Trump’s Terrifying Imperial Fantasies

Summary

---

Runaway Country with Alex Wagner

Episode: Trump’s Terrifying Imperial Fantasies

Date: January 8, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this high-stakes episode of "Runaway Country," host Alex Wagner brings together political commentators Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes alongside first-hand voices from the Venezuelan diaspora to dissect President Trump's shocking military intervention in Venezuela. The episode explores the humanitarian, legal, and political fallout of Trump's actions—particularly the capture of President Nicolás Maduro in an unauthorized military operation with significant civilian casualties. Wagner, Favreau, and Rhodes dig into the roots, motivations, and implications of a new, aggressive doctrine of American imperialism, dubbed the "Don Row Doctrine," and examine the specter of expansions into other nations, most notably Greenland. The episode is a blend of personal testimony and sharp political analysis, revealing a country in the grip of destabilizing executive overreach and global ambitions.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Trump's Actions in Venezuela

• Summary:
  The episode opens with Wagner highlighting President Trump’s unilateral military action to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which involved over 150 military aircraft and resulted in 80+ deaths ([01:13]). Maduro and his wife are now detained in New York City, facing US federal charges.
• Legal and Ethical Issues:
  There was no imminent threat to the US, no congressional authorization, and a weak legal basis for the intervention, which Trump justified as a "law enforcement operation." Wagner underscores the dangerous precedent:

  “Trump is not even pretending that this is about democracy.” ([02:00] Alex Wagner)

• Oil as Motivation:
  Trump openly acknowledges the goal of controlling Venezuelan oil resources:

  “We’re going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil because we have to have.” ([02:30] Trump)

2. Voices from Venezuela: Hope, Despair, and Uncertainty

• Adelice Ferro (Venezuelan American Caucus):
  Expresses mixed relief and despair after Maduro’s arrest, fearing the regime’s “other heads” (like Delsey Rodríguez) may be as bad or worse ([04:00]).
  • Quote:

    “Every emotion got mixed with despair because he announced point blank that they were already negotiating with Delsey Rodriguez… not much better than Maduro. Actually could be at certain levels worse than Maduro.” ([04:00] Adelice Ferro)

• Nyrca Melendez (Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid):
  Describes the extreme desperation of Venezuelans, making even US intervention palatable:

  “The amount of message[s] were like, I don't care. The desperation, help me, help me be out of it…I mean, we need help.” ([05:22] Nyrca Melendez)

• Adelice on Safety in the US:
  Despite legal status, feels increasingly unsafe under Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, highlighting fear but emphasizing the need to keep speaking out:

  “I don't feel 100% safe…what is on the line is our freedom, our democracy…” ([07:00] Adelice Ferro)

3. Expert Analysis: Favreau & Rhodes on Imperial Ambition

• Trump’s Doctrine—Ambition Unleashed:
  Favreau and Rhodes condemn both the recklessness and the lack of coherent strategy. They see the Venezuela operation as a mask-off moment for raw imperialism, with future plans rumored for Colombia and Greenland.

  • Rubio’s ‘Plan’ is Eviscerated:
    Rubio’s announcement of phases (stabilization, recovery, transition) is mocked as hollow and logistically unsound:

    “The scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning.” ([14:39] Ben Rhodes)

• Imperial Extraction:
  The panelists liken US actions to “East India Oil Company imperialism,” openly questioning the sanity and legality:

  “Are there gonna be US troops defending Chevron down there?…Are these oil fields gonna be rebuilt?” ([19:23] Ben Rhodes)

• Greenland as the Next Target:
  Trump’s team, especially Stephen Miller, assert US interest in annexing Greenland, openly discussing military force as an option ([21:39]).

  • Miller’s Rationale:

    “For the United States to secure the Arctic region…obviously Greenland should be part of the United States…you cannot take it off the table that the US would use military force to seize Greenland.” ([22:09] Stephen Miller)

  • Reaction:

    “There is no fucking way to witness…the rhetoric coming out of this White House and not react with quite a bit of alarm…” ([23:01] Alex Wagner)

4. Political Repercussions and Calculations

• Republican Party Dilemma:
  Trump ignores political fallout, focused only on personal legacy, territorial acquisition, and aggrandizement. Republicans, according to Favreau, are forced into complicity or silent desperation, unable to break with Trump or sell a clear benefit to voters ([32:24] – [33:15]).

• American Public Reception:
  Polls reveal lackluster and declining public support for regime change and imperial action:

  • “Taking Greenland by force” supported by only 7% of Americans ([39:14] Jon Favreau)
  • Managing Venezuela’s government garners ~23% approval ([39:23] Jon Favreau)

• Democratic Response:
  Wagner and guests ridicule cautious or “measured” Democratic responses, urging unambiguous condemnation:

  “The President…has bombed a country…to decapitate a regime that he otherwise left in place to steal their oil…you should be fucking measured in your response, you fucking cowards.” ([41:30] Jon Favreau)

5. Broader Implications: Authoritarianism at Home, Militarism Abroad

• Creeping Authoritarian Model:
  Rhodes draws comparisons between Trump and Putin, warning that militarism accelerates domestic repression:

  "When those two things converge, right? Authoritarian creep at home and military adventurism abroad, they both tend to become an accelerant on the other.” ([53:19] Ben Rhodes)

• Electoral Safeguards and Erosion:
  The conversation closes on concerns that Trump and future successors may abandon even basic electoral incentives, further relaxing checks on power ([54:22] – [55:45]).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Logic of Imperialism:

  “This is completely fucking insane to just put a finer point on it. I don't even know where to begin.”
  — Ben Rhodes, [17:57]

• On Media and the Political Class:

  “Ass kissing will only just get you ass in the end. I just made that up right here.”
  — Alex Wagner, [28:09]

• On Reaction in Venezuela:

  "We have been waiting for Maduro to be held accountable for more than a decade and we have been living with Chavismo for 27 years."
  — Adelice Ferro, [03:33]

• On Public Support and Absurdity:

  “7 in the single digits… are in favor of taking Greenland by force.”
  — Jon Favreau, [39:16]

• On MAGA and Intervention:

  “The one thing that makes me optimistic… is this is a core issue for MAGA… there could be a MAGA tipping point here. That's my only source of optimism.”
  — Ben Rhodes, [58:49]

• On the Democratic Weakness:

  “If you can't say that that's bad, or you think that saying that is bad is Trump Derangement Syndrome, you may have the derangement syndrome.”
  — Alex Wagner, [42:13]

• On the Imperial Endgame:

  "Stephen Miller thinks that he's gonna be on firmer legal standing with the Alien Enemies Act by saying, oh, we really are at war with Venezuela now because we started it.”
  — Jon Favreau, [50:46]

• On Lessons from History:

  “We've learned nothing or we keep trying to forget history from a policy making standpoint. The American people fucking remember Iraq. The American people remember the cost of those wars and how little we got in return.”
  — Ben Rhodes, [35:44]

---

Key Timestamps

• [01:11] – Trump’s justification of regime change in Venezuela
• [03:33] – Venezuelan community perspective (Adelice Ferro, Nyrca Melendez)
• [07:00] – Ferro on safety and free speech in the US under Trump
• [12:59] – Marco Rubio lays out the "plan" for Venezuela
• [14:39] – Ben Rhodes: “This is an insane plan.”
• [21:39] – Stephen Miller's pitch for annexing Greenland
• [32:20] – Discussion on Trump’s disregard for political consequences
• [39:14] – Public polling on US regime change and Greenland
• [41:30] – Democratic “measured response” mocked by panel
• [53:19] – Authoritarianism and imperialism converge
• [55:45] – The perils of post-Trump power transfer
• [58:49] – Will MAGA push back on military adventurism?

