← The Dan Bongino Show
The Dan Bongino Show
Maduro F'ed Around and Found Out | Episode 196
00:58:10
Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro seized into American custody; The left defends an actual fascist; and a preview of what comes next.
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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Vince on a Monday. Great to be back with you in this, the year of our Lord 2026, the 250th anniversary of our country. We've got a lot to talk about as we start off the New year. As always, it's great to have you with us. We have a very big show ahead. Our guys go into Venezuela, grab Nicolas Maduro, get out of there in less time than most major motion pictures in Hollywood. It's just incredible what these guys were able to pull off. We'll talk about that experience, what happened, that operation, and then what it means for Venezuela, for the Western Hemisphere, and certainly for the United States of America. That's all ahead on this program. We'll be joined by Mike Gonzalez today as well. He's an expert on the commies, including people like Maduro and for that matter, the new communist mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani. We've got a lot to discuss with Mike Gonzalez and a very big show. And in a moment, I wanna just give you a quick summary of the departure from the FBI of one Dan Bongino. He's done. What comes next? Well, I'm curious too. It's all coming up on this edition of Vince. Great to have you with me. Best audience anywhere. Hey, you know, winter hits and suddenly you're spending way more time indoors, especially in your bedroom. Honestly, staying comfortable is absolutely everything. And this is why I'm so that I sleep on a Helix mattress. Ever since Allison and I switched to Helix, our lives have improved dramatically. You know, before Helix, I was getting a rough night's sleep. I was sleeping terribly. We had gone to some random mattress store and they guided us into something that really didn't work. And I thought to myself, you know, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm never gonna have a good night's sleep. Nope. It was my mattress. My mattress sucked. Helix. Wonderful. I took the sleep quiz. It matched us up with the perfect mattress for how we sleep. No guessing, no stress. And since then, our sleep has been incredible. Incredible. A good night's rest really sets you up for a great day. Helix is award winning. It ships free in the US they give you 120 night sleep trial plus a lifetime warranty. And if you're not happy, their Happy with Helix guarantee makes the return super easy. And Helix has an exclusive offer for you. Go to helixsleep.com Vince for 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com Vince and get 27% off site wide and make sure. You enter our show name after checkout so they know that we sent you helixsleep.com Vince. Jaw Walsh in the chat goes. You're curious, too. Yes, I'm curious, too. I'm very excited to hear that Dan Bongino's officially done at the FBI. That I'm confident that comes as a great relief to Dan and his family. His great family. It's been a crazy year. It's been an absolutely crazy year. And to summarize how Danzier went, The FBI Director Kash Patel sent him off last night, 5:00 Eastern Time. Last night on X, he posted the following. He said Dan heads back to the private sector after helping orchestrate a record year for the FBI. And here's how Cash ran the numbers down. He said there was a historic 20% drop in the nationwide murder rate. Nobody disputes that, by the way. That's all over the place. That the homicide rate has fallen to record levels. Record lows. A 100% increase in arrests from year to year. That would be arrests being done by the FBI. 1800 gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted. That's a 210% increase over the prior year under the Biden era. Let's see, what else? 2,000 plus kilos of fentanyl that were seized. That's up 31%. That's enough to kill 130 million Americans. And just to be clear on what Cash is saying here, have you noticed that drug overdose deaths, drug deaths in the United States have plummeted over the course of the last year? This is not a coincidence. When the FBI is pulling all this fentanyl off the streets, when we're blowing up ships that are trying to make their way to America carrying illicit drugs, when we lock down our border, it turns out it does save American lives. A lot of them. It's a huge deal. A huge deal. What else? Nihilistic, violent extremism arrests are up 490%. You know what that is? Nihilistic violent extremism. This is when people get on the Internet and they try and groom children into hurting themselves and others. Yeah, we're arresting those people. Thanks to Dan cash and the FBI, that's up nearly 500%. That's a meaningful jump. Over 6,000 child victims have been located. That's a 22% increase over the prior year. Espionage arrests, that would be. Spies in the United states are up 35%. And multiple successful surges, including summer heat. That was violent crime. That was orchestrated by Dan. Remember, Cash came out and he gave that big Press conference saying that Dan quarterbacked that whole thing. Over 9,000 arrests in just three months. And he goes on to say the FBI is saving lives and protecting innocent kids. None of it possible without Dan's leadership and support. Thank you, Dan Bongino. