega as a CIA asset when he was CIA director, who arranged it so that our hostages would not come home until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated over the defeated Jimmy Carter. Another small unpaquito issue here is just a small matter of the former President of Honduras who was also convicted of drug trafficking. But I am holding in my hot little hands right here the Department of Justice press release that says in black and white that he was indicted after he was no longer President of Honduras, like weeks after he was no longer president and brought to the United States to stand trial. Not by being kidnapped by the military. No, no, he was extradited the old fashioned way. The US military did not land in Tegucigalpa and kidnap him. So before we even dive back into what this is all about, again, we need to establish, given the fact that the US has a history of playing footsie with drug trafficking Central American presidents, when we want the money from their drug trafficking, which is poisoning Americans, when we want to use that money to overthrow governments that aren't playing ball with us on other things, and then we indict them when they're not convenient anymore, the same way that we Run Saddam Hussein as an asset, and then when he's not playing ball and wants the oil for Iraq, then we overthrow him. We play this game all over the place. Right. So again, let's just quickly question, is any of it legal? So Trump has announced on his social media that he is going to personally run Venezuela and sell Venezuela's oil in the open market and put the funds in the US Treasury, I guess, or maybe at this point, hell, maybe in his own pockets and then maybe share some of it with the Venezuelan people. So let's first see what the House speaker has to say. House Speaker Mike Johnson, is this legal? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Last one.
- [14:40]
D
Yeah.
- [14:41]
B
The president, as you saw, said that.
- [14:43]
D
He is going to get 50, 50.
- [14:46]
B
Million barrels of oil or something from Venezuela in. The President. Does the president have the authority to.
- [14:52]
E
Unilaterally seize oil from Venezuela and use.
- [14:55]
B
The money from the sale of that oil as he sees fit, as he said he's going to do? It's, it's, I hear Congressman Jimenez over my shoulder, who's the world's expert on all this, saying that is sanctioned oil. Okay. And I don't, I'm not going to get up here and tell you the.
- [15:08]
E
Details of all these developments, because we.
- [15:11]
B
Don'T, it's still being developed. There are a lot of ideas. There's some brainstorming being done out loud by all sorts of people, many of whom are not even authorized to have these conversations.
- [15:20]
D
I would not run with too many.
- [15:21]
B
Of these headlines right now.
- [15:22]
E
Okay?
- [15:22]
B
I'm telling you that all of this is developing right now. I am very confident we have steady hands at the wheel and then this will be figured out. So stay tuned. Thank you. Why I call it imperialism, which is American imperialism, just like American imperialism has always been, only dumber. Okay, so let's, as you saw the president, let's try it again. Hold on. Because I want to try it again. Now. We've asked Mike Johnson, is it legal? Because in addition to Trump bragging on his truth social that we're going to keep the oil and start selling it, or $50 a barrel and pocket the money for ourselves or use the oil for our own economy, we've also, the US Military has detained a flagship, a Russian flagship, meaning has a Russian. It's flying a Russian flag that's got oil on it. We've now taken that, we've stolen that we are pirates of the Caribbean now, not just killing people in the Caribbean, but stealing oil ships with Russian flags on them. So we've done all that so let's now try and see if Carolyn Levitt, who is the White House spokesperson, Carolyn Levitt, is this legal?
- [16:30]
A
Well, as you saw, the president announced last night, this was a deal. This was a deal made by the president and his team with the Venezuelan interim authorities. This will benefit both the American people and the Venezuelan people. And Secretary Wright and the Department of Energy are working with the interim authorities and also with the private oil industry to execute on this historic energy deal that's not only good for the United States, but it's also going to revive the prosperity, the safety, the security of both the United States and Venezuela as well.
- [16:59]
B
Oh, Carolyn, Carolyn, Carolyn. The Venezuelan interim authorities as screaming Marco Rubio said yesterday when he got all in his feelings when on CBS he was asked, why didn't you arrest everyone in the Venezuelan government? Why just the president and his wife? What about his son? What about the head of the secret police? What about some of the most ferocious and terrifying leaders of that country who are still literally in place? What about the vice president? He said, well, we. Well, what did you want us to do? Stay there a whole week and get them all? So the interim authorities of Venezuela is this mic on are the same people who've been running Venezuela for the last 12 years. The interim authorities are everyone who's been running Venezuela for the last dozen years, with the exception of Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The rest are all still in place. The interim authorities are the same people who've been running in Venezuela the whole time. So basically, no, it's not legal. What you're saying is we're going to steal the oil of a government we haven't even replaced or toppled. They've still got a government that's supposedly active. The vice president is out there saying, bring us back our president. You illegally kidnapped him. We're not playing ball with you. And Trump has said she's going to be the interim leader because he doesn't want Ms. Corino, Maria Corino, who's kissing ass, begging to be put in place the opposition leader, because Trump is mad at her because she accepted that Nobel Peace Prize. He thinks she should have said no to the Nobel Peace Prize. This is per New York Times reporting. And so since he's mad at her for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, she can't run the government. So the opposition, I just want this to be clear to y'.
- [18:44]
D
All.
- [18:44]
B
The opposition is not in power in Venezuela. The same Maduro regime is in power, just without Maduro. So can the United States with having kidnapped the president of another country begin to sell the oil of said country and give it to our business leaders? Can Exxon Mobil now just have the oil? And if Trump is going to do that, if he now and Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio, if they're now running Venezuela, if Trump is now the CEO of Venezuela, should we not consider his own business prowess as a factor in whether he's even capable of doing that? Let's listen to Barbara Walters interviewing Donald trump back in 1990.
- [19:30]
F
Billion dollar Taj Mahal. It's been setting Atlantic City gambling records since this opening day, but it's still barely breaking even. And the Taj is draining revenues from the other two casinos that Trump owns. But the Taj Mahal's opening did steal headlines for a few days from the soap opera of Trump's personal life. First, in February, there was the publicity over his separation from his glamorous wife of 13 years, Ivana. Add to that the spice of his friendship with an also glamorous model, the younger Marla Maples. On the business side, there were growing financial problems. In May, Forbes magazine reported that Trump's financial worth had dropped by two thirds, to half a billion dollars. In June, Trump missed a payment to the bondholders of his Trump Castle casino in Atlantic City. The Trump shuttle, which he bought last year from Eastern Airlines, wasn't making a profit. Manhattan's largest track of undeveloped land, all 76 acres of it, was just sitting there. Trump bought it six years ago for $95 million. It's still undeveloped and there are no buyers in sight. Trump's bankers had a choice. They could force him into bankruptcy or loan him more money. They chose to lend, but the terms were harsh. He had to relinquish a great deal of control over his empire. And Trump had to either get his assets to produce more money or sell them. Assets like this jewel, the Plaza Hotel, mocking itself its second year under Trump ownership, it's still struggling out of debt. Above it all literally sat a confident Donald trump. From his 26th floor office and nearby Trump Tower, he was reassessing his options. For it's particularly important to him these days for this book to be a success. While the new book is entitled Surviving at the Top, there are many people who would say failing at the top.
- [21:24]
G
Well, I think what the press has done is taken a situation where they see something and blown it to kingdom come. I've never seen anything like it. Whether it's a marriage, by the way, or whether it's financial, I've never seen press reporting as I have with regard to me, and I hope the general public understands how inherently dishonest the pressure press in this country is.
- [21:50]
F
As a member of the press, let me try to clear up some of the things which you say aren't true. You write in your book, my bankers and I worked out a terrific deal that allows me to come out stronger than ever. I see the deal as a great victory and eventually the rest of the world will too. Being on the verge of bankruptcy, being bailed out by the banks, skating on thin ice and almost drowning, that is a, that's a businessman to be admired.
- [22:19]
G
You say on the verge of bankruptcy, Barbara, and you talk on the verge and you listen to what people are saying.
- [22:23]
F
Talk to your bankers.
- [22:25]
G
Well, that's fine. And what do they say? I mean, you know, depending on which bank you're talking to, what do they say?
- [22:30]
B
You know who owns the Plaza Hotel now? The Qataris. Joining me now, looks like he's gonna do a bang up job running Venezuela. This should go great. Just like Trump steaks, Trump water, the Trump board game. It's gonna go great. Everyone. Everything he's ever touched has turned to shit. Those two casinos, he bank it in Atlantic City. Kind of hard to bankrupt the casino. Atlantic City. Let's just see how he does with the oil of Venezuela. Who knows? Joining me now is my friend Katie Fang, former host of the Katie fang show on Ms. Now and who now has the Katie Fang show and all of the Katie Fang franchises, both on substack and on YouTube with the Midas Network. Katie, is any of this legal? Oh, God.
- [23:12]
A
So I'm going to crib off of my good friend Steve Vladic, who we nerded out the other day on my YouTube channel. We broke it all down. So there has been a blatant and egregious violation of international law.
- [23:24]
B
Joy.
- [23:25]
A
By invading and violating the sovereignty of a foreign nation. When we went to Venezuela. The domestic legal issues are couched in two separate theories. One is a 1989 Office of Legal Counsel memo by Bill Barr. I said the other day, he's like a bad penny that keeps on just popping up, right? But Bill Barr, before we did the Panama invasion vis a vis Manuel Noriega, whose name is raised resurrected as well. In terms of Venezuela, Bill Barr did this OLC memo in 89 that basically said that if you use military forces to do protective work for law enforcement reasons, eg, you know, trying to go and get people with open arrest warrants like Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, and it's okay. And the President can not only do that, but president can also use his inherent authority under the Constitution to be able to protect federal things, such as law enforcement going over to effectuate arrest warrants. And so they've kind of like cobbled together. Steve Vladik called it. Joy, you'd appreciate this. It's like a Frankenstein, right? Creation of legal theories, or we'll see. The true assertion of what the Trump administration thinks is the legal reason in that federal criminal case in the Southern District of New York of Maduro and his wife and others, because it is inevitable that Maduro will be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment for various reasons, including head of state and foreign leader immunity. You know, hauling him in front of, you know, a United States court and a lack of personal jurisdiction over him and his wife. And the Department of Justice will then be forced to have to say clearly what legal authority that they're relying upon. But, you know, functionally, whether he's even the recognized head of state is questionable. You aptly noted before I joined you, Edmundo Gonzalez was the person that Maria Karina Machado. These are the democratic opposition leaders. You know, Maria Karina Machado, we don't even know where she's. Where she lives right now because there's personal safety issues. And Imundo Gonzalez, because Maria couldn't actually be on the ballot. Joy, he was her stand in. And so his name was on the ballot. And the Democratic opposition won more than two thirds of the vote in 2024. But this idea of fair and free elections is bullshit in Venezuela, and that goes as far back as freaking 2018. But prior to 2018, we, as in the United States, did recognize Maduro as the duly elected leader of Venezuela. And so there's going to be a lot of fact intensive questions about whether or not we can do this to a foreign head of state. But why would you leave at least two people, including Delsey Rodriguez, that the State Department has put bounties of $25 million for their arrests still in place in Venezuela because it was never about. It was never about democracy. It was always about oil.