---

Tone and Language

The tone is urgent, irreverent, and unapologetically critical, laced with exasperated humor and political candor. Wagner and her guests blend gallows humor with deep constitutional concern, all reinforced by first-person testimony from the Venezuelan expatriate community. Swearing and vivid analogies pervade, reflecting both the podcast’s progressive voice and the real anxiety of the moment.

---

Conclusion

This episode paints a dark, fast-evolving portrait of American foreign policy—one where imperial overreach, volatility, and domestic instability blend together. Through analysis, criticism, and the voices of those directly impacted, Wagner and her guests lay bare the dangers of unchecked executive action, revealing how domestic political apathy, media complicity, and opposition caution are colliding with MAGA expansionism. The episode closes with cautious hope that public backlash—from across the political spectrum—could serve as a potent, if precarious, guardrail.

---

For further listening, Alex Wagner recommends checking out "Pod Save the World," where Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor provide additional emergency analysis on the breaking Venezuela news.

---

Transcript

[John]

Now is your time to get into a new Dr. Horton home by taking advantage of its national red tag sales event going on right now through January 25th.

[Ben Rhodes]

Stop by any of its participating communities.

[John]

And find select red tag homes at Incredible Pricing. So whether you're buying your first home or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton difference. Tap your screen now or visit Dr. Horton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and equal.

[Ben Rhodes]

Housing opportunity Builder.

[Alex Wagner]

Choose to show up with the bold styling of the Mazda CX30.

[Ben Rhodes]

Awake up.

[Alex Wagner]

Happy 2026, everyone. This year, the first week of January has been 153 days long, which is really weird. But for those of you whose resolutions include nation building and American imperialism, congratulations. You are really kicking this one off. Right?

[John]

Don't ask me who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial.

[Alex Wagner]

What does that mean?

[Ben Rhodes]

That means we're in charge.

[Alex Wagner]

We're gonna run everything.

[John]

We're gonna run it.

[Alex Wagner]

That was President Trump on Air Force One this week, delivering an update on his version of ill conceived Republican regime change when Trump ordered the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an operation that involved 150 military aircraft and left over 80 people dead. Maduro and his wife are now being held in detention in New York City where he faces four US Federal criminal counts, including narco terrorism. But just a little refresher here. There was no imminent threat posed to America. There was no congressional authorization for any of this. There was no real legal argument underpinning it, except for the very flimsy excuse that this was a law enforcement operation and not regime change. Just to be clear, Maduro is a dictator and he is a criminal. Under his command, Venezuela has jailed thousands of political dissidents. Hundreds of people have been killed at peaceful protests, including children. Eight million Venezuelans have fled their country fearing for their safety. And so much of the Venezuelan diaspora is celebrating Maduro's seizure. But Trump is not even pretending that this is about democracy.

[John]

We're going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil because we have to have. We're sending our expertise in.

[Alex Wagner]

Trump isn't waging a humanitarian mission and he's not stopping with Venezuela. I'm Alex Wagner and this week on Runaway country, we are talking about whether anyone should be optimistic about the situation in Venezuela, what Trump's real motivations are, which country is next on his list, and whether we might be seeing the beginning of a Radical reorganization of global power. We're talking to Jon Favreau from POD Save America and Ben Rhodes from POD Save the World about whether imperialism is back and what the hell the Don Row doctrine is. But as we do on the show, first we are starting with the personal. We are talking to two women from Venezuela about what is happening in their homeland, whether there's any cause for hope and if they see similarities between the authoritarian regime they fled and the one they live under today.

[Adelice Ferro]

We have been waiting for Maduro to be held accountable for more than a decade and we have been living with Chavismo for 27 years.

[Alex Wagner]

Adelice Ferro is the co founder and executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, a grassroots organization supporting Venezuelans participation and engagement in US politics. Adelis is relieved that Maduro is being brought to justice, but she believes her homeland is a long way from being freed.

[Adelice Ferro]

Whenever we heard the news, obviously there was a sense of joy, of relief, of justice finally being served. And then after the press conference that President Trump gave the next morning, every emotion got mixed with despair because he announced point blank that they were already negotiating with Delsey Rodriguez. Because Del C. Rodriguez is just another head of this monster of several heads, of which Maduro was probably the main one or the biggest one. But there are many other heads that now are empowered and Delsey Rodriguez is not much better than Maduro actually could be at certain levels worse than Maduro regarding repression, regarding persecution, regarding torture, regarding political prisoners.

[Alex Wagner]

Nyrca Melendez, an activist and founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid in New York City, says that people in Venezuela are so desperate for change that they will abide the American imperialism as long as something changes.

[Adelice Ferro]

After the Saturday morning, the reaction were we became, my husband and I, we became their eyes and their voice because they didn't know what was happening. They hear, they knew it was something here, something there. People speculating, you can tell. So they start to ask in our WhatsApp groups and we were just checking and informing them about what was happening. And then Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, they start to delete as usual, to delete all the message because it was Daniel throughout the, through the WhatsApp group with my family, some of my family, my relatives back in Venezuela. One of the members of that group said a statement about the oil and the US here and there. And the feedback, because it's an open guru, you can tell, I mean the amount of message were like, I don't care. The desperation, help me, help me be out of it. I can feel the anti US Imperialism from here and there, sentiment is true. That is true. But it's trying to be connected about what is happening in Venezuela. It's like, okay, if you are ready to take a broken country, everything. I mean, we need help.

[Alex Wagner]

I asked Adeles, who lives in Florida, whether she feels safe speaking out about what's going on in Venezuela, given the Trump administration's attitude towards immigrants, including people like her, who are here legally. This is what she said.

[Adelice Ferro]

I don't feel 100% safe. Sometimes I am afraid of something that can happen to me. But you know what? I have been an American citizen for many years now, and I know the Constitution. I know my rights. I am so proud to be an American and for this country to have opened its arm to me and my son and in so many ways gave us an opportunity to flourish and to grow and to thrive in here. And because of that, reason is why I am speaking out. And I am not going to be quiet while I see what is happening in this great country of that is mine too. So, yes, fear, of course, I never felt it before. I have to tell you, never before. Not even on his first presidency. But this time, yes, I am. Sometimes I said, wow, God protect me, please. But we cannot go back. What is on the line is our freedom, our democracy, the opportunity of every single one of us. For all of those reasons, we have to keep going. Even if we feel fear when we.