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Thank you for your service to your country. Pretty amazing stuff. And you know what? Wasn't even on the list that Cash didn't include. They caught the pipe bomber. Dan caught the pipe bomber, too. Something that he was obsessed with as a private citizen. Goes in as deputy director of the FBI. They hunt this guy down, they take him into custody. So great. Honestly, as I said before, when we got the news that Dan was leaving, a lot of points on the scoreboard. And he can leave with his head held high. A lot to be proud of. And here's what I'm looking forward to. Look, I said before somebody pointed out in the chat, I just cited that, like that. I'm curious about what's gonna happen too. Isn't that interesting that Vince is curious? Wouldn't Vince know? I don't know. All of this is up to Dan. Everything that is gonna happen next in terms of Dan's schedule is up to him. And I can't wait to see it. I'm as eager as you are to see him back behind a microphone talking to an audience and giving us his perspective on what exactly went down inside of that government and what the rest of us should make of it. Look, in media, there's something obviously true, but just intuitively. But I'll just lay it out, which is you turn to people that you feel like, have a good sense of what's actually going on because you want their help in understanding the world in which you're living. Right? Like what's actually happening in Washington. Who should I trust? Who is untrustworthy? Who's a scumbag? The people that we choose to listen to or engage with in media are the people we think are giving us the best possible recitation of the facts without fear or favor. That's the way it should be. And so one of the ways you do that is you try to accrue knowledge from the outside. I mean, this is what I have to do. I've had a year of, rather a career in journalism where I try and get to know people, find out more information. I see a lot of news cycles come and go, and I get a clearer and clearer sense with each passing news cycle about where things are headed, the trajectory of these news events, what's gonna happen next for Instance, we're gonna talk about Venezuela in a moment and there's a lot of comparisons being made to Iraq. People are like, oh, we're involved in regime change. It's gonna be a complete disaster. It is really important to have a sense of history and a sense of how these operations go. What American benefits exist here. You've gotta think clearly about it. You have to. And you're gonna turn to people to help you make sense of it. Dan has always had a talent for that on the outside. Now, yes, Dan had a career in government before as a secret service agent, as a police officer. Those gave him excellent perspectives on the way things worked on the inside that he could use to inform his media career. But now imagine what he's got now. This is the thing. I was thinking about this this weekend. I'm like, you know, I don't envy the kind of job that Dan just entered into and spent the last year doing. I don't envy that at all. It just seems. Seems miserable to me. It seems miserable to me. And God bless him for doing it. What I do envy is the perspective. What I do envy is the insider knowledge. What I do envy is the ability to see what's going on on the inside. And now take it to an audience publicly. I can't wait for it. I'm super pumped about it. So anyway, a lot to be excited about. Um, Dan's. All of Dan's announcements, whatever he wants to do, that's all on his schedule. Again, I'm as curious as you are. I can't wait to, can't wait to find out more. But congratulations once again to Dan wrapping up his time at the FBI and coming back to the rest of us in the private sector. Looking forward to that and a nice send off from Cash Patel. That's cool. All right, let's see. No, don't make me the deputy director. Let's go, let's go. No, stop it. Stop it. Stop that nonsense. All right. Maduro fucked around and now he found out in the FAFO sequence. Boyd did Maduro fo. Holy cow. So here's what we saw. And for those of you who've been following this show for a time, you know a lot of these details, but I want to recite some of the really clear facts about what's been happening in Venezuela. You understand that modern day Venezuela, Venezuela, the flourishing country really up until the commies took it over in the form of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, was built by the United States of America. No, I didn't stutter the country was built by the United States of America. The wealth as we know it in Venezuela has come to be because of the US. We built the oil industry in this country and up until the communists stole it from American energy companies, that country was on an excellent trajectory. But just like everything else, just like every other country the commies have touched, they ruined what we had built. They ruined what good, hard working people had built for their own cruel