- [26:36]
B
Exactly. And the problem with us nitpicking who is illegally and legitimately elected while people in this country aren't all 100% sure Trump was legitimately elected in the year of our Lord 2024. But we'll leave that aside. We didn't have a problem with Salvador Allende, who was democratically elected in Chile, being knocked off at behest of the CIA and replaced with Pinochet, who then went on to kill Thousands and thousands of his own people. We don't seem to mind. We didn't seem to mind all of our former drug dealing buddies that were running Central and South American countries when they were in our pocket. We didn't have a problem with them until they stopped playing ball. Right when they're playing ball, we don't care if you're a drug dealer. We were fine with it and putting you on the CIA payroll as long as you're playing ball with us. I want to go to a couple other things just that are happening here that are sort of interesting just as a matter of course. So the US or. And I don't know where these fake AI videos came from but in trying to make the case that this is that the non overthrow of the Venezuelan government. Again, I wanna make it clear we did not overthrow the Venezuelan government. We just kidnapped the president and his wife. The whole rest of the government, the head of the secret police, all the scariest figures there, they're the ones with the bounties.
- [27:51]
A
They actually have multi million dollar State department warrant rewards if you have information to lead to their arrests.
- [27:58]
B
100%. And they also had the big guns they've got. I was talking with a friend today, was very read into this that was saying they've got, you know, lots of arms, lots of guns, lots of firepower and they are arresting journalists and terrifying people and terrorizing people in Venezuela while the US is pretending everything is good because now Exxon's back. Fake AI videos have been promoted by maga. Real accounts, fake accounts. We don't know. Trying to pretend that people are loving this. So that's one item. I don't know if we have that Jason. A9 you may not have that. Oh, we're going to see. So kind of everywhere they're AI videos. And so that is a strange thing to do to pretend you've overthrown the regime and show all these fake crying videos to what end?
- [28:50]
A
Well, look, nobody and you know, it kind of irritated me a little bit when I was criticizing what just happened because people are like why can't you be happy that Maduro is gone? I'm not unhappy that Maduro is gone. That's not the case. Nobody wanted Maduro. But if you are legitimately seeking democracy for the Venezuelans, you bring back Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Karina Machado and you put them in place. Cutting the head off of a snake doesn't kill the snake, right? So you need to be able to make sure that you actually have the true democratically Elected people in place. But remember, no matter how much Maria Karina Machado looks like she's trying to play both sides right now by saying, I want to share my Nobel Peace Prize, etc. And I don't know what she would do if she was actually in power. Joy. But when you leave Delsey Rodriguez, the vice president who's now the acting interim leader of Venezuela, who is actively in violation of her own constitution, the Venezuelan constitution requires within 30 days of the vacancy of the presidency to have elections nobody has talked about in the United States circles, facilitating elections within 30 days because it's irrelevant, because Exxon mobilized Chevron and ConocoPhillips. They are the only people that are that anybody is paying attention to right now. So it never had anything to do with drugs, never had anything to do with narco terrorists, never had anything to do with regime changes to make sure that democratically elected people are really holding office. It always had to do with controlling the grift. And the grift in this instance is the oil and the oil reserves that exist in Venezuela.
- [30:32]
B
And I will note too, that I, as somebody who's very anti war, I don't even think that as rotten and horrible as Maduro was, as bad as Saddam Hussein was, it's really not our place to go and change the regime to anything at all, in my personal opinion. I think the Venezuelan people, when they get good and sick of their dictator, they will overthrow them, like the Haitians throughout the French, and like it happens in any country where they're sick of them. But I wanna show one other thing, because it does appear that it was not just about oil. It was also about Donald Trump's fragile ego. Can we play this, Jason? A 10. Hopefully it has no sound on it, apparently, at least according to the New York Times, one of the final sort of last straws that got Maduro got is that Trump was angry that he was dancing like him. I promise y', all, this is true, that he was mad that he was doing dances like Trump does, and he was. Trump was offended that he was when he thought copying him. That's just odd.
- [31:22]
A
Well, it fits. It tracks, right, Joy? And then also the fact that he didn't get the Peace Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, but Maria Karina Machado got and she didn't decline it. He's so butthurt about that, right? That he was like, oh, I'm not going to recognize her as the true democratic leader of Venezuela. It is remarkable to me also that I mentioned this the other day. Trump Also said that the American taxpayers are going to have to help reimburse Big Oil when they incur all the expenses to have to rebuild the Venezuelan oil infrastructure, because the amount of barrel output right now has. Has plummeted after the nationalization of oil by Venezuela. And so apparently, Big Oil, we're not only going to be helping them get richer, but who the hell cares that we're spending billions of dollars on military operations when we can't even get health care for basic. Basic. Americans can't get their health care right now.
- [32:22]
B
Absolutely. And the Trump donor who bought Citgo is about to get, maybe be a trillionaire. We're basically enriching oil companies. And then, yes, you, the taxpayer, you can't get health care, but you're gonna pay these oil companies to develop. You have to understand, Venezuela used to be 30% of the world's crude oil. They used to produce 30%. Their production has gone to almost zero. Getting their production back online is gonna take billions, hundreds of billions and billions and billions of dollars, and it's gonna take a lot of time. I had one person say to me today that if Donald Trump could get oil under a dollar by doing this, he'd probably be able to serve a third term. People would be so happy. It's not that simple getting that oil, which is not the same kind of light, sweet crude that the US Produces, it's a whole different kind of oil. And only a handful of oil companies know what to do with it. You have to, like, cook it and heat it and do all this other stuff to it to get it to be ready to use as fuel. It is much more difficult. So, but let me play you Stephen Miller, who I think has been the most sort of blatant about the idea that he is an imperialist and he's not proud, he's not ashamed of it. Here's Stephen Miller.
- [33:25]
C
States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We're a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons from our adversaries to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of half of the United States. Sovereign countries should be able to do what they want to do. The Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine is all about securing the national interests of America. For years, we sent our soldiers to die in deserts in the Middle east to try to build them parliaments, to try to build them democracies, to try to give them more oil, to try to give them more resources. The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology. This whole period that happened after World War II, where the west began apologizing and groveling and begging. I don't even know honestly what you're talking about right now. What I'm talking about, Jake, is the idea. And by the way, you do. I know you love doing that smarmy thing, Jake, and I was hoping to be better than that this time. I'm just. I asked you about if there should be an election. I asked you if there would be an election in Venezuela. That's what I asked. I said, why was the president so quick to dismiss Machado? You answered that question. And then I said, the objective, Jake, is security and stability for the people of Venezuela. With our help and leadership, that country will become more prosperous than it has ever been in its whole history. Venezuela, the woman running Venezuela right now, is part of the Maduro regime. There will be conversations, Jake, about all of these guy posts along the way. The reason why I was giving you that speech, which I know you didn't want to hear, is because Europe approaching this from the wrong frame, this neoliberal frame, that the United States job is to go around the world and demanding immediate elections to be held everywhere, immediately, all the time, right away, no vacuums. That's not what I think. But you invaded the country, we took the country, and we seized the leader of Venezuela. Damn straight we did. And I'm saying we're not going to let. So is the US Going to have new elections that we're not going to let Tim pot communist dictators, send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country. Okay. And we're not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversary.
- [35:51]
B
Yeah, but I don't even know your thoughts.
- [35:54]
A
Can I be a petty bitch for a second? He, Stephen Miller didn't get his ass kicked enough when he was a fucking kid. I'm just going to let you know right now, because if he had, I think he probably would end up being better. Here's the bottom line. You know, I am not a huge fan of Jake Tapper, but I will give him credit because that was ridiculous. Ridiculous like what just happened with Stephen Miller. But here's the thing. They can't even keep track of their narratives. Joy Is it about drugs or is it not about drugs? Because it can't really be about drugs because then you pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who's admittedly actually worse than freaking Maduro, Right? And to Jake's point, you can't leave Delsey Rodriguez in because she's a part of that regime that you say was this tin pot communist stuff. And the reality is who think, who, who elected the United States to be the person paternalistically to go and tell the people how they need to be. It is a disgusting imperialism way of looking at things. And yet it seems to be okay for this particular administration to think that they know better than anybody else. But the reality is this. Donald Trump can't even take care of us. We're Americans. He can't even take care of us. And he thinks he's going to go run Venezuela now, is he going to run Greenland and he's going to run Cuba and he's going run all of the in Panama. He can't even run the United States. And so when you bail out your American farmers with one cheap little bailout, you think that people are going to be thinking that, thank you, sir. May I have another mentality? No, we actually pay attention to this shit.
- [37:26]
B
This while they're killing Americans. If Jason, I'm sorry, I'm jumping around just a little bit. We're going to go back. We have to talk about this Minnesota situation. Oh, yeah. Top of the show we played the mayor of Minnesota, Jacob Fry, dropping an F bomb of righteousness about the killing of this woman. And I'm going to start by Jason, let me know when you have it ready. Playing A seven, which is Christy Noem lying, lying about what happened in Minnesota.