[Alex Wagner]

Come back, we are going to put all of this into context with the great Ben Rhodes and Jon Favreau. This episode is brought to you by Strawberry Me. You know that feeling when a new year starts and you tell yourself, okay, this is the year work is going to be great, and then two weeks later, you're already burned out again. I don't know that feeling at all. Yeah, we've all been there. If work left you drained last year, and that is being euphemistic, today's sponsor, Strawberry Me, can help you change that. Strawberry is career coaching that gets to the real source of your burnout. Whether it's too much on your plate, no boundaries, a tough manager, Jon Favreau, or just feeling totally disconnected from the work you do. A coach helps you figure out what is draining you, build habits that protect your energy, redesign your day to day so it feels sustainable, and create a plan so burnout doesn't come back by March or February or January. It's not therapy. But honestly, it's like therapy for your career. And here's the good part. You get matched with a coach who fits your personality and Your goals in just a few minutes. Sessions are flexible, they're private, and they are made for real people with real jobs, not the fantasy version of you that always has it together. If you're listening to this thinking, yeah, I'm burned out. Let this be your new year reset. Go to strawberry me, Alex, and try your first coaching session for 50% off. That's strawberry me, Alex. Good luck. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Okay. The year does not require you to reinvent yourself. Maybe it just requires you to unburden yourself. And so therefore, therapy may be the answer. It can help you more easily identify what weighs you down and what holds you back and who holds you back by offering an unbiased perspective to better understand your relationships and your motivations and your emotions. I know that I am always trying to keep it all together. I'm always trying to make sure the kids beds are made and also the dishes have been put in the dishwasher or that the dishwasher has been unloaded and that I have done a good job at work and not said anything remarkably stupid. It's a very low bar and it's hard. It is hard out there. It is hard in these times. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Betterhelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Runawaycountry that's betterhelp.com Runawaycountry. Okay, I'm doing something we've never done on this show and I think hasn't been done in America yet. Maybe that's not true, but we have for the first time on runaway country. Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes on this program. Thank you for joining me, guys.

[John]

Thanks for having us.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's very exciting. Very exciting.

[Alex Wagner]

You may wonder, can we talk about this, Ben, the fact that you're not with us because you're on a silent retreat, know that you're recovering from the flu. Is that okay to us?

[Ben Rhodes]

I am. I am. I am. I am recovered, I feel like. But I don't want to bring my contagion into the headquarters of crooked media and disable progressive media for the battle.

[Alex Wagner]

Someone who still believes in viral transfer. He's a quaint.

[John]

What a guy. Appreciate you.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, guys, let's just get Right to the meat of. Can you believe it's only January 7th? I can't. It really has been.

[John]

And it's still 2026.

[Alex Wagner]

It's still 2026. This year has been 2000.

[Ben Rhodes]

And Trump still has not been president for one year.

[John]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, anyway, just set that on the table and just like, we'll look at that. We'll polish that stone as we go on. So this morning, White House officials trotted up to Capitol Hill to pretend that they have a plan for what happens in Venezuela. And I wanna play you the comments made by Viceroy of Venezuela, AKA Secretary of State Marco Rubio, explaining what's going to happen now that our law enforcement procedure is complete. Let's take a listen to what he said.

[Marco Rubio]

Well, there's a lot of operational details that can't be discussed publicly, obviously, for obvious reasons. So as we move forward, we'll describe our process, which is a threefold process in Venezuela. I've described it to them. Now, step one is the stabilization of the country. We don't want it descending into chaos. Part of that stabilization and the reason why we understand and believe that we have the strongest leverage possible is our quarantine. As you've seen today, two more ships were seized. We are in the midst right now and in fact, about to execute on a deal to take all the oil they have, oil that is stuck in Venezuela. They can't move it because of our quarantine and because it's sanctioned. We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. We're going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is dispersed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime. So we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front. The second phase will be a phase that we call recovery, and that is ensuring that American, Western and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market in a way that's fair. Also, at the same time, begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released from prisons, are brought back to the country and begin to rebuild civil society. And then the third phase, of course, will be one of transition. Some of this will overlap. I've described this to them in great detail. We'll have more detail in the days to follow. But we feel like we're moving forward here in a very positive way.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay. That is a really extra Long law enforcement operation, if it sounds like to me. I want to quickly display comments from Senator Chris Murphy, who speaks for all of us, I think in his just, like, I don't know, incredulity. This is what he had to say shortly thereafter.

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, this, this is an insane plan.

[John]

They are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of.

[Ben Rhodes]

Time undefined as leverage to micromanage the country. I mean, this, this scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning. So we learned a lot. I'm glad we had the briefing.

[John]

But this is going to be a.

[Ben Rhodes]

Very, very rough ride for the United States.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, cool.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I feel better already.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, totally, right? Insane. He didn't use the word bonkers. That's where I would have. That would have been my chosen word. But, Don, how are you feeling this morning as we get the full explanation from the Trump White House?

[John]

I feel like it's completely insane. I've been saying it's insane for the last couple days, and I'm just like, I don't. I realize that narrowly, if you ask people, like, okay, Maduro's a bad guy. We got Maduro, you know, he's gonna be on trial. Yeah, fine. Either people don't care. Like, yeah, that's good. Good, Good for us, I guess. Everything else about this, everything else we've learned has only reinforced Senator Murphy's belief that this whole thing is insane. The more we learn, also, Marco Rubio is out there continually trying to put lipstick on this pig that then Donald Trump quickly wipes off immediately when he says, no, no, we're taking the oil. We're taking the oil, and we're doing it because we run the Western hemisphere, we're in charge, and that's it. And so there's so many things that, I mean, I'm sure, Ben, you'll get into it, but there's so many things that seem just at first reaction could go completely wrong with that plan. Like, we're going to micromanage the country and otherwise we're going to threaten them with the oil. So what if they say, no, we're going to do what we want, and then they just don't get their oil? And how are they distributing the oil funds to the Venezuelan people around the corrupt government? How's that working? What are they doing about all of the other forces in the country that remain loyal to Maduro? And so it's either like boots on the ground in there, and if we don't do boots on the ground, then how are we fucking Expecting everything to go well with a country that doesn't necessarily have stable leadership, that the whole countries are. I don't understand at all.

[Alex Wagner]

I mean, this is happening, Ben. So we're taking 30 to 50 million barrels of oil and we're selling them at market prices, not those cheap discounts, FYI, Right? Like, in case anybody was worried that we'd have with the 50 million barrels of oil that we were gonna seize. Through what means? And this is happening as, Ben, the U.S. is installing, if you will, Delsey Rodriguez, who is Maduro's protege, to run the country and effectively lead the military that remains loyal to Maduro and is literally stopping Venezuelans at checkpoints to make sure they're not texting or saying anything positive about the United States of America. Like, it is an inordinately complicated situation on the ground. And yet Marco Rubio talks about like this, like, okay, we're gonna do X, Y and Z, rebuild the country, you know, get our oil out and yadda, you know, bing, bang, boom, we won.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I have some questions, Alex. I'm sure this is completely fucking insane to just put a finer point on it. I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with inside of Venezuela, right? There has been no indication from the Venezuelan government, which is still the Maduro regime. It's just they decapitated the top of that regime, that they're on board with this plan. And I will remind you, these words like stabilization, you know, reconstruction, transition, these are the buzzwords of like, a major regime change. War.

[John]

Yeah, and send in Paul Bremer.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, here's the thing. When we had 150,000 troops inside of Iraq, we couldn't make that country do everything that we wanted to do with its politics, with its oil. So the idea that having these kind of permanent, I guess, deployment of US forces in the Caribbean is going to somehow for years to come, compel heavily armed ideological factions in Venezuela to do every single thing that we say is utterly bonkers and flies in the face of any lived experience that the United States has had and any of its other military inventions. That's one point. Second point is how exactly is this East India oil company imperialism going to work, right? Like, where are they?