purposes. We build all the oil infrastructure there. Everything. Venezuela, to be clear, has the largest proven oil reserves on the entire planet. Proven, in other words, we know how much oil is underground at the very least, and it is the biggest on the entire planet. The United States, through a variety of oil companies, goes in drills for it, refines it, brings in all of the manpower to pull this oil from the earth. And then eventually what ends up happening is Hugo Chavez steals it. Steals it. Now they call it expropriate, which is a fancy word for steal. It's theft. They stole it from the American companies. And the only company that stuck around, Chevron, stuck around under duress. The way that worked was they said, Chavez said, okay, basically you own almost none of your company, but if you take a very tiny share of your own company, we'll steal the rest of it and you get to stay. So Chevron took the deal. All the other oil companies run right out of town. Run right out of town. All their stuff was stolen. And so ever since then, what is, you know, and this was sold obviously to the Venezuelan people. This is gonna enrich you. This is gonna be good for you. This belongs to us. This is what these commies say. They'll say something like this. They appeal to their national sensibilities or to the populace by saying, we're doing this for you. Well, how'd that work out? Well, it got to the point that Venezuelans were eating zoo animals. Remember that? Where Venezuela has reached desperate levels of poverty and despair. Now, how has Maduro done in the midst of all of this? Well, he's done great. Maduro gets to live in palaces. Maduro gets to live a luxurious lifestyle. He's surrounded by armed guards who protect him at every moment. Those armed guards, to be clear, are Cubans, they're not Venezuelans. Because if your family was eating zoo animals to subsist, chances are you might not be happy with your leader. So the Cubans, speaking of commies, have been protecting Maduro and where's all that oil going? Well, certainly the proceeds are not going to the Venezuelan people. They're desperate and Starving. The proceeds go to Maduro and then the oil itself, well, goes to all the authoritarian regimes. The Cubans get the oil, the Iranians get oil. The Chinese are the single biggest buyer of that oil from Venezuela. But I thought there were sanctions, Vince. Yeah, there are. And that's why they use false flags. They use ghost shipping in order to move that oil, starting through Cuba, all around the world. All around the world simultaneously. The way Venezuela operates is as a narco state. Maduro is the head of the state run cartel. And they've been sending cocaine especially all across the planet and into the United States, into the hands of America's children, causing tremendous amounts of harm and despair. Maduro's been doing all of that. That led to an indictment in 2020. The Trump Justice Department began to hold Maduro accountable from afar. Now, they couldn't take him in the or. They didn't take him into custody back then. And did the Biden administration get rid of the charges against Maduro? No, they didn't. They sustained them. They kept them in place. In other words, the Biden administration shared the assessment that Maduro was guilty of something. And that brings us to the current day because finally somebody's done something about this. President Trump's Justice Department, with the help of the United States military, the extraordinary help of the United States military just went in and in the course of three hours were able to raid Caracas, grab Maduro, get him out on a helicopter and put him on the USS Iwo Jima and bring him back to New York. They did all of this in very rapid succession in a well orchestrated, amazing, unparalleled military operation that happened like that. In fact, speaking of he f the round and he found out. Here's the, here's the news this weekend from the press conference with the President and his cabinet members. Take a look. Cut one. Last night, on the order of the.
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President of the United States and in.
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Support of a request from, from the Department of Justice, United States military conducted an apprehension mission in Caracas, Venezuela to bring to justice two indicted persons, Nicholas and Cecilia Maduro. Nicolas Maduro had his chance until he didn't. He effed around and he found out.
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This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military.
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Might and competence in American history.
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Like, I don't understand yet how they haven't figured this out. And now if you don't know, now you know, because this is the way it's gonna play out. And I think people need to understand that this is not a president that just talks and does letters and press conferences. And, you know, if he says he's serious about something, he means it. But don't play games. Don't play games with this president in office because it's not gonna turn out well.