- [37:51]
A
There. You asked about a shooting that we just had in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action.
- [38:02]
B
They got stuck in the snow because.
- [38:04]
A
Of the enforcement adverse weather, that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their.
- [38:07]
B
Vehicle and a woman attacked them and.
- [38:09]
A
Those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot to protect himself and the people around him. And my understanding is, is that she was hit and is deceased. We're continuing to gather more information. But this goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and our law enforcement are under every single day. These vehicle rammings are domestic acts of terrorism. We're working with the Department of Justice to prosecute them. As such, we will continue to protect our ICE officers and in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies as well.
- [38:48]
B
You've seen me, in the last couple.
- [38:49]
A
Of days deploy over 2,000 more officers to the Minneapolis area.
- [38:53]
B
And in the last two days, we've. So, first of all, why is Ahefa always dressed like she's her own Barbie? And this is the way she would dress a doll if she had them at home? She's constantly cosplaying. But before I let you sort of weigh in on that, let's actually show you all. And I'm gonna warn you all, this is actually a bit disturbing to watch. It is. Kristi Noem lied on live TV about what happened in Minnesota. Maybe forgetting that humans have phones now that people can actually capture the truth of what you all are doing live on camera. Here it is. Jason, if you could play. I believe this is a. No, no. Shame. Shame. Oh, my fucking God. What the fuck? What the fuck? You just fucking. What the fuck did you do? You all are fucking criminals. You're fucking criminals. What the fuck are you guys. What the fuck? What the actual. You are fucking insane. Did you do.
- [40:22]
A
What did you do?
- [40:24]
B
You.
- [40:26]
A
Shame. Shame.
- [40:29]
B
Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. What's happening to her? What happened? Dude, you shot her. I'm trying to help. No, no. You fucking shot someone in the fucking face. You shot someone in the face. You can leave it there, Jason. And if you could just play the very next one, which is ICE agents refusing to allow a neighbor of this woman to give aid.
- [41:28]
G
Back up.
- [41:29]
B
Now, I'm a physician.
- [41:32]
D
I understand we got EMS coming, and.
- [41:34]
B
I get it, but this is.
- [41:35]
C
Give us a second.
- [41:36]
B
We have medics on scene. We have our own medics. Where are they? Where are they? How can I relax. You just killed my fucking neighbor. You caught butter in the fucking face. You killed my fucking neighbor. How do you show up to work every day? How the fuck do you do this every day? You're killing my neighbors.
- [41:55]
A
You're stealing my neighbors.
- [41:56]
B
What the. Man. Katie. The question of sovereign immunity and whether ICE agents have it. Kristi Noem clearly lied. No car was rammed. You saw it yourself. Nobody rammed any car. The ICE agents got out of their car unmolested, walked up to this woman's car and shot her in the head. What legal ramifications can there be?
- [42:24]
A
So there are other videos that show that she was ordered to leave, that there were other vehicles that were ordered to leave. She was actually obeying an order to leave. The video also shows that she went in reverse, and you can see her wheels, the tires of her car turning to be able to leave. If she was trying to ram those agents, she would not be turning the vehicle to be able to leave where she was. All of what we witness ourselves disproves the lies that have been pushed up by noam, by dhs, and by Trump because Trump himself also lied on truth social about what happened today. I mentioned to our, our friend Don Lemon that, you know, the George Floyd murder, I think, created this precedent of people in the communities being armed with phones to be able to document the truth. Because we have sadly gotten to the point where we can't rely on law enforcement to be reliable, truthful narrators about what has occurred. What's interesting about this immunity issue, Joy, is we don't even know the capacity within which ICE agents are now operating. Are they operating as a part of dhs? What is the authority under which they are there?
- [43:45]
B
Right.
- [43:46]
A
Because if they are operating under dhs, NBC News has reported that all of those ICE agents approached that poor woman. And let me be clear, she has a name. Her name is RENEE Nicole Good, 37 years old. And the Minnesota City Council issued a statement that Renee was a resident of our city who was out caring for her neighbors this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government woman. So Ms. Good, you know, she's murdered at the hands of ICE. And according to NBC News, the way that those ICE agents approached her car, Ms. Good's car was in violation of any training they ever would have received when it comes to approaching a vehicle. Failure to adhere to proper training became a big focus point in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin. And the reason why I bring that up is, you know, any of these bullshit defenses of self defense, et cetera, that we're going to hear in this instance, Joy, we have to hope that our local and state authorities and law enforcement in Minnesota are going to do an investigation and prosecute this, Joy, because we cannot rely on the Department of Justice anymore and the Trump regime to do right by any of us, and especially by Renee Nicole Goode.
- [45:02]
B
Thank you, Katie Fang. Just looking here from the Star Tribune, Renee Nicole Good, as Katie has just told you, 37 years old, identified by her mom, Donna Granger, who's her mom, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter lived in the Twin Cities with her partner. In a joint statement, several Minneapolis City Council members confirmed that she did live in the city. The family was notified of her death Wednesday morning. Katie Fang, my friend, thank you so much. Everybody. Please follow Katie, both on YouTube at the Katie Fang show as well as on Substack. We're going to put all the links below so you guys can do that. Thank you, my friend.
- [45:37]
A
Good to see you.
- [45:38]
B
God bless. So we have the United States military pretending to be law enforcement and flying into foreign countries and arresting foreign dictators, bringing them back for trial in the United States, but leaving the rest of the regime in place. We have ICE agents not presenting a warrant. You did not hear them say I have a warrant for your arrest or anything other than shooting her in the head immediately, then lying about or supposedly ramming their car. She apparently was somebody who was watching ICE agents. You have a lot of community good Samaritans who are doing that, who are watching what ICE agents are doing and following them and trying to document what they're doing. And she lost her life for it. Let's go on to the next sort of outrage that we're seeing in this country. I don't know if you all have noticed that so many people are sick with all the rest that's happening. I don't know how many people you know that either have the flu now or had the flu or were just getting over the flu. It seems like it's sort of rampant, right? Well, RFK Jr. You know, he's well on the job warping our healthcare system to the MAHA standard as measles is on the rise and folks are running around unvaccinated, not just for the flu, but also for Covid, measles, mumps and rubella. But RFK Jr thinks that he's doing a great job, a bang up job. And he now claims that he has changed the food pyramid.
- [46:54]
G
In accordance with President Trump's directive.
- [46:58]
B
Rook and I will release the Dietary.
- [47:01]
G
Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030, the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in history. These guidelines replace corporate driven assumptions with.
- [47:16]
B
Common sense goals and gold standard scientific integrity.
- [47:20]
G
These new guidelines will revolutionize our nation nation's food culture and make America healthy again.
- [47:27]
B
For decades, Americans have grown sicker while.
- [47:29]
G
Health care costs have soared. The reason is clear. The hard truth is that our government has been lying to us to protect corporate profit taking, telling us that these food like substances were beneficial to public health. Federal policy promoted and subsidized highly priced processed foods and refined carbohydrates and turned a blind eye to the disastrous consequences. Today, the lies stop. The new guidelines recognize that whole nutrient dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care costs. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, my Message is clear.
- [48:13]
B
Eat real food.
- [48:15]
G
Nothing matters more for health care outcomes, economic productivity, military readiness and fiscal stability.
- [48:23]
B
Okay. Joining Me now is Dr. Vid Gupta, pulmonologist and prominent public health expert with a background in military medicine and health technology. He serves as a medical analyst for Ms. Now and is the leader of Midas Health, part of the Midas Touch Network. He's also my friend, Dr. Ven Gupta. Hello. Happy New Year.
- [48:41]
E
So good to see you, Joy. Thanks for having me.
- [48:43]
B
These new nutrition guidelines. As a physician, your thoughts?
- [48:47]
E
You know, as with everything, it seems like it's hard to keep up, but everything now there's a clear pattern with RFK and what he's doing, which is he has a set of personal beliefs, whether it's on autism and Tylenol, autism and vaccines, and now the food pyramid. And he's going to impose those personal beliefs in the absence of any evidence or new data on the American people. And I mean, we've had devastating impacts when it comes to what we're seeing with measles, what we're seeing with flu, as you just mentioned in the T up, Joy. And I think this is going to confuse people and probably, unfortunately give people the wrong impression when it comes to unprocessed red meat. Let's just take that as an example. No one here has argued, I mean, he's trying to stride in as some sort of white knight, talking about processed foods, processed red meat, as though we haven't been talking about that for generations. Issue about good nutrition, say in schools or just in general, is a question of resources. People opt for processed red meats like pepperoni and salami and packaged foods when they don't have enough money to buy something more nutritious like whole foods, which he's referencing. Of course, if we had those resources in places like schools, everywhere, in every zip code, this would be an easier discussion. We've been having the whole processed food discussion for a very long time, so nothing one is new here. But I worry about him inverting the pyramid, talking about more raw milk, talking about more unprocessed red meat. So take your steaks, your hamburgers. That's still not good for you. And that's one to two meals per week. Fine. That's okay. Moderation. It's not sexy to talk about, but everything in moderation. But any red meat is still very high in saturated fat, which he is sort of soft walking here. Saturated fat is not good, Joy. He did not prevent, he did not provide any data, any new data about saturated fat as Though we've been misinforming or corporatist healthcare priorities, it's all nonsense. There's no new data he presented. Saturated fat still is linked to bad cholesterol, which is still linked to heart disease.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah.
- [51:05]
E
Where did he debunk that? Where, where is he debunked? I mean, just to say it, last week this or early this week, the six childhood vaccines that they were now walking back and making sort of, you know, essentially shared clinical decision making, they provided no surprise, no justification or data to justify that. So all these things, there's no explanatory data, there's. They soft message it. And especially in this case, I think he's, he's going to confuse people.
- [51:36]
B
And can we just show the original food pyramid? Jason, this is B3. I mean, they didn't really change this. Like, you know, it's not as if the government has been saying go out and eat pepperoni. That's never been. My mother was a nutritionist. I grew up with this food pyramid. It's always been saying eat, eat grains, eat fruit, eat vegetables. So I'm really not sure what he thinks he's changed. The government's never said to eat processed foods.