[Alex Wagner]

Anglo Petroleum Oil.

[Ben Rhodes]

You have to extract the oil, you have to refine the oil, you have to put the oil on tankers. Where is it going to be sold from? Where's the money coming in? They say the oil's going to get to the Venezuelan people, they're going to disperse it through The Shavista communist government.

[John]

Collectivos are gonna hand it out.

[Alex Wagner]

Exactly. They love doing that.

[Ben Rhodes]

Terrible organizations, motorcycle gangs that are currently rounding up any remaining opposition elements are gonna distribute the money for the good of the Venezuelan people. Like, how is this happening? How are these oil fields gonna be rebuilt? Like, are there gonna be US troops defending Chevron down there? Like, that's the question I have. How much is this costing now? It's not like free to have like this armada stationed permanently in the Caribbean. So they keep kind of inventing plans after they take actions and hoping that they can stay like a half a step ahead of events. But the reality is the language you get not just from Murphy, but from everybody walking out of these briefings is kind of like, even the Republicans who are on the talking points look a little dazed and confused here about what they're even defending because nobody can explain coherently how this is gonna work.

[John]

Look, you libs, here's the deal. Everyone's been saying, oh, Trump's gotta focus on affordability. Well, how about this? Because now, if we take enough oil, then maybe years and years from now, years from gas prices will go down by a couple pennies. And you guys see this quagmire. I see a job opportunity for college graduates. Maybe their job's being taken by AI, but now they can go to the southern colonies and pump some oil.

[Alex Wagner]

Totally.

[John]

Maybe of the infrastructure that hands it out to the Venezuelan people. We got all. And you know, unless you're working in Greenland, you got, you got job opportunities in Venezuela and the Caribbean as well.

[Alex Wagner]

You gotta know how to run a job.

[John]

It's a jobs program for America.

[Alex Wagner]

It totally is. Under the leadership of Generalissimo Miller. What is stunning to me is this plan is no plan stance that we are getting from the White House. This morning comes on the heels of White House officials, including the President and his Deputy Chief of Staff, saying, Greenland, Columbia, watch your back, cuz, we're coming for you next. This is Stephen Miller speaking, not ironically, on television earlier this week.

[Ben Rhodes]

Greenland has a population of 30,000 people. Jake, the real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control 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 Naito 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 the process we're Going to have.

[John]

As a, as a community of nations. So you cannot take it off the table that the US Would use military force to seize Greenland. You can't take.

[Ben Rhodes]

I understand you're trying very hard to.

[John]

Which.

[Ben Rhodes]

Which again is your job. I respect it is great to get exactly the headline right. That catchy headline, trying to get an.

[John]

Answer that says, that says Miller refuses.

[Ben Rhodes]

To rule out the United States. Should have Greenland as part of the United States. Nobody's gonna fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh boy.

[Ben Rhodes]

Is that how you guys pronounce United States.

[Alex Wagner]

When you're a fascist? The pronunciations are slightly accurate.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, the fascist intonation there.

[Alex Wagner]

Fascist intonation.

[John]

Fascist intonation is big for him. It makes up for the poor rhetoric.

[Ben Rhodes]

He sounds like he's eating the word states. United States.

[Alex Wagner]

That's cuz he's actually eating metaphorically the United States and all of its democratic principles. Jake Tapper, you smarmy fucking journalist. In your headlines you're getting your questions. You want answers to whether or not we're going to try and annex Greenland. Fuck you. And cable news while I'm at it. Yeah, the real deal here is that as. As. And I have, I mean, we've all spent like a lot of time, I think, trying to laugh at the notion earlier this year when it was. When the Greenland thing sort of was floated in the national dialogue, that this would not really happen. But there is no fucking way to witness the events that we did in the last week and the rhetoric coming out of this White House and not react with quite a bit of alarm about the very real potential prospect that the United States will go after Greenland. And it is something European leaders have sort of been reluctant to address. And then we can talk about why for a while. But we're now at the stage where it's like, oh shit, is this happening? Like, do we all need to learn how to like ride dog sled so that we can repopulate an Arctic mass a couple miles to the north?

[John]

John, again, that's another job opportunity. There's a lot of minerals up there. And so if you want to go for the miners, it's fucking crazy. And what are the benefits of us for the American people? Let's just talk just pure politics at home. What are the benefits of taking over Greenland? We potentially break up NATO because Denmark is a NATO ally. We're going to trigger an Article 5 response by the United States taking action in Greenland. So we're going to piss them off. Denmark has already said we Have a military base there already. Denmark has already said, oh, if you want more presence there to defend the Arctic, as one of their bullshit excuses. We need to defend the Arctic from Russia and China. Denmark's like, you're, you're happy to, we're happy to have you have more military assets there. We're happy to work with you on sort of development and economic stuff. They don't want any of that. They just want to take fucking Greenland. So how much more money is that going to cost us? And what kind of benefits are the American people going to see from that? Other than Donald Trump feeling like, you know, he just has controlled more of the Western hemisphere?

[Alex Wagner]

Well, I think he wants to rename it Trumpland. I mean, you know what I mean? It's just, I do, I want to get to the political costs because the political benefits seem non existent, Ben. But when it comes to the way in which the alarm that you hear from Europeans. The Atlantic was reporting this week that a lot of, you know, when Trump was initially dallying with this idea of taking over Greenland, Europeans were kind of like trying to brush it aside, not trying to talk about it, because they thought it actually, if they came down hard on Trump's Greenland dreams, he might punish Ukraine and US Security measures to support the Ukrainians. Now they seem genuinely alarmed that, you know, he's real about Greenland. This could be a real threat to NATO and I don't know, I guess Ukraine and US Support for Ukraine gets caught in the middle of all of this.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I believe this Greenland thing ever since he started bringing it up after the election. And the reason why is it's kind of what you said, Alex. You mentioned naming it, but it's more like the psychology of an aging autocrat. Right. Is I need a legacy. And Trump is not the kind of guy who's measuring his legacy in legislative victories for the American people. No, no, no. It's the wealth that he is able to acquire, it's the power that he's able to acquire. And it's, I think, increasingly evident. It's the territory that he's able to acquire. And Greenland is a big chunk of territory, a big chunk of real estate. And that's how Trump looks at it. In the same way that Putin, as he got older and less interested in domestic affairs in Russia, well, that's when he started looking for territorial acquisition, too, first in Georgia and then in Ukraine. It's very much the same psychology. And look, the national security argument is complete and utter bullshit. Because first of all, as a NATO member. We have access to Greenland for whatever national security purposes we need. We actually currently have a military base there. Stephen Miller's arguments about NATO make no sense because every other single member of NATO would be against the United States doing this, because what is the point of an alliance if one member of the alliance can fucking invade another member and steal their territory? Right. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

[John]

But friends like these, not much of an alliance.

[Alex Wagner]

Who needs enemies?

[Ben Rhodes]

So. But the reason I think it got quiet after the inauguration for a bit and has come back now is because he kind of had to set the table. He had to get Pete Hegseth in there. He had to kind of magnify the top of the Pentagon so that they would follow orders, Right? He had to kind of normalize this new form of foreign policy where we act without any rules. And now he's kind of coming back at it. And I talked to Europeans, including Danish officials, from time to time, and they've taken it seriously. But they've made the mistake of thinking that if they kind of, you know, kissed up to Trump that he would get their back on Ukraine. And they like everybody else that's kissed up to Trump, whether you're an American university or law firm or whether you're Maria Machado in Venezuela, has learned that that doesn't get you anywhere.