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Amazing video, amazing piece of audio produced by the White House. Kind of a wrap up on the weekend's events. Really, really phenomenal. So here's some of the pieces. As we understand it. You had members of the FBI speaking of a reason I want to hear from Dan. You had members of the FBI involved in this operation to arrest and get Maduro out of the country. You had Delta Force involved. Delta Force, these are the most elite military members on the planet going in and grabbing this guy. You had the CIA, which, by the way, last year, for those of you who follow the news closely, you'll remember this. I think it was October of last year when President Trump confirmed that the CIA had been deployed in Venezuela. A reporter just randomly asked the question, why'd you send the CIA in? And President Trump just accepted the premise. It was like, hey, you gotta do it. I forget what he said, the quote, but he confirmed that the CIA was deployed. And obviously they were there laying the groundwork for this operation. Months in the making and pulled off with immense success. Everything from the airstrikes that were going on, they filled the air with aircraft in order to just create a lot of chaos in the air and to. And to basically create this massive distraction of military air power. And then simultaneously they shut off power in the city. This is amazing. Don't mess with the US. We shut off power in Caracas and then they get into the military base where Maduro was being held. And according to the President, he and his wife made a sprint for a safe room. They were trying to get behind a steel door for a safe room. And Delta Force got on them before they could close the door. And in the process, they killed 32 members of the Cuban military, Cuban guard that were there to protect Maduro. All killed according to the Cuban government. Now they say 32 were killed. Not a single American casualty. Not a single one. They grabbed Maduro and his wife. The door could not be shut if it had been shut and sealed. The military was also ready for that. They had blowtorches and whatever devices you needed available. The President said it would have taken them approximately 47 seconds. 47. I'm not sure if he chose that number on purpose. It's the 47th presidency, but 47 seconds to get through that door if it was locked, not locked. They got ahold of him and they got him out of the country. The president said he's never seen anything like this. Here he is in some of his first public accounting on the subject, talking to FOX this weekend. Cut to.
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I've never seen anything like this. I was, I was able to watch it in real time and I watched every aspect of it and I listened to the communication between, you know, where we were in Florida and out in the field in Venezuela. And it was amazing to see the professionalism, the quality of leadership, the professionalism. General Raisin Gain is fantastic. Don't forget we did another one not so long ago. It was called the knocking out of the Iranian nuclear threat. The nuclear power. That was, that was unbelievable what they did there. And this is something that I don't know. It's amazing. And to have a few injuries but no death on our side is really amazing.
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It really is amazing. He said a few injuries, a few injuries but no death on the American side. Really an amazing thing. Meanwhile, dozens of Cuban guard killed in the raid. Wonderful stuff. And I'm glad these guys are on our side. Aren't you glad Delta Force is on our side? Holy crap. Could you imagine what the chaos of that must have been like? How are they reacting in Venezuela? How are Venezuelans reacting all around the world? You know, that's a country where millions upon millions of people have fled because of the commies who have been running the whole show. I've got details on that coming up. Celebrations around the planet. I'll share that with you. But first let me tell you about one of our great sponsors. Have you heard about Goldbelly by any chance? It is amazing. If you missed it during the holidays. Well, you don't have to miss it anymore. Don't miss it anymore. It's an amazing site. It celebrates the best of America by shipping our country's most iconic foods to from legendary restaurants right to your door anywhere in America. It's perfect for game day, Valentine's Day or anything else you've got going on. Goldbelly's gonna ship you iconic Chicago deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's, the original Buffalo wings from Anchor Bar in Buffalo, Guy Fieri's unbelievable trash can nachos, real Philly cheesesteaks, or even the legendary Franklin's barbecue straight from Texas right to your door. You know, we've got Valentine's Day coming up. Can you believe it? It's already on the way. And they've got great gifts for that. You can get award winning dinners from Peter Luger steakhouse yeah. Or world famous macarons from Latter Ray. Now, I've used Gold Belly quite a bit. And let me tell you, whether you're looking to turn game day into an unforgettable experience with friends or you want to impress your loved one on Valentine's Day, all you have to do is this. Go to goldbelly.com and get 20%. Go to goldbelly.com. get 20% off your first order with the promo code Vince. That's GoldBelly.com code Vince for 20% off your first order, GoldBelly.com. thank you to Goldbelly. Great operation. All right, let's see here. Okay, so we get this raid on Maduro. Maduro, who, by the way, was at a court hearing this morning in New York. They perp walked him. Did you see this? The DEA agents perp walking Maduro into New York this weekend. Take a look at this cut sticks as Maduro's like, happy New Year. Happy New Year. He says, yeah, happy New Year. You felt the animal. He's walking.