- [51:59]
E
That's exactly right. I mean, this whole make America healthy again slogan, that's exactly what it is, Joy. It's a marketing ploy. There's no substance behind it. I mean, I find it ironic they talk so much about the environment and the environment around it. He's supposedly an environmentalist and a lawyer by a background focused on these issues. The EPA is doing everything possible to make the environment more unhealthy for human health. NIH walking back trillions of dollars of research for future cancer, chemotherapy for other therapeutics. There is a. There's such a contrast in his own government between what their stated intentions are in prevailing policy.
- [52:41]
B
Yeah. And also in how unhealthy he sounds and how he's claiming to make America healthy again. Just. I'm not even going to play my other clip because he actually makes me feel unhealthy. Listening to him speak, I just, it's almost like I can feel the heroin waxing in the air as he's talking. The other thing he did was to change the recommendations, the guidelines to doctors regarding vaccines. And you and I have been talking about this for a long time. I think we've all seen it coming. We knew where he was going with this when he was put in office. They've reduced the number of vaccines recommended from 17 to 11. What does that mean? And what does that mean for not just people who have kids, but also people who are going to vaccinate their kids but send their kids to school with maybe kids who are not vaccinated?
- [53:25]
E
Yeah, I think that's such an important call out, Joy. So a few things. One, you know, he likes to. I think it's important to recognize that he is wanting us to look a lot like Denmark, probably in, you know, across dimensions here. But what are they really saying? They're saying that Denmark has it right from a vaccine standpoint because they do 11 vaccines for children. We do 17. We actually are very close to most Europe, most of our peer European countries that do about 15 to 16, some cases, 17 vaccines against 17 different disease states for children. So we're.
- [54:03]
B
We're.
- [54:03]
E
Denmark's the outlier. We are not the outlier, number one. Number two, Denmark in the United States are very different. To state the obvious point, they are 1 50th our size. They have universal health coverage. They have near zero childhood poverty. Everybody gets vaccinated for their hepatitis B strategy. If a moment. Moms get tested right before birth and they get the vaccine if they test positive. That strategy was trialed here in the United states in the 1980s, Joy. It failed miserably. Tens of thousands of kids ended up getting chronic liver disease because they got exposed, because we just can't do that. We've talked about this. Fragmented healthcare access, high rates of childhood poverty. People don't do as recommended when it comes to vaccine policy. What works for Denmark will not work here. What's the impact for parents of kids? Just people in general? We're seeing it. There's a resurgence when vaccine rates decrease. Take measles, take flu. Everything is lower. We're seeing measles at its Highest rate in 30 years. Flu cases are surging in 45 states. Joy. We also. We have a burden of infectious disease that very few other countries have at our economic development level. Denmark does not have our problems with flu. They don't have our problems with rotavirus. We had 70,000 hospitalizations amongst kids from rotavirus prior to implementation of the vaccine, which now they've made in some ways optional. It's a large. I mean, it doesn't make any sense, but it also. I think it's a broader point. Vaccines compensate for structural gaps in our society and not biological differences. And that's why we have our prevailing vaccine policy. It's to account for the fact that we have several gaps across dimensions in the United States, and it protects kids as a Result. And it protects, frankly, anybody older immunocompromised individuals. It protects our broader society because we have these gaps.
- [56:01]
B
I mean, how do people deal with. I mean, there's a war against autistic people being waged by RFK Jr. Apparently a war on Tylenol. And it feels now like you can't trust anything that our government says about health. Nothing. What they say about vaccines, what they say about measles. He's allowing measles to run rampant. There are people who are forming measles clubs and communities again, that's hot again among these maha people thinking, if my whole family gets measles, we'll be safer. They're allowing this kind of misinformation to become policy. How frightening is that for you as a physician?
- [56:39]
E
Well, you know, they don't. Nobody on his team, Joy, whether it's Oz Macri at fda, Bhattacharya at the nih, none of these individuals are, I, I think are the types of physicians. In the case of Oz and Macri, they're not practicing physicians. Nobody in his, in his coterie, surrounding him in white coats, actually deals with the consequences of their policy. So, one, they're insulated from it. Two, they are in their positions because they took contrarian standpoints to most of the medical community during COVID And so they've been chosen for a specific reason, which is they've been contrarian to begin with and I think personally to seek power. But perhaps a cynical view. I think we need a few things. One, it's important to remember about 80% of the public, according to a recent YouTube economist, Pollution, do not trust RFK. And this is across party lines when it comes to health and medical advice. So he is speaking to a very narrow audience, but that audience has a megaphone, they're loud on social media. And so important. To keep that in mind, I do think the majority of the country is reachable on common sense health advice and public health guidance. They don't want this. And we're going to hopefully continue to see those trends play out and hopefully there's some accountability. But then, two, more broadly, I wish medicine had clearer accountability guidelines for its practitioners, doctors that spread misinformation, just like a doctor that engages in medical malpractice is held accountable and there's repercussions and consequences, but we don't see that in the public domain nearly as much. If I go on and say something objectively wrong, I should be punished, just like if I were to engage in some form of medical malpractice there's clear lines of punishment there and scrutiny and accountability. Why isn't there that paradigm if you're giving bad medical advice? I just don't understand that.
- [58:35]
B
And, you know, my exit question to you, Dr. Gupta, just because we went through this crisis of COVID together, I will let you all know, I will disclose that the person who made me get vaccinated was this man who's on the street right now because it had Trump anywhere near it. I was like, I don't want nothing to do with a vaccine. Trump, anything to do with you. Like, no, you're not going to just get your vaccine. You need to videotape yourself getting it and post it. And I was like, yes, sir. Because I believe this man. I trust him. So you're the only reason I did it, because I was so nervous because Trump had anything to do with it. Right. But I think that lack of trust in government that I felt was because of him, it was personalized to him. But now I feel like so many people don't trust anything that's coming out of the government when it comes to health, because of the people, as you said, he's put in place in your mind, do you and other doctors sit around and talk about how thoroughly Covid, like, destroyed America's kind of just basic conversants on basic health and also our sort of societal cohesion all the time?
- [59:36]
E
Joy. I'm close to the American Academy of Pediatrics and their leadership. I'm on the board of the American Lung association, so I have a chance to talk to individual practitioners, those at the society level. And I see the impacts of this. I see this because there's a lot of people that come into my intensive care unit as a result of not doing things that I wish they did, like getting basic screenings, in some cases basic vaccinations. And because of this information environment that we live in, they end up with consequences that sometimes, in many cases, are irreversible. 40% of people never walk out of an American ICU. So I see this very vividly. And one of the fears, not to leave on a down note necessarily, but one of the fears is, well, we need to see. Well, we as a society need to be shocked out of this in some way that, you know, another pandemic. Something here to, to showcase the realities of. Of what we're seeing sort of on an individual basis, but at scale. Does something bad have to happen for us to realize that this is not working, this can't continue? I don't know. I Hope not. I'm, I'm on a note of hope. I will say that again. I do not think the vast majority of the American people want this. And yet the 2015, 20%, whatever we want to x percent of people that perhaps are disciples of the Mahav movement, they have done something when it comes to mastering media and the manipulation of media and the information environment that has been effective. So I'm hoping we can wrangle that.
- [61:14]
B
Dr. Ven Gupta, one of the most trusted voices, honestly, I'm telling you. And he can verify that if I have a question about anything to do with health, I text him first. He really is brilliant. We appreciate you so much, Dr. Ven Gupta. You are so fantastic. Hopefully you will come back often. Congrats on being a part of the Midus network. We love everything you do and we will be following all of your things. We're going to put all the links in the chat.
- [61:36]
E
Thank you, Joy. So good to see you again.
- [61:38]
B
Great to see you. Happy New Year. So there you have it. We try to get some trusted voices on because, yes, people are sick, everybody's got the, the flu, and you can kind of understand why. All right, so as we continue to move on, allow me to read to you from the online history of the Federal Reserve Board. No, no, don't try to fall asleep. Don't get a cocktail. Just listen. It's not gonna be so bad. Let me read to you. This is from the Federal Reserve Board's online site. Quote. The international monetary system after World War II was dubbed the Bretton Woods System after the meeting of 44 countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944. The countries agreed to keep their currencies fixed, but adjustable in exceptional situations to the dollar. And the dollar was fixed to Gold since 1958. When the Bretton woods system became operational, countries settled their international balances in dollars and US Dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 an ounce. The United States had the responsibility of keeping the dollar price of gold fixed and had to adjust the supply of dollars to maintain confidence in future gold convertibility. Initially, the Bretton woods system operated as planned. Japan and Europe were still rebuilding their post war economies and demand for US Goods and services and dollars was high. Since the United states had about 3, 3/4 of the world's official gold reserves, the system seems secure. In the 1960s, European and Japanese exports became more competitive with US exports. The US share of world output decreased and so did the need for dollars, making converting those dollars to gold More desirable. The deteriorating US balance of payments combined with military spending and foreign aid resulted in a large supply of dollars around the world. Meanwhile, the gold supply had increased only marginally. Eventually there were more foreign held dollars than the United States had gold. The country was vulnerable to a run on gold and there was a loss of confidence in the US Government's ability to meet its obligations, thereby threatening both the dollar's position as the world's reserve currency and the overall Bretton woods system. Many efforts were made to adjust the US Balance of payments and to uphold the Bretton woods system both domestically and internationally. These were meant to be quick fixes until the balance of payments could readjust. But they proved to be merely postponing the inevitable. In other words, the US Enjoyed low inflation, cheap goods, many of them manufactured here. We used to make refrigerators and things, right? And basically free money. Woo. Free money. And everything was priced in dollars around the world, including oil. So along comes Republican President Richard Nixon, who in the midst of a falling economy and rising inflation, looking to get reelected, not only did the Watergate stuff right, he did two other things. In June, as we discussed earlier on this show, he declared, well, we didn't discuss this early on the show, but in June he declared the war on drugs.