[Alex Wagner]

Nope. Ass kissing will only just get you ass in the end. I just made that up right here.

[Ben Rhodes]

Did you really make that up?

[Alex Wagner]

I literally just fucking made that up. You can have it for your other merch.

[Ben Rhodes]

Merch idea.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, Ass kissing will only get you ass. Maybe a pair of underwear that said that. More of my conversation with John and Ben right after this quick break. Runaway country is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. I'm not going to be polite about this. I get scared when I go to the fish counter. I don't know how to pick it. I don't know how you can tell just from sight whether it is the freshest fish. I don't even know whether I like it. When was the last time you truly trusted the seafood you brought home? When you trusted yourself with that seafood? I used to question everything from, like, the nutrition to the taste to the sustainability to how I was going to cook it. Until I discovered Wild Alaskan Company. Wild Alaskan Company is the best way to get wild caught. Perfectly proportioned Wild Alaskan Company is the best way to get wild caught. Perfectly portioned, nutrient dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Trust me, you have not tasted fish. Fish this Good. It is firm and fleshy when it needs to be. It is flaky and light when it needs to be. I mean, I got no complaints. Why choose wild caught seafood? Because it's 100% wild caught and never farmed. And that means there are no antibiotics or GMOs or additives. Just clean, real fish that support healthy oceans and fishing communities. And it's nutrient rich and full of flavor. Wild Alaskan fish is frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture and nutrients. Like Those all important Omega 3s. Wild caught from Alaska. Every order supports sustainable harvesting practices and your membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips and truly feel good seafood. My favorite fish variety. This week I'm back on the salmon. I know you guys were waiting to find out. That's where I'm at. Try it risk free with a 100% money back guarantee. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan company will give you a full refund. No questions asked, no risk, just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same. There are plenty of them in the sea, but they're not all the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com Alex for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That is wildalaskin.com Alex for $35 off YOUR first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Choose to lean into it. Every Mazda is engineered to give you effortless control.

[Ben Rhodes]

Awake up.

[Alex Wagner]

John. There is the aging autocrat and the impulses of an aging autocrat. And then there's the fact that he's the President of the United States and the head of the Republican Party. And like, there are a lot of people beneath him that are gonna have to play cleanup on all of this. And I do not understand the political calculation here at all. Right. Like, we have some early polling. One in three Americans expressed support for the capture of Maduro. Four in ten approved of sending the military in to capture Maduro. To me, these are all kind of like very initial responses to your point at the beginning of the show. Like, he was a bad fucker. He's gone. There's gonna be some happiness about this. I say this as someone whose mother comes from a military dictatorship. It's great to see bad people go away as long as they're replaced by better people. He's not being replaced, as far as we can tell, by better people. And the plans that we're hearing this morning suggest American boots on the ground. Certainly some American money being spent on this for the dude who literally rode back into office and whose whole raison d' etre is America first. Isolationism. Fuck the rest of the world. Like, what? How does this not cost the Republican Party dearly? Just. I mean, how can this not be a violation of the thing they hold most sacrosanct?

[John]

Yeah. So I think Trump no longer gives a shit about the political calculation.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[John]

He spoke to the House Republicans, I believe this week, and said, like, I don't like what's wrong with the voters.

[Alex Wagner]

I think we do we have that piece of sound. Can we play it? It's a choice. It's choice incredulity.

[John]

But I wish you could explain to me what the hell's going on with the mind of the public. You got to win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be. I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached. Now, notice the most interesting part of that is you gotta win the midterms.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah. You gotta win the midterm.

[John]

And they're on the ballot. And his view is, I'm doing whatever the fuck I want. I'm getting rich, I'm taking territory, I'm making everything Trump. I'm the emperor of the Western Hemisphere. You gotta do your shit. Otherwise I'm gonna be embarrassed. And guess what? I'm gonna blame you if it goes wrong.

[Alex Wagner]

Totally.

[John]

And then they're gonna have to impeach me and whatever. I've gotten impeached a couple times before, so who cares? He doesn't care about the politics. I really don't. Not to the ext. He has in the past, not that he ever has. A lot. I do think the Republicans in Congress are probably doing what they've done for the last 10 years, which is like gritting their teeth, trying to get through this by pretending not to have a real answer or dressing up what he's doing and then hoping that it just goes away and we're onto the next news cycle. I think the challenge is what he can't run away from. What they are not gonna be able to run away from is if. If the economy does not improve, if people's financial situations do not improve, the things they care about, if their needs are not met, the American voter, then even in a best case scenario where Trump wasn't trying to take over the Western Hemisphere, people would be pretty pissed. In a scenario where they say, okay, well, my healthcare costs are going up, I still can't buy a house, prices are still high. And what's the president and his party that controls Washington up to? Well, he's slapping his name on the Kennedy Center. He's talking about the marble armrest that he's building. He's building his new ballroom. We got a whole bunch of, we got a whole bunch of troops in Venezuela either boots on the ground at risk or just we're paying for a bunch of military there. An armada to get some oil that I'm not seeing the benefits of where now we're invading Greenland. Every time I turn on the TV he's with some other foreign leader who's kissing his ass and giving him a foreign gift. People be really about that and I don't know how Republicans run away from that. I don't think they can because they're not going to want to Trump off because they can't. Because they can't win elections that way. But at the same time they can't break with him cuz he's going to be really pissed. So they're just going to try to run their own races I think and pretend that what he's doing isn't happening.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, a military adventurism, Ben. I mean you wrote a great in your flu like haze the brilliance still shines. You wrote a great op ed in the New York Times this weekend about American military adventurism and how we have learned nothing or we keep trying trying to forget history from I think a policy making standpoint. The American people fucking remember Iraq. The American people remember the cost of those wars and how little we got in return. I mean I think to John's point the Republican Party can try and whistle past the graveyard but like I don't think that from mag on down they're gonna forget what this actually is if they're especially given the fact that the administration's being so weirdly transparent about it.

[Ben Rhodes]

The great irony of this is that it would have been completely impossible for Donald Trump to take control of the Republican Party without military adventurism because it was the absolute catastrophic debacle of the war in Iraq and the broader war on terror launched by the Bush administration that caused I think a complete collapse in confidence among Republican voters in their own elites. Right. And some of those voters by the way, are veterans of the war on terror too. And their critiques were not wrong that essentially the wars made no sense. They cost trillions of dollars. They led politicians and elites to focus on things that were not of concern to Americans. And that's how Donald Trump was able to take control of the party. And now as president, he is kind of poised to repeat the same playbook, potentially on steroids, if he keeps going past Venezuela. Because what they know is he's not even trying, Alex, to describe a benefit to them from what's happening in Venezuela. Right. He talks about, like on the press conference he gave after the operation, he talked about the great American oil companies. They're the greatest oil companies in the world, Right? Sure. If you can get down there and somehow get the American oil companies in on the, you know, cornering the Venezuelan oil market. Like, the oil company profits will go up over time, but there are no jobs created by that. The jobs are in Venezuela where the oil is pumped and refined. Right. To John's point, the amount of time it would take for Venezuelan oil to make a significant difference in global markets is not going to do a single fucking thing for affordability, certainly before the midterms. Right. So he's not even trying to say that this military intervention is on behalf of the American people. It's kind of on behalf of his own aggrandizement. And he kind of likes the TV president thing. And we all know if I can offer a bit of media criticism here, like the American media seems to love the first day of a regime change operation. You know, they get the complex special forces raid and then they get the TikTok story of how it was all planned. And you get the images of Maduro and cuffs coming off the helicopter. And Trump loves all that stuff. But what's so telling to me, Alex? Look, I'm not on polar coaster. Like, I don't know as much about this as John and Dan, but the high point is when you have those images.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

And if only 3 in 10Americans support this and all they've seen thus far is a dictator who is a bad guy, as you say, being hauled in cuffs because he got apprehended in a special forces night raid. That seems like a Netflix movie. That's the high water mark for this thing. Right. I don't know what else they can do that would make people like it more over time.