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Good night.
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Happy New Year.
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Good night. Happy New Year. Yeah, good night, son. DEA agents perp walking him. Yeah, pretty wild. Trump tweeted a photo of him or posted a photo of him to True Social. He looked. He looked, you know, ridiculous. They had a hearing protection on him. They had the, like, not the headphones, but, you know, like basically to block his hearing. And then they had blinders on him, too, to block everything out. So he didn't know, you know, where he was going and couldn't look at anything, couldn't hear anything. And so President Trump posted at the Truth Social, kind of a wild image to see. People were saying it looks like a video game streamer called Dr. Disrespect. Have you seen this at all? So here's what the guy.
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The guy.
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Here's what it looked like. This is the White House post Nicholas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima. Look at this. He looks a little Saddam Hussein ish, actually. And then. And then the doctor Disrespect guy posted it and he said, stop linking this to me. It's not funny. Because what does he look like, the disrespect? Oh, he's got. They've got it at the top. Hey, fellas, can we fix the screen a little bit? There he. Look at the top of the screen. He dresses up like this guy all the time. He looks like the exact same. There he is. Anyway, that's Maduro in custody. How are Venezuelans feeling about this? Hey, Any Venezuelans in the chat right now? How do you feel about this? That Maduro is no longer leading that country, that the United States is now subjecting him to justice? Because here's what it looks like among the Venezuelan diaspora in the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Cut three. They were throwing a hell of a party. Watch this. I'm telling you, I'm seeing these party videos. You guys see these? Isaac, did you see the party videos? I. Dude, I wanted to get down with these parties. I was like, I don't know what they've got, but they've got a vibe. They're, They're. There's a vibe going on. Cut four. Look, more dancing Venezuelans. Dude, What song is that? I gotta, I gotta do. I gotta get some AI research done on that song or something. I don't know if Shazam will tell me. I gotta find out what song that is. I'm going to put. That's a bop. I'm putting that on in the car. I don't know. That's a great. That's a great rundown. It's really funny. And then, of course, there's no, no celebration of something that makes people happy that Trump's responsible for. Would be complete without YMCA and the Trump dance. Take a look. Cut five. Trump impersonator. So funny. I love that people are telling me not to dance. You know what? No, I'm gonna dance. It's so good. I love it, man. I just like happiness. I'm a big fan of joy and I'm a big fan of commies being displaced. Now what is this all about? What's going on here? So, as I mentioned, the American energy industry was like straight up stolen by the commies. Can I say something to the American left? Let me address them for a moment. How many times do lefties try and force you to do land acknowledgments and claiming that you live on something that you stole? Now, of course they're lying about it, but let's just go with that for a moment. Oh, you stole this land, so you have to make a land acknowledgement. Oh, the Cherokee were once the owners of this land and we inherited it from them or we stole it from them or whatever they say. Okay, well then why shouldn't the Venezuelan communist government have to do oil acknowledgments that they stole our infrastructure from America? This oil industry was built by America. No, they don't have to subject them to that standard. Why is that? Exactly? Why is that? Why is it that I'm beginning To come to the conclusion that you just hate us, meaning Americans at every turn. Right now, the left is freaking out that Donald Trump just enforced an actual criminal indictment against Maduro, and Maduro is not the president. Even in the Trump administration, they've been kind of referring to him as the president. They just as a title. He's not the legitimate leader, was never the legitimate leader of Venezuela. He was there. Fraudulently, he seized power. If you listen to Venezuelans, they referred to him as an occupier, not as the leader of the country, somebody who seized power against the wishes of the country. And speaking of that country, you know, there's. In a moment we'll talk to Mike Gonzalez and get his expert assessment of all of this. But I do want to focus on something for a moment. You know, there is a lot of legitimate concern about what comes next, totally legitimate. You know, in the United States, I think we have developed a very cynical view, for good reason, about the use of our military in foreign countries, especially when it involves