- [64:47]
G
America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this.
- [64:56]
B
Enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all out offensive. I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to.
- [65:07]
G
Fuel this kind of an offensive.
- [65:09]
B
This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply.
- [65:14]
G
As well as Americans who may be.
- [65:16]
B
Stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world. It will be government wide, pulling together the nine different fragmented areas within the.
- [65:24]
G
Government in which this problem is now being handled. And it will be nationwide in terms.
- [65:30]
B
Of a new educational program that we.
- [65:33]
G
Trust will result from the discussions that we have had.
- [65:39]
B
And then in August of that same year, 1971, reading again from the Federal Reserve's online history archive, Nixon unfixed the dollar to gold quote. With inflation on the rise and a gold run looming, Nixon's administration coordinated a plan for bold action. From August 13 to 15, 1971, Nixon and 15 advisors, including his Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns, Treasury Secretary John Connally, and Undersecretary for International Monetary Affairs Paul Volcker, who was later Federal Reserve Chair under Reagan, met at the presidential retreat at Camp David and created a new economic plan. On the evening of August 15, 1971, Nixon addressed the nation on a new economic policy that not only was intended to correct the balance of payments, but also to stave off inflation and lower the unemployment rate. The first order of business was for the gold window to be closed. Foreign governments could no longer exchange their dollars for gold. In effect, the international monetary system turned into a fiat system, meaning unfixed currency that relies really on promises rather than on a physical thing like gold. Returning to reading this a few months later, the Smithsonian agreement attempted to maintain pegged exchange rates. But the Bretton woods system ended soon thereafter. The second order was for a 90 day freeze on wages and prices to check inflation. This marked the first time the government enacted wage and price controls outside of a war. It was an attempt to bring down inflation without increasing the unemployment rate or slowing the economy. In addition, an import surcharge was set at 10% to ensure that American products would not be at a disadvantage because of exchange rates. That's a tariff. Shortly after the plan was implemented, the growth of employment and production in the United States increased. Inflation was practically halted during the 90 day wage price freeze, but would soon reappear as the monetary momentum in support of inflation had already begun. Nixon's new economic policy represented a coordinated attack on the simultaneous problems of unemployment, inflation and the disequilibrium in the balance of payments. The plan was one of many prescriptions written to cure inflation, which would eventually continue to rise. One year later, after doing those dramatic and drastic things to curb inflation so that he could get reelected, the Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. He got more desperate because his plan of unfixing our dollar to gold didn't stop the economy from continuing to slide down now in the modern era. The other part of what Nixon did, that deal that he cut with the Saudis, and this was not long before he left office, as I believe in 1973, to fix the oil exports of the Saudi regime to the dollar, which was now unfixed to gold. So think about that. The Saudis are now pricing their oil in a dollar that really has nothing underpinning it but US stability and promises to pay back our notes. Fast forward to June of 2024, when what a lot of people viewed as the beginning of the end of the dollar began, that is in June of 2024 when that Saudi deal to price their oil in unfixed dollars ended and they declined to renew it. Even Donald Trump seemed to see that this was a problem. So here he is speaking at the World Economic Forum in July of 2024.
- [69:26]
G
So my specific question is, would you.
- [69:29]
D
Strengthen or modify any of These economic sanctions programs, particularly Russia, including the pipeline you mentioned.
- [69:38]
G
Well, it's a great question. The problem with what we have with sanctions, and I was a user of sanctions, but I put them on and take them off as quickly as possible, because ultimately it kills your dollar and it kills everything the dollar represents. And we have to continue to have that be the world currency. I think it's important, I think would be losing a war. If we lost. If we lost the dollar as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war. That would make us a third world country, and we can't let it happen. So I use sanctions very powerfully against countries that deserve it. And then I take them off because, look, you're losing Iran, you're losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency. As you know better than anybody. All of these things are happening. You're losing so many countries because there's so much conflict with all of these countries that you're going to lose the that, and we can't lose that. So I want to use sanctions as little as possible.
- [70:37]
B
Now, Donald Trump, ain't that right? But even he is like a broken clock. That's right. Once in a while, because. Let me turn off the fan, because what he's talking about with sanctions is that when Russia was sanctioned for invading first Crimea and then all of Ukraine, what those sanctions meant was that Russia was no longer able to use the SWIFT system. Swift. If you ever try to wire money, SWIFT is an international code for wiring money, and it is based in dollars. The SWIFT system is controlled by us. When sanctions happened, Russia was blocked from using swift. That's what those sanctions meant. So if you sanction a country financially or an individual financially, they can no longer move money by wiring it through the SWIFT system. What Trump was saying is if you lock Russia out of that system for long, they're gonna find some other way to sell their shit. They've got a lot of oil and they want to sell it. So eventually they're just gonna say, well, f y', all, we're going to find a way to sell our dollars in rubles. Even if rubles are inflated or deflated or their currency isn't strong, they're just going to sell their shit in rubles, or maybe they'll sell it in Chinese Yuan. Sanctioned countries eventually get sick of being sanctioned and they try to find a way out, enter Brics.
- [72:14]
G
Brazil, to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the Standard. And that's okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game, too. So anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10% charge.
- [72:28]
B
Is that immediate, sir, or should they engage in some behavior?
- [72:33]
G
Well, if they're a member of BRICS, they're going to have to pay 10% tariff just for that one thing, and they won't be a member alone. I thought BRICS was, you know, I said this about a year ago and it largely broke up. But, you know, there are a couple that hang around, but I thought it largely broke up. BRICS is not, in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard. And we're not going to lose the standard at any time. If you have a smart president, you will never lose the standard. If you have a stupid president like the last one, you would lose the standard. You wouldn't have the dollar as you. And if we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war. We would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen. The dollar. You ever hear the expression dollar is king? The dollar is king. We're going to keep it that way, okay? And I'm just saying if people want to challenge it, they can, but they're gonna have to pay a big price. And I don't think any of them are willing to pay that price.
- [73:40]
B
Oh, you don't think so, Donald? This is why, again, he's a broken clock. That was right about the dollar being in jeopardy because the end of that Saudi deal was a problem for the dollar, the unpinning of dollars to gold, meaning we don't know what's in Fort Knox, but whatever's in Fort Knox ain't underpinning our dollar. Our dollar is just based on people's perceptions of the US do, stability. But we also, once the Bretton woods system came in, spent like drunken sailors. The US Was just spending, spending, spending, building up our military, free money, got rid of manufacturing, let that go, became an information economy. We were building, building and enjoying, having essentially a free economic ride. And now, because other countries have said, you know what? We're getting tired of being abused by you guys. We're getting tired of being pushed around. Maybe we'll form our own little alliances, like the EU formed the European Union to put all them together into essentially a United States of Europe so that they could combine their economies to be stronger together. Until the Brits foolishly bounced and Brexited out of it. But that EU alliance is designed to make them like the United States. Right? A combined set of economies. Well, Donald Trump said BRICS is over yet? No. Let me read you this from Africa News. The first China led BRICS joint naval exercise is due to start Friday in South African waters. This was way back in 2023. They did joint naval exercises. BRICS initially consisted of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. And they did joint military exercises back in 2023 because they were already thinking about how do we get ourselves out from under the thumb of the United States, out from under their boot. Fast forward to this month. Those joint naval exercises that South Africa hosted in 2023 this year they were hosted by China and Venezuela because they too were sanctioned and the President and his wife and the leadership of that country were no longer able to do business through Swift, etc. Guess what? They were selling what little oil Venezuela was selling in. They were looking to sell that in Chinese Yuan. China is eating our lunch and our breakfast while we are trying to scramble to build an imperial power base in the Western Hemisphere to belatedly try to counter China's expansion globally. Not just with their presence and their willingness to build infrastructure without questioning people about their human rights records. They're doing it in Africa. They're building up the Caribbean. They're building up any place we've left. Everywhere USAID is gone. China's in there. But they're also deeply involved in Central and South America. And so the United States is attempting to defend the control of the physical resources in our region and trying to force our region to keep using our ungold fettered dollar. And we've done this before. Let's look at C4.
- [77:01]
A
When we looked back at history, we found that the US has done this before involving different countries in different countries. President so let's take a closer look. To get answers, we went to the office of Historian, Congressional Research Services and the research database EBS CEO. According to EBS CEO, in 1965, U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson sent 22,000American troops to the Dominican Republic. The goal was to stop former President Juan Boche, who had been overthrown in 1963 in a coup, from returning to power. The US feared it could become a new communist government. In 1983, after Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was overthrown and killed, President Ronald Reagan ordered the US military to invade the island. He said the invasion was meant to protect American medical students living there and to prevent Grenada from falling under communist influence. And in 1989 President George H.W. bush ordered a U.S. invasion of Panama. About 24,000 U.S. troops were sent over to remove the country's leader General Many Manuel Noriega who had been charged with drug trafficking. He was captured and taken to the US put on trial and sent to prison with your verify. I'm Megan Brown.
- [78:16]
B
And they started that in the 80s or in the in the six 70s. They left out the 1950s when we overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran to prevent them from nationalizing their oil. They left out the fact that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was looking to nationalize their oil and potentially sell it in Euros. We left out Libya and Muammar Gaddafi attempting to a gold based currency that all of Africa could use together to sell their abundant resources without going through the United States. So we have a history of imperialism in our region to try to force these former colonial states to remain in the United States sphere of influence. We're no different than what Russia is doing to Ukraine. And a lot of what we've done in the past is to overthrow democratically elected governments, replace them with friendly dictators and then throw out those dictators when they stopped cooperating with us and looking the other way while those same dictators dealt drugs into our streets. They didn't care about that. And now we're looking to use the same imperialist tactic on steroids because we don't have a Congress strong enough to stop our imperialist wannabe McKinley president. And if you think Congress is mad about it, you don't understand that they all want the same thing. For the dollar to remain supreme and for us to remain have the primacy in our region even though we've been ignoring the region and letting China cook. Here's Rick Scott of Florida.