[John]

The Washington Post did a poll where it was a little bit closer on. Do you support getting rid of Maduro or not? It was like 42, 40. But in that same poll, they asked, like, do you support the United States government managing Venezuela and like choosing essentially the government for them? And that was at 23, 24%. YouGov just had a poll out this morning on Greenland and they asked how many People support taking Greenland by force. And that number is 7. 7.

[Alex Wagner]

7S is in the single digits.

[John]

7 in the single digits. And then they said, what about taking it but not by force. And then you add another 21 to that.

[Alex Wagner]

So 28.

[John]

So 28% altogether are in favor of taking Greenland either by force or, I guess, by negotiation. So no one wants this. I think if you were to try to assign some sort of political calculation to the broader White House, I do think part of it is like, aren't you proud of America now that we're kicking ass again and that we have been, you know, we've been bullied and humiliated by the rest of the world, by the Danes, because of our weak leaders like Biden and Obama and all that stuff.

[Alex Wagner]

Fuck you, Denmark.

[John]

And they walk all over us. And now every time you turn the news, there's Pete Hegseth and helicopters over Greenland and Maduro's in handcuffs and there's memes everywhere. And, you know, so I think they might be thinking that that's going to sort of, you know, have this, like, jingoistic pride in the country. I just think they're fucking crazy. I don't think that matters much to anyone beyond the intensely online base that they already have.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah. As people are, like, watching their healthcare Premiums skyrocket to $1,000 a month and can't afford fucking bacon. Yeah, cool. No, but definitely Pete Hegseth in a fucking dog sled in Greenland is gonna change all that. So Ben brings up a critique of the media, which I think we could extend to the Democratic Party. And not a critique, but a question to ask of how Ben's chiming in.

[John]

We're chomping at the bench.

[Alex Wagner]

We need to talk about this. Axios has a piece this morning that quotes anonymously, of course, centrist Democrats in the House who think that the party is mishandling this, that they need to give more credit to Trump. Quote, maduro is bad. Glad he's gone. You can't have it both ways. But the base thinks that everything Trump touches has to be bad. A vulnerable House Democrat tells Axios, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. I wish the Democratic Party would be a little bit more measured on this. I think it looks weak. Said another Democrat. If you don't acknowledge that when there's a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. I can hear your eye rolls, John, but could you talk a little bit more about whether or not this is flawed thinking on the part of the opposition party? That's not interested in American imperialism and military adventures.

[John]

The President of the United States has told us all that he has bombed a country in an attack that left 80 people dead to decapitate a regime that he otherwise left in place to steal their oil. And now he will be managing the country indefinitely as he sets his eyes to the north on another country that is our NATO ally that he also wants to invade.

[Alex Wagner]

Don't forget about Colombia.

[John]

But you know what? You know what? You should be fucking measured in your response, you fucking cowards. Like, what?

[Ben Rhodes]

It's just.

[John]

It is the. If you can't. If you can't say that that's bad, or you think that saying that is bad is Trump Derangement Syndrome, you may have the derangement syndrome.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, totally. TDS is something you may want to look into. Ben?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. I read this, and at first I thought that maybe the AI had become sentient and somebody had decided that an article should be written that was maximally designed to trigger Ben Rhodes. Like, I felt like that's just your new flu medication. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was a little out of it on the flu, right? I was like, this can't be real, right? Because I don't know where to begin. I'm just gonna. A couple points about this, right?

[Alex Wagner]

Just go, Ben. Just go.

[Ben Rhodes]

The first thing is, like, you're supposed to be good politicians. Like, what fucking planet are you on where you think that this is what the American people want the President to be doing? Like, I remember when really good things would happen on our foreign policy, too. And Dan Pfeiffer would be like, please don't talk about them. Because even good things Americans don't wanna hear about if it's not dealing with their fucking problems, right? So if people have told you again and again and again that affordability is what they care about, and they are starting to reward Democrats at the polls, right, in the recent elections because Democrats are talking about affordability. And then the President United States is like, I'm gonna cancel my affordability tour to go try to conquer Venezuela. And you are not a capable enough politician to be like, you know what? I think he doesn't care about you. He cares about himself. This is not hard. People. Like, I don't understand this fucking mindset at all. These Democrats who are permanently stuck. Like, you have to be as old as us to remember the fucking 2002 midterm elections when the Democrats lost because they were called weak on the war on terror. And there are some Democrats who have been running in the 2002 midterm elections ever since then. Yeah, let me just also I was.

[John]

Gonna say like that was such a, that was such a tougher call for Democrats. Yeah, like you're right. That like we just sort of let them get away with it. But like yeah, our country was attacked. It was like the massive terrorist attack in our country. Yeah, we lost a couple thousand people.

[Alex Wagner]

Yes.

[John]

Like yeah, huge fucking psychic scar. The politics are tricky on that one. This is like on even I was saying Ben, on I think Pod Save America, that like even the strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities is a tougher call on this because it's like, yeah, do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? No, we don't. Now do we know how much, whether they actually made a dent in them? We don't. So we can, we can argue about that. But like yeah, the general goal is right, but taking over Venezuela. No one thinks that taking over Venezuela and stealing their oil was something that is going to protect the United States or make Americans lives better. No one thinks that.

[Alex Wagner]

Most people had no idea who the fuck Nicolas Maduro was until like literally Saturday. I mean this is not someone who lives in the American imagination the way Saddam Hussein did or Osama bin Laden. I mean this is a fabrication of American threat launched by an insane octogenarian who takes too many blood thinners.

[Ben Rhodes]

But these were the same kind of Democrats by the way, who were like these are the kind of guys, I'm sure these are guys who are like repeating the price of eggs thing in like February is Nicholas Maduro in charge of the global fucking egg market. Like this is not hard for you people to understand that this is not the thing that people care about. And I just cuz this is a big hobby horse of mine. 2004, George Bush wins on this message, right. Of being tough every single presidential election since. Right. 2008, Barack Obama runs as the anti war candidate, anti establishment candidate. He wins. 2012, Mitt Romney runs as the Hawk. Obama wins 2016, Hillary runs as the hawk. Trump runs as this anti forever war guy. He wins 2020. Let's throw that one out. Every has Covid Biden's in the basement. Whatever. 2024, Trump runs to end forever wars. Right, I know. So the American people keep telling their politicians that they don't care about the fake weak tough frame that plays well on cable news or on Axios or political playbook tip sheets. And yet these people keep diving back into that pool. It's astonishing to me.

[Alex Wagner]

It's almost as if they haven't learned anything since 9 11. It's almost as if they've just forgotten history. We'll have more from Ben and John in just a second. But first, if you are enjoying this conversation, and I hope you are, I highly recommend checking out Pod Save the World, which Ben Rhodes co hosts with Pod Save America's Tommy Vitor. Tommy and Ben released an emergency episode as the news of Venezuela was breaking earlier this week. I mean, who needs to sleep? And they will be continuing that conversation on Pod Save the World in the weeks to come. They break down Trump's claim that the US Will now run Venezuela and why this kind of regime change is illegal and the global implications of the move. New episodes of Pod Save the World drop every Wednesday, covering major news developments around the world. And they do it so well. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss a beat. Runaway country is brought to you by ZipRecruiter if you are hiring for your company, this is a busy time of year for you because You've got new 2026 goals, which means finding the right people to accomplish them. Unfortunately, you also have new hiring challenges for 2026, like filling specialized roles or identifying qualified candidates from a huge pool of applicants. Thankfully, there is a place you can go that can help you conquer these challenges and achieve your hiring goals, and it is called ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for [e-mail] Runaway ZipRecruiter's matching technology I know I'm going to say it again. Matching technology. It works very quickly to find top talent so you don't waste time or money talking to not top talent. You can also find out right away how many job seekers in your area are qualified for your role. With ZipRecruiter's advanced resume database, you can instantly unlock top candidates contact info. It couldn't be easier. Let ZipRecruiter help you find the best people for all of your roles. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com Runaway Again, that is ZipRecruiter.com Runway ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire choose to show up with the bold styling of the Mazda CX30 away cup. I have to say, as we talk about how this plays out domestically, there's also, I mean it's so. It's so Usually it's Democrats who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but here it's like even with the Venezuelan population in the United States, right? So you're Trump, you win a disproportionate, I mean, compared to other elections, share of the Latino vote, right? And then you, you, you thank them by establishing immigration dragnets in cities across the country, stoking fear among brown people, literally fucking all over the United States. And maybe for like a hot minute on Saturday night, you get a little reprieve, right? You get a little reprieve. You get Latinos and specifically Venezuelans saying a, he got Maduro out. And how do you respond to that? How do you respond to the increasingly somewhat warm temperature or warm reception you may be getting in otherwise pretty chilly corners of the Latin American population? You issue a statement from U.S. citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Matthew Trageser, who says President Trump's decisive action to remove Maduro marks a turning point for Venezuelans. Now they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future. It's all good now. Sure, there may be, you know, checkpoints to ensure you don't do or say anything that we think is untoward or unsupportive of the dictatorial regime that very much remains in power. And sure, nothing on the ground has meaningfully changed for you. You may get thrown in jail or killed or have one of your loved ones thrown in jail or killed. But now it is time for you self deport and go back home. Venezuelans, you're welcome. Signed the American United States of America. It's amazing to me, John, that the posture here, given how much trouble they are in with a key voting bloc, especially ahead of 2026, is to say, we unfucked your country, now fuck you.

[John]

But it was actually, it's not just some like crazy hypocritical side effect. It was one of the goals of doing this. Stephen Miller thinks that he's gonna be on firmer legal standing with the Alien Enemies act by saying, oh, we really are at war with Venezuela now because we started it and so we wanna. There's what something like, I think 500,000 Venezuelans that are either here because of parole is one policy that you can come into the country or they have temporary protected status. And so.

[Alex Wagner]

Which has been revoked by the Trump administration.

[John]

Yes. And I have a friend who is like, well, you know, a lot of Venezuelans like celebrating on the streets in Miami. I'm like, well, I hope they're citizens.

[Alex Wagner]

Exactly.

[John]

Because the celebrations will be short lived once ICE arrives in Miami.

[Alex Wagner]

Exactly. In vans.

[John]

Because this is what Stephen Miller wants to do. And they have been targeting Venezuelans more than other immigrants, or that's one of the immigrant groups they're targeting more because they're recent arrivals. You know, they haven't been here as long as a lot of other immigrants. And so their status is more fragile. And so, yeah, this is part of the deal. And I don't think they give a shit. I mean, again, Stephen Miller doesn't care about the Latino vote.

[Alex Wagner]

No, he doesn't care about, I mean, he doesn't care about anything but the most sort of nefarious goals of recreating American greatness in the same way, like almost if he only spoke Russian. It's so similar to what Putin is doing in Ukraine, restoring the sort of greatness of the empire at all cost and that, that things need to be taken by forced and outsiders need to be thrown out of the country and the true pure blood of the natives and needs to be sort of receded across the land. Ben?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yes. I mean, I felt a lot of Putin echoes in what we saw in Venezuela, what he's talking about Greenland, where like I said, it's like you reach that stage in the autocrats tenure where inevitably, if you look at any major power, not like a kind of small or medium sized country, but major power that has taken an authoritarian turn. There's always a period of power consolidation at home. And then at certain point, there's always then a spillover into military adventurism. And I think that the question for us, for Congress and for the American people is, and this is what I was kind of trying to get at in that piece, Alex, is that like when those two things converge, right? Authoritarian creep at home and military adventurism abroad, they both tend to become an accelerant on the other. Right?

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[Ben Rhodes]

So in Russia, once Putin kind of broke that seal, then the crackdowns on dissent at home started to pick up because we can't have people criticizing the regime. And then he's losing support because people don't like the iron fist at home. So then we need to kind of keep the war machine moving. Right. And this is the kind of unvirtuous circle that we need to make sure gets arrested. Right. This is why the midterm elections are really important. Because one of the things that worries me, guys, and I don't know what you think about this, you've both made this point that neither Trump or Stephen Miller seem to even bother to care about American politics, Right. And you can read that as like, he doesn't have to run again. He's selfish, he doesn't give a shit. Or you can read that as people who might think that they don't need to play American politics to stay in power. Right. Because they'll find other ways to stay. I mean, I'm just, like, raising questions here, Right? I'm not saying that's likely.

[Alex Wagner]

But you're just asking questions.

[Ben Rhodes]

No, but you asked about other countries, right? If we want to study other countries, then that is what happens in other countries. If you want to look at, like, Putin in particular, Right. Once he started down war, then you saw an extension of presidential terms. Right. Against the Russian constitution. So that is the analogy. The question is, does America? And America does have more guardrails. We have a federal system with 50 states. We still have three branches of government. So I'm not saying we're destined to do that. But these guys are certainly talking like, people who are not, like, concerned about politics.

[John]

Well, and we've been focused on Trump. Like, is Trump going to run again at third term? Is he going to leave?

[Ben Rhodes]

But state.

[John]

Trump does just decide to leave, and that's it. And he's already said that. That doesn't have to be the thing that we're most worried about. Say a Democrat wins in 2028. There's gonna have to be a transition of power. And if it's like J.D. vance on the losing end of the, of the election and it's close, do we all feel confident that we're not gonna get another post 2020scenario?

[Alex Wagner]

What happened 5 years ago where Stephen.

[John]

Miller and Pete Hegseth and all the rest of them are like, well, yeah, Trump. Trump doesn't want to be president anymore.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's.