- [79:57]
G
What the President did and Marco Rubio.
- [79:59]
B
And Pete Headseff and everybody, our military, Maria Karina Machado and what they did.
- [80:05]
D
In Venezuela is going to change Latin America. This is the start of changing Venezuela. Then we're going to fix Cuba.
- [80:11]
B
Nicaragua will get fixed next year we'll get a new president in Colombia. We're going to start the democracy is coming back to this hemisphere. So the President oh we're going to fix Cuba, we're going to fix it, we're going to fix Colombia. You've got a whole list that Rick Scott I want to talk about fraud. The guy whose company defrauded the United States. Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare system to the tune of trillions of dollars. He now says we're going to fix Colombia, fix Cuba and then what's going to happen to those countries resources? Well, according to Donald Trump, he's going to sell them and we're going to profit and to hell with the people of those countries. Because I will remind you again, we have not, excuse me, removed the regime in Venezuela. We just removed the leader and left the regime in place. Joining me now is foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst, One of my favorites to talk to, David Rothkoff. How are you, David? Happy New Year.
- [81:11]
D
Same to you. Joanne.
- [81:14]
B
I just wanna let you cook. Tell me what you make of this Neo imperialism. I'm calling it trumperialism. It's American imperialism, only dumber in my view. But what do you of it?
- [81:25]
D
Well, I think that's a good way to talk about it. It's, you know, that's not so neo, you know, I mean, we're doing what we did years ago, we're doing what other countries did years ago. We bought into this notion which was articulated pretty much in the starkest possible terms the other day by Stephen Miller that Mike makes right, that the world is about power and that power is all that matters. And if we want Venezuela, we should take it. We want Greenland, we should take it. We want other things, we should take them and you know, they're not even stopping that. You know, remember, you know, all the way back like four days ago when they said this was about drugs. Well, you know, it's not about drugs anymore. It's about oil. And we're going to get a bunch of oil. And you know, I mean, you know, we are the world's largest oil producer, so it shouldn't be that high a priority for us. But you know, somebody's going to get rich off of this. And you know, I think we've got to watch real closely because we're not just dealing with imperialists, we're dealing with the most corrupt administration in American history. And every time there's a deal, there seems to be a Trump or a Lutnik or a witness cough or somebody in the wings cashing in on what is happening. And Lord knows that for sure is what's going to happen here with, you know, Trump's friends and big oil and who knows, maybe Trump's family, I don't know. But it's, it's, it's repugnant and essentially it's undoing what we've spent 80 years trying to do in terms of, of Building an international order. Not that we did a perfect job by any means, but there was at least this premise that we were going to try to make a rules based order. And these guys just have tossed all that out the way. They don't care.
- [83:23]
B
They don't. And I think they actually hate American history. My working theory is that from the Supreme Court, conservatives on down, they loathe the 20th century because to them all the bad things happened in the 20th century. Women got the right to vote, labor got the right to organize, women left the home and never turned around and went back. They got the right to abortions, blacks got civil rights and were able to vote for them. It was an abomination and they are now erasing it. They're erasing the whole century except the parts about using drug dealing as a CIA asset because it depends on who you are as a drug dealer, right? Donald Trump didn't have any problem with the Honduran President dealing drugs into the American streets. Just as Reagan and Bush didn't have any problems with Venezuela dealing cocaine into American streets. If we get what we want.
- [84:17]
D
No, I mean, that's true and this has been true of America for a long time. And you can go back to Teddy Roosevelt and find examples of other going in and taking over countries because banana companies wanted it, because other kinds of US companies wanted it. We fought a lot of wars about, I mean, how in your lifetime, in my lifetime, there were three, four oil wars that really never end. We keep going to war for these oil companies. And I think the other side of it though, and I think you're right to point out this predicate of drugs is this administration has figured out they have a modus operandi, which is if they can make something an emergency, then the President can do whatever he wants. And so you'd say, well, these are narco terrorists. They're not even the biggest drug dealers in their zip code, right? But we said, well, they're narco terrorists so we can go and invade and do whatever we want. And you know, you listen to Kristi Noem today talking about a woman who was trying to drive away from a police stop in Minneapolis and they killed her. And she said, well, she's a domestic terrorist. And they just, they think they, they found a magic formula which, which gives the President license and the people around the President license to be killers, to be tyrants, to ignore the law. And it's happening in every area of this administration. I don't know, I just got off a plane and I've been Reading about this stuff for the past couple of weeks, and I don't want to wind you up, but what's happening in Venezuela, what happened in Minneapolis, what is happening with RFK Jr. With cutting back on vaccines, what has happened with Rubio and getting rid of usaid? What is happening with Lee Zeldin and what he's doing with EPA in area after area after area, this government is killing people. And we've got leaders in the Democratic Party who are like, well, we need to work together. And I don't want to use words like. Like impeachment and stuff like this. Holy shit. You know, I mean, what do they have to do before we call them for what they are? You know, this is a band of criminals stealing money and murdering people and making millions of people around the world suffer, you know, without any regard for what's right or what's in the interest of the American people. And frankly, I don't get. Maybe you have an idea. I don't get why people are not angrier.
- [87:13]
B
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't know why people are not angry. I think people are starting to become numb to it. Right? I mean, when you have the Democrats saying we must continue to fund the government that's abusing us and abusing our constituents, we must fund it. There's just not a lot of, I guess, strategy on the other side. And to go back to what you're saying about the corruption, there are two things I would love for you to react to. Number one, and the complete warping in very short order of the United States military. We knew when Pete Hegseth came in, who has no qualifications to be the Pentagon leader, and then they changed the name, at least in their own minds, to the Department of War. We suddenly have a United States military, apparently, whose job is that they are like the bail bondsman. They are going to pick up the current president of another country of a sovereign nation, as if they're, like, going to pick up somebody for a DUI and they know where he's at home and using them as law enforcement. And then they're also being used in the American streets, deployed into our streets as some sort of quasi law enforcement. I'll start with that. What do you make of the warping of the American military's mission?
- [88:19]
D
Well, I don't think any secretary, I mean, clearly Pete Hicks is the least qualified person ever to be Secretary of Defense, but I don't think any senior official of the United States has ever done more to debase the American military than Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump, because essentially what they're saying is the military is the errand boys of authoritarians who don't care about the law. And he's got the military going into the streets of American cities to enforce the law. He's got the military doing what they called a law enforcement operation in Venezuela, which was just, again, words to get around the War Powers act and so forth. But, but, you know, there's a. There's a subtext to this, and it's.
- [89:08]
B
One, by the way, to say nothing of murdering people at sea. They've turned our military into pirates who just murder people at sea.
- [89:16]
D
They murder people at sea. And also, how many scores of people did they murder in Venezuela? You know, that when, that, when they went into this thing. And what is troubling to me, I mean, I knew Trump was a bad guy. I knew Hegseth was a bad guy. But the last time around with Trump, there were people, there was a Secretary of defense, there were generals who said, no, you can't do this. And he's gotten rid of them systematically. And now he's got people, generals, including this, you know, raising Cain, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who just click their heels together and say, yes, sir. How high, sir? Do whatever the hell he wants, ignore their oaths to the Constitution, not to follow illegal orders. And every time somebody does that, it empowers Trump. It empowers Stephen Miller. It makes them think they can do whatever they want. And they've turned the police, just like they've. They've turned the military, just like they've turned ice into, you know, kind of the. The stormtroopers of an authoritarian state, as opposed to people that we revered because they were fighting for our freedoms and they were sacrificing a lot. And, and, you know, that doesn't. That's not going to go away, you know, soon. And, you know, what if they invade Greenland, a NATO ally, and all of a sudden, sudden we blow up NATO or they go into some other craz. I mean, he was talking the same day they went into Venezuela about that he had to go into Mexico because Mexico's president wasn't really in charge and he needed to clean up Mexico. And it's like, oh, my God. I mean, he is completely out of control in the Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike, for the most part. Roll over and say, scratch my belly, boss. What a way to start the new year.
- [91:14]
B
I mean, it is absolutely insane. And you mentioned Stephen Miller. You evoked the Crypt Keeper himself. So let's play him Jason, if you could just let me know when you've got C9.
- [91:24]
C
The Premier of Greenland and the premier of Denmark and other Danish officials are responding to a Twitter post from your White. Katie Miller, herself a former Trump White House official, showing Greenland covered with an American flag, saying, soon after that was posted, President Trump repeated the claim that the US Needs Greenland for national security reasons. The Danish prime minister responded to this in an interview earlier today, as reported by Bloomberg, quote, I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says it wants Greenland. But I will also make it clear that if the US Chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War. Can you rule out that the US Is ever going to try to take Greenland by force? Well, let me go back a step. The president has been clear for months now, so I know you're treating this as breaking news. The president has been clear for months now that the United States States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus. Right, but your wife posted that like hours after the Venezuela operation. But that's why it's newly relevant. No, and I'll talk with you about it for an hour. I think it's really important conversation. I just wanted to. I just wanted to reset, Jake, by making clear that it has been the formal position of the US Government since the beginning of this administration, frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States. The president has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the US Government. Right, but can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table? It wouldn't be a military action against Greenland. Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is by what right does Denmark assert control over. Over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO for the United States to secure the Arctic region to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States. And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country. That's a process we're going to have as a community of nations. So you can't take it off the table that the US Would use military force to seize Greenland. You can't take. Jake, I understand you're trying very hard to. Which, which again is your job. I respect it is great to get exactly the headline right. That Catchy headline. Trying to get an answer that says that says Miller refuses to rule out the. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to, to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. One last question, Stephen. Does that make any sense?
- [94:17]
B
So it's Manifest Destiny meets 1930s cosplay. I'm sure it sounded better in the original German, but what do you make of Stephen Miller's supposition, effectively that NATO, out of fear of the United States, would simply give us another country's land? And I will Note that the 30,000 some odd people who live on Greenland are mostly indigenous. So essentially they're treating them like the Nez Perce or the Cherokee. We're just gonna take your land.