[John]

He's riding off into the sunset. But we're still here. I mean, there is. There has been a history in other regimes of the charismatic leader finally stepping aside or dying, and then their number two comes in. In fact, that's what happened in Venezuela.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And those people are in legal jeopardy, too. Like, Pete Hegseth knows that, like, if the Democrats take charge, like, you know, these boats that he blew up. Right. I mean, I want to ask you guys, it's interesting that JD Vance has not been out there in Venezuela.

[Alex Wagner]

This is what I actually wanted to bring up as a positive note. Maybe before we go in this season of discontent and alarm, the New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace Wells, who I am a big fan of, wrote about Vance's absence here and the fact that when he has Made statements. They have been sort of anguished statements. Benjamin writes, the likeliest person to inherit the Trump mantle is the one who has been staying out of the frame. This is Vance, who's noted that there is national anxiety over the use of military force. Now, I don't think of J.D. vance as a particularly principled person. Perhaps some of it is driven by someone who served and believes that you. A military adventurism is not in America's interests. But I think it's also political calculation. Right. Like. And does that. Is there some. Should we be optimistic about the fact that the vice president of the United States is operating with at least a little bit of caution around all of this, suggesting that he thinks it might be a bad move that could cost both him and his party in the near term? Am I being overly Pollyanna ish here?

[John]

I think so, unfortunately, because.

[Alex Wagner]

Never mind.

[Ben Rhodes]

He has.

[Alex Wagner]

That's the show. Thanks for joining us.

[Ben Rhodes]

I'll take the other side on this one, though. I'll take the other side.

[John]

Okay, so I think that it's early days, And I think J.D. vance has already, you know, tiptoed out on Twitter where he writes all his best stuff in his Twitter essay being.

[Ben Rhodes]

Like, when he's fighting with you.

[John]

Yeah, right. Cocaine is still bad and we just can't have some commies be taking our oil and not do anything. So he's like, he's on the talking points.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah.

[John]

He's not out there in front. I also think it's because he knows his buddy and potential running mate Marco Rubio. This is his moment. But I think J.D. vance has a larger problem on everything over the next couple years, which is he is completely tied to Donald Trump's political fortunes. And if Donald Trump becomes an even more unpopular president, JD Vance doesn't have the option while he's vice president of breaking with Donald Trump in any kind of way.

[Alex Wagner]

I mean, most vice presidents see Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

[John]

Right. Exactly. And that was like, for any vice president, you're not out there criticizing the president. With Donald Trump especially, you can't do that. So he's in this weird liminal space where he's tied to his political fortunes are tied to Donald Trump. And so if he doesn't agree with something Donald Trump's doing just from a political standpoint, the best he can do is, you know, throw out a Twitter essay and then sort of hide and.

[Alex Wagner]

Say, marco, you got this, man.

[John]

Cool. But, like, that's not going to change the calculus of what happens if J.D. vance becomes president. And we are three years on into this quagmire where we are, you know, our adventures in imperialism aren't going as well as we were told they would go. Like, J.D. vance is just gonna have to own that either way. So it's like, I don't. I don't know that. I guess what I'm arguing is that I don't know that it matters much either way.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, well, that's sufficiently pessimistic then.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. So my, like, slightly more optimistic take is this. And it doesn't really have anything to do with J.D. vance. Cause I, you know, I agree with John about that, but I think I've been fatalistic about the. Well, the likelihood of further imperial adventurism. Right. I mean, and we talked about he's threatened Colombia, he's threatened Mexico, he's threatened Cuba, he's threatened Panama Canal. Right. There's a moving roulette wheel of targets here. And the one thing that makes me optimistic that he might not be able to kind of go down the punched card there is. I do think that this is a core issue for maga. Like, there's some issues that. There are a lot of issues that they've been willing to chunk overboard on behalf of kind of fealty to Trump. But I actually think that this is deeper to the MAGA base than a lot of the other things that he's had betrayals on. And so, like your Greenland numbers, right, John? Like seven. I actually think that that speaks to the fact that there's not any Democrats who are going to support this stuff, and most Republicans aren't either. And that at a certain point, there is a political. If you're losing, Trump doesn't mind if he's losing issues 60 to 40 or even 65 to 35. But this feel like issues that could become 75, 25. And that's when Congress, because they actually want to save their skins, you know, start to become afraid about where Trump is taking the Republican Party branch. And so I don't know how those guardrails manifest. There was a bill, a war powers resolution that Thomas Massie co sponsored with Joaquin Castro that came two votes short of literally preventing them from doing what they did in Venezuela. They probably would have done anyway. But it feels to me like there could be a MAGA tipping point here. That's my only source of optimism on kind of creating a big enough backlash to this imperialism to at least kind of stop it in its place.

[John]

My concern is that the MAGA concern about foreign adventures is only real and only remains when there are troops, you know, thousands and thousands of troops abroad, when Americans start dying overseas, or when they know that we're spending a crazy amount of money on all of this and, and domestic conditions continue to deteriorate, which is a possibility for sure. But the idea that Donald Trump and his regime get to go bomb some shit and then we own it, we can slap America on it and then maybe we get some oil, I think that's fine. It's either fine to the MAGA base or cool, they like it. And I think where the base is gonna start getting upset is if this comes back to bite us in the ass, which it will at some point, whether short. I mean, Donald Trump's betting that it's long term or maybe not betting at all, maybe just think, but like, he would be lucky if it was a long term thing that came back and put us in the ass. But if Americans start dying, if American soldiers are deployed, if suddenly we're just spending tens of billions of dollars on foreign adventures, then they're gonna start getting pissed. But if it's this, this kinetic action here and there and we're just, you know, kidnapping this leader and blowing this up.

[Alex Wagner]

80 people killed here and there, you.

[John]

Know, they're gonna memeify everything. It's another fucking video game and they think it's cool. Let's keep going.

[Alex Wagner]

Let me tell you something, John. Those dog suds don't drive themselves. That oil does not distribute itself.

[John]

AI is gonna do some amazing things with Pete Hegseth.

[Alex Wagner]

I don't think this chapter is done being written. And I would say, word to the wise, J.D. vance, you kiss ass and you just end up with ash. So that's our show for today. I think it was a humdinger. A lot to discuss. No. 2 better gents to have with me. Thank you, John.

[John]

This was fun.

[Ben Rhodes]

Thanks, Alex.

[Alex Wagner]

And that is our show for this week. Can you believe it is the first one of this year? Oh, yeah. As always, if you've been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies, send us an email or a one minute voice [e-mail] and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to all of you guys who have written in already. Last but not least, please, please, please don't forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway country with Alex Wagner. Thanks for listening. Runaway country is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Ilick. Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacey Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis. Ben Hethcote is our video producer and Matt de Groat is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. Katie Long is our executive producer of development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. Choose to show up. With the bold styling of the Mazda CX30.

[Ben Rhodes]

Why does every recipe I try need 18 ingredients, including a jar of something paste I'll never use again but will sit in my fridge for nine months? I just want dinner in the oven fast. That's why I love Blue Apron's new.

[Alex Wagner]

One Pan Assemble and Bake meals.

[Ben Rhodes]

They send you fresh ingredients that are already chopped. All you do is put it all together and and bake.

[Alex Wagner]

That's it.

[Ben Rhodes]

No chopping, no weird leftovers. Just delicious, easy to make meals. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20.

[Alex Wagner]

Terms and conditions apply.

[Ben Rhodes]

Visit blueapron.com terms for more.