- [94:48]
D
Look, this guy is clearly a smug asshole. I mean, but he's not just a smug, he is a smug, ignorant. And I think, you know, when you listen to him say it, you would not know that the largest military base in Greenland is us. You would not know that Greenland is already part of America's defenses because Denmark is a NATO ally and Greenland participates in our defenses with N. Denmark and these other countries, it is clear this has nothing to do with defense. Once again, Trump has, you know, somebody has gone up to Trump and said rare earth minerals. And Trump thinks there's a way to cash in on all of this. And you know, but you know, Stephen Miller doesn't know anything about NATO. He doesn't know anything about history. You know, he says, well, what is Denmark's claim? Well, what was the claim of the English who came to the America? What was the claim of the Spanish who came to the Americas or the French? They didn't have a claim. What Miller is saying is again, Mike makes right. And in the middle of that interview, that's exactly what he said. He said power was the final arbiter of anything in international relations. But I think he's wrong, not only wrong about history. I, you know, I mean, there's a standing order by the Danish Defense Forces that if anybody tries to take Greenland, they are to shoot to kill.
- [96:23]
B
Fire. Bat.
- [96:25]
D
If the United States went in and asserted itself in Greenland, it would be the end of NATO. You talk about, you know, American security. Blowing up the most important security alliance that has existed in the world since ever because the President of the United States is greedy and corrupt and stupid would be a terrible move to make But NATO could not survive the United States attacking another member state of NATO. And so, you know, this is, you know, and, you know, another part of this which I find troubling and also kind of weird is how did Stephen Miller get to be the Secretary of every everything? Stephen Miller is the Deputy White House Chief of Staff for domestic issues. He was initially responsible for immigration issues. In the past two months, he's been put in charge of the US China relationship. He was standing next to the President and Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State when they announced the Venezuela thing. He's now seemingly with his wife, on the cutting edge of America's next great colonial conquest. Conquest in Greenland. This guy has more power than anybody. And that alone, given the fact that most of the time Stephen Miller looks like he'd rather be in his basement pulling the legs off of little insects is a little troubling. Right? I mean, this guy is clearly twisted.
- [97:55]
B
Yeah. His family is perplexed by the fact that they, you know, his grandmother, great grandmother, were there, were Jewish immigrants to this country. But he seems like he'd probably be rooting for the other side in World War II. The other piece of it is that there is a group of these sort of strong men, figures who see themselves that way and who are all kind of doing the same thing. Donald Trump spoiling. To try to expand, you need to put the Latin America map up. This is C6, if you have it. He thinks that this is his playground. He's going to take it all. All of the Americas belongs to Donald Trump. Plus Greenland. He thinks the Arctic as well. So you've got him doing it over here. You've got Xi Jinping looking at Taiwan being like, hey, buddy, you know, we're probably going to eat you alive as well. You've got Putin doing the same thing, obviously trying to gobble up the parts of the former Soviet Union. You've also got Bibi Netanyahu, who is just unhinged and unabashed as well. They've recently approved more settlements on the West Bank. They're going to basically vivisect the west bank, eat up all of Jerusalem, half of the West Bank. They're apparently going to turn Gaza into a real estate development for Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner to own. It's as if there's no law on Earth anymore.
- [99:15]
D
Well, or it's the law of the jungle again. And I think this is something Putin was pushing for. And obviously Putin has guided Trump on a lot of things. It's in Putin's interest for the United States to embrace this idea of spheres of influence. Russia can do what it wants to do in its neighborhood. The US Will do what it wants to in its neighborhood. China will do what it wants to in their neighborhood. And in fact, you know, as far back as 2019, you had Fiona Hill testifying that she thought the Russians thought that was kind of the deal. Deal. The US could get Venezuela, the Russians could get Ukraine. And, you know, clearly, despite whatever he may be saying, Trump has pulled back US Support for Ukraine. Hugely, hugely from Biden levels of support. He's pulled back U.S. support for NATO. He's refocused the U.S. away from this issue. All of this is playing into Putin's hands. And the big winners from day one of this administration. And every single day, you know, the, the cash keeps coming out of the, the slot machine of geopolitics for him is Xi Jinping. Every single day, Trump is president, China gets stronger.
- [100:30]
B
Yeah.
- [100:31]
D
And, and, you know, and he sees, he, he's looking at this going, okay, so I got three years to get Taiwan.
- [100:37]
B
Yeah.
- [100:38]
D
Because I know the next American president probably won't feel this way. So I've got a window of opportunity to do the kind of things the US has pushed back against for the past 80 years.
- [100:50]
B
A couple more things. One, if we're talking about spheres of influence, given the fact that Saudi Arabia no longer trades its oil in our dollars and that they are on their own, they're trying to diversify their economy, they're into everything. Suddenly they're doing comedy shows, and they're trying to get involved in golf and sports, and they're trying to invest in anything other than oil. And they are a power that is heavily invested in the United States, as is Qatar, who controls the sphere of influence in that region. Because Israel is unbowed, it feels like Saudi Arabia is unbowed, and Iran is not going anywhere. Who runs that sphere of influence?
- [101:28]
D
Look, first of all, I think Trump thinks wherever he wants to be in charge, he's in charge. Having said that, I don't think he wants to be deeply involved in the Middle East. East. And if he can sort of say, bb, you handle this, and mbs, you handle that, we'll come in if we have to bomb Iran every so often. But basically, we want to pull the US out of this. And by the way, the Russians are playing their own role there. I think it's a place where, frankly, he doesn't have a huge amount of appetite, and that's why he's letting you know, Bibi get away with what he's getting away with, and that's why he's deferring more and more to allies in the Gulf and so forth. And, you know, to some degree, letting countries take care of their own regions isn't the worst thing in the world. What we're talking about here is having big bully countries, right, you know, come in and dictate what they want, when they want it, everywhere in the world in real time. I got to say, by the way, he's also losing the number one or number two trading partner, investment partner of every country in the Middle east is China. The number one or number two trading investment partner of every country in Africa is China. The number one or number two trading partner, investment partner of every country in South America is China. And. And Trump, with his crazy tariffs and his crazy deficits and his crazy policies for the dollar has given China win after win in these areas. People are looking at the Chinese currency and saying, oh, well, we need to be more in that, that's more stable. And in fact, when Trump goes, and I guess next month, he can replace the Fed chairman whenever he does. When Trump goes and replaces the chairman of the Fed and puts in a little puppet who's going to change interest rates because it's good for Trump's political ratings, people are going to flee the dollar. And we don't realize how much of our power has been intangibles. The degree to which people trust us, the degree to which we have had the full faith in and credit of the United States behind our debt instruments and behind our dollar and so forth, those things are gone up puff in a poof of smoke.
- [103:55]
B
Yeah, and they're not. And I try to tell people this all the time, that it's not a matter of Gavin Newsom becomes president and it goes back to normal. That's not how it works. When the supply chains are gone, they're gone. And people now peep at the United States as an effectively an unstable democracy that lurches from normal presidents like Barack Obama all the way to Trump and then to a relatively normal normie guy like Biden, then all the way back to Trump. We're not stable, and our dollar is now unhinged to anything tangible. It's all based on vibes. It's based on whether you trust us. It's just a trust US Currency. It's not based on gold. So it doesn't matter what's in Fort Knox. It ain't nothing to do with the dollar. How much of A a threat. My exit question to you, my friend, is because brics, where the sea in brics is China, Brazil, Russia, India, China, Saudi Arabia, plus all the other countries that have joined Egypt as well. How much of a threat is that to our dominance of the world as we've known it throughout both our lifetimes?
- [104:59]
D
Look, the threat to American dominance in the world is one country, but it's none of the BRICs. It's the United States. The biggest threat to the United States by far is Donald Trump and the Trump administration. He has got economic policies that are exploding our deficit, weakening our dollar and making our trading partners not trust us anymore, not want to deal with us. He has got immigration policies that are people who used to come to the US to study saying, I'm not going to the US to study. And by the way, as you say, that's not coming back. You know, there's a new president in three years. You think somebody's going to say, well, I'm going to spend four years in this country. The president could change again, the Congress could change again. We don't know. We don't trust them. It took 250 years for the United States to build up the level of trust that we've had now. And there were plenty of slips along the way. And what is happening now in that area, in the way we treat the environment and the way we treat our alliances and the way that we treat science, you know, how do you trust a country that's saying, you know, when it comes to health care, I think we're going to go and embrace the 17th century view of vaccines, you know, or how do you, how do you, how do you work with a country that is reversing all of the social gains that have been made everywhere else in the world? And I think your point is absolutely critical and the right one to end this conversation on, which is there is no Democrat who will reverse the damage Trump has done on day one or year one or in the next four or five years. And in fact, the thing that I really urge people to look at is not just political outcomes, look at the sources of power. The reason Trump is in power is because the rich guys who write the checks, who determine who the candidates are, the billionaires, the oligarchs, they've said, yeah, I can cut a deal with this guy and we're going to get more money. And those guys aren't going away. Those are the ones who've allowed this to happen the way it is. And so we need a real discussion about the nature of power in America, about the nature of our system. And we need to know that it's going to take us 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years to fix what Donald Trump has already destroyed, much less what he's going to do damage to in the next three years.
- [107:39]
B
David Rothkoff, those were bars. I feel like you should just have a metaphorical mic and drop it, because, my friend, you just said the words. I appreciate you. I hope you can make more time for us. Just don't get your schedule too full between 6pm Eastern and 8pm Eastern, because I'm gonna be hollering again. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you.
- [108:01]
D
Anytime. It's always a pleasure.
- [108:02]
B
Thank you so much. You heard him. You heard the man. And that is one of the finest analysts of foreign policy and national security on Earth. And what he said is real. We're gonna clip that and make sure that you guys can rehear that on our social media and everywhere, because you can't unsee what the world has seen, that we are, we are not reliable. The United States. And I'm not talking about the president. I'm talking about the people. The American people are so erratic that we on purpose, apparently put back into power someone who committed insurrection, someone who is a serial fraudster going all the way back to the 1990s, someone who bankrupted himself five times his companies. Someone who could not run casinos in Atlantic City without running them into the ground, someone who ran an airline into the ground, a games company into the ground, a fake university into the ground and ended up being sued by the State of New York. Someone who was never successful in business, but then played a successful businessman on tv. And that was enough for tens of millions of Americans to believe that he was someone who should be President of the United States. They believed it because he was a television character that they liked. The American people are the problem. Because the American people cannot be counted on to not follow Donald Trump with maybe a sane person. Maybe it's the governor of illinois, maybe it's J.B. pritzker. And then after that, maybe we go down to J.D. vance. Maybe we get a normal president again, and then maybe we elect another one and another one, and we ratchet back and forth between relatively normal and really insane. And then we have two political parties who are incapable of reacting to the onset of autocracy. The Democrats are paralyzed. The Republicans are feckless, cowardly and complicit. And so then the American people become more and more demoralized. You know who used to say that that is the way that the, that they could take over America without firing a shot. Defectors who used to be spies for the old Soviet Union, former Russian spies who defected to places like US and Canada, would say, this is how we take your country without firing a shot. I was watching one of them, this was a gentleman who actually defected to Canada, and he said, we take the momentum the way that the Chinese do China again. And in their martial arts, you fire a punch and you deflect that punch, and then you allow that arm and fist to continue going in the direction it was going. You use the momentum of your adversary to go in whatever direction it's going. And so if there's conflict in the United States, racialized conflict, conflict between the sexes, conflict over gender identity, whatever that is, all that the Russians had to do was to continue to move us and let us continue to push the momentum in that direction to the point where our own beliefs, our own failures destroy us without them having to ever invade us. They don't have to use their nukes on us. We've destroyed ourselves and Donald Trump. Electing Donald Trump is perhaps the greatest catastrophic error that American voters could have made and that they made since putting George W. Bush back in office. These gangster presidents who are so beholden to the real owners of the country, the oligarchs, the billionaires, the people who don't care about the national interest, they just wanna continue to enrich themselves. And no, there's never enough money that's gonna make them satisfied. They wanna be trillionaires and then they're gonna wanna be like quadra trillionaires, whatever the multiple of trillionaire is. And they don't really care about the national interest because they're attempting to go right back to what the country was in the beginning, an oligarchy where the Thomas Jeffersons and James Madison's of the world didn't give a shit, didn't give two shits about what happened even to all the other white men. They just cared about being rich and not being taxed by the crown. And if that's all you care about, you build a country designed to make sure that you stay rich and that the people who make you rich, meaning your workers, whether they are enslaved people or indentured servants or later on, factory workers, have no power to stand in the way of your unending greed and wealth. And we really haven't changed. We had one century where we really did fundamentally change that, the 20th century. But this current iteration of conservatives have erased the 20th century. At least they're in the process of erasing it. And then all you have to do this is the other thing that this Russian, former Russian spy said is that you simply demoralize the population of your adversary. As somebody is saying in the chat, to the point where they are so dumbed down, they are so ignorant, they are so unknowledgeable of history or the world that they can't fight back. And even if they did know the information, they wouldn't want to fight back because they're so morally exhausted. And so you have a country where people who no one can confirm are even federal agents are now shooting 37 year old women in the head. And a good percentage of the country are cheering and are thinking that that is absolutely fine. We are so morally decrepit at this point that there are millions of Americans who will not mourn the death of a 37 year old woman who was leaving the scene of an ICE arrest in a suburban neighborhood in Minnesota. This was not in the mean streets. This was around people's homes. Those ICE agents, bullets could have wound up in the crib of an infant. They could have wound up in an old lady sitting by her window. They were just shooting because if this person was attempting to stop them from kidnapping someone, according to Kristi Noem in her cosplay outfit, they're a domestic terrorist. And guess what? A domestic terrorist is anyone the Trump regime says is a domestic terrorist. I've seen video of people being arrested for simply speaking up against the administration. They're going to arrest journalists. They've already thrown a journalist to the ground and detained her. This is what they're doing. And then they're saying Maduro is a criminal. Trump is Maduro. Maduro rigged an election and took power and control even though he had gotten the minority of the votes. Well, so did Trump. The first time in our rigged system, he got the minority of the votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 3 million more. He still took power. Maduro is a strong man who abuses his people. So does Trump. How is Trump that much better? Maduro was allowing drug dealing to take place. That was poisoning the American people. So did Trump. The previous Justice Department under Biden, prosecuted and convicted Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, of literally poisoning the American people with drugs. And Trump let him out because he's like, he's like me. He was prosecuted by the wrong prosecutors. Trump is no different from Maduro. So what happens if in some other capital, let's say in China, they decide that Donald Trump is stealing from The American people, and they issue a sealed indictment for Donald John Trump. They seal it. Can they send their military to Washington and kidnap him and take him back to Beijing for trial? That's what Trump just did. And I will note, as some folks have noted, and as David Rothkoff implied, civilians also died in Venezuela. So our military is murdering people in Venezuela, murdering people at sea, murdering Trinidadian fishermen. There is no law. And so I will end, as I began. Almost everything your government, whether it's a D or R, tells you when it comes to national security is very likely bullshit. It's always been very likely bullshit. The premise for going into Vietnam was bullshit. We were just trying to control who was the leader of Vietnam so that they would play ball with our manufacturing companies. The premise of the Korean War, bullshit. Iraq War, bullshit. When we invaded Kuwait to basically take control of their oil fields. And by the way, last thing I will note here before we end, when we took over Kuwait in a blatant war for oil under George Herbert Walker Bush, the former CIA director who was running Central American leaders as CIA assets when we took over Kuwait, you know what the Kuwaitis did? They burned their own oil fields. Venezuela is a nation of 30 million people. If you think they're just gonna let Donald Trump and his friends and Marco Rubio run their country. And Stephen Miller. You think Stephen Miller would be safe on the streets of Caracas right now if he landed? How many bodyguards do you think he would need to get from door to door? Do you think they're just gonna sit back and let Exxon come in and run their country? The regime is still in place. They still have all their guns. If I were that sitting vice president that's running the country now, I would triple my security. Because first of all, y' all got a leak in there. I would triple my security. We don't know where Machado is, but I would triple my security there if I was hurt, too, because the thugocracies of the world are all out of control. Russia's a thugocracy. Israel is a thugocracy, an expansionist thugocracy. And the United States is a rampant, insane thugocracy run by a criminal, just like Venezuela was. So there we have it. I think it's time for a moment of joy. Jason, what do you think? I think so.
- [118:13]
D
I was actually waiting for you to.
- [118:14]
B
Get there, but when you go on.
- [118:16]
D
Your rest, I just sit back and listen sometimes.
- [118:18]
B
We're just gonna let her cook. We're gonna let her rant, Let her cook. Let her cook. So I appreciate everybody in the chat that's got lots of positive comments. We really appreciate y', all, but we're do a quick moment of joy. This one is fun. This moment of joy comes from a movie, and it's a musical. I do love a musical. Hopefully YouTube will be kind to us and let us. And let us. And let us play it.
- [118:46]
D
You know, they're not.
- [118:50]
B
I think so. I think so. I think so. And it's a movie called To Be or Not to Be.
- [118:58]
D
Well, the good thing is at the.
- [118:59]
E
End, at least we could.
- [119:00]
B
Yeah, it's at the end if we. If they don't. If they're not gonna let us use it. And the play is called. The play is called To Be or Not to Be. Let me. Let me get all the information so I can tell y' all what it was. It's actually a really. It's supposed to be a really funny movie, and it's sort of making fun of Hitler, Right? And let's go ahead and play it then. I'll give you all the information about it later. All I want is peace.
- [119:23]
G
Peace.
- [119:25]
A
Peace.
- [119:27]
E
A little piece of Poland, A little.
- [119:32]
B
Piece of France, A little piece of Portugal and Austria for chance. Little slice life of Turkey, all that that entails.
- [119:47]
E
Little.
- [119:49]
F
Spot of Greece.
- [119:53]
D
You get the coin, right?
- [119:54]
B
We get it. We get it. We get it. It's. It's. Oh, it's a. I think it's actually pretty hilarious. It's to be or not to Be. It is a. Is a play called To Be or Not to be. All I want is peace. A little piece of Poland, A little piece of Hungary. It's a play on Hitler. You got to make fun of Hitler. I got to try to. I'm trying to find the name of it. The guy who wrote it is. I need to find it, Jason. How can I not find it? It. To Be or Not To Be. And it's a comedy. It is a comedic play. A comedic movie, I should say. A comedic movie, and that's what it is. I can't find it. Featuring. Okay, here it is. To Be or Not to Be is an old 1942 film, but it was made into a musical. Sorry, I can't remember the name of the person who did it. Apologies for that lack of information.
- [120:41]
D
What's it, Sprint time?
- [120:45]
B
It's not Springtime for Hitler. It's very similar, but it's actually. Yeah, it's just. Actually just a funny play. That's a moment of joy. That's it, everybody. Thank you. For tuning in. We appreciate y'. All. We'll put it in the thing. I'll tell y' all who the. I'll give people the credit that they deserve. It was actually pretty hilarious. And thank you all. Sid Caesar, they're saying, singing the Mel Brooks. That's it. Thank you, Chad. Oh, my God. I had menopause brain. Mel freaking Brooks. I knew it. See, the chat always comes through. Mel Brooks, the goat. I'm sorry, y'.
- [121:13]
A
All.
- [121:13]
B
I had, like, a menopause moment. Mel Brooks was a great movie. To be or not to be. Google it tonight. Watch it on YouTube. For the youngins who don't know about Mel Brooks, you need to google them. Thank you all for tuning in to the Joy Reid show. We will see you guys on Friday and we'll also let you know when our insider team TJRS chat will be. I'm excited about it. We're going to do it very soon. Love you guys and see you next time. Have a wonderful evening. Bye.
- [121:43]
D
Okay.
- [121:48]
B
Yeah.