quote, unquote, regime change. But here's something that I'm thinking about right now and that I'd like you to think about as well. This is definitely not Iraq. This is in no way the same set of circumstances. Venezuela is within the Western Hemisphere. So in other words, it's in the most important sphere of influence for the United States. It is of paramount importance for national security that the Western Hemisphere be under American control. I mean, the whole Western Hemisphere. Additionally, China has made and all of our adversaries, but China especially has made massive inroads into Venezuela as a staging ground for its adversarial relationship with us buying illicit oil from them, stolen from the American people. And we're supposed to be just okay with that? No, we're not okay with that. We will assert ourselves again and re establish dominance in our own hemisphere and push back our adversaries, big ones. The other piece here is when you look at anytime a regime changes, anytime there is a military conflict of any kind, even if it's a short, little tiny one like the one we just saw this weekend, 90 minutes, three hours, there's nothing. But then you displace the person who's acting as leader of the country, what comes next? Well, it helps to understand what the country looks like right now. Not every country that has withstood a change in the way its government is structured or regime change has ended up in complete disaster. Famous examples of great successes have been Germany and Japan in the wake of World War II. Now, how did that happen? Well, both of those countries had more cohesive cultures than, say, Iraq. The Middle east is plagued with sectarian and tribal violence that you don't find in places with more homogenous cultures like Japan and Germany. So culture is probably the leading indicator Venezuela has that Venezuela has cultural cohesion. The other is whether or not the country has a legacy of real democratic institutions. Iraq was a joke. Iraq was a joke run by the Hussein family. A complete authoritarian dictatorship didn't have a reasonable legacy of democratic institutions to fall back upon and as a result became a complete disaster in the wake of the overthrow of Saddam. But Germany had a history of democracy. Japan, we convinced the emperor to basically swear off his own divinity as we changed the government there, but again, had a homogenous culture. Venezuela does have a history of functional and stable democratic institutions up until the Communists took over in the form of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. So you have people who grew up in a world where they recognize the stable and thriving democracy that they once had and they'd like it back, please, which is why you're seeing Venezuelans celebrate right now. So there's all sorts of reasons for optimism here that this is going to work out. But I'm going to explore it more with Mike Gonzalez in just a moment because again, this really comes down to is it good for us or not? And I would submit it is. It is. More in a moment on this coming up. All right. Hey, let me thank our great sponsors, including Brickhouse Nutrition, Just absolutely amazing. Doctors call weight cycling a complete disaster. And half of Americans do this. When you lose 10 or more pounds and then you put that weight back on, plus a couple of more, it can be tough on your body and it probably leaves you really frustrated. And the bottom line is simple. Most people need help losing weight. And here's a great way to do that. Non Prescription Lean by Brickhouse Nutrition. Now, it was created by doctors and Lean is an oral supplement, not an injection. The science is super impressive. The studied ingredients target weight loss in three very powerful ways. 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You can eliminate your stress and set yourself up for a very strong 2026. The Fed dropped rates for the fourth time in December. American Financing can help you access that equity in your home at an interest rate in the low fives. You heard that, right? In the low fives. That's a much lower rate than the average 20% or more credit card rate. American Financing is saving their customers an average of $800 a month. It's like a $10,000 raise to start the new year. There are no upfront fees, no obligation to see how much you can save. And they're closing some in as fast as 10 days and even delaying two mortgage payments. American Financing, America's Home for home loans, call today. 888-879-6460. That's 888-879-6480. American financing.net Vince, I'm very happy to tell you that I have joining me right now the great Mike Gonzalez at the Heritage Foundation. He's wonderful and he's an expert on all of these commies and communist movements all around the planet, the Marxists. Mike, good to talk to you as always, sir. Glad to have you with us on a Monday.
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Vince, I'll tell you what, I'm an expert on the Ketchup Song, which is the song you were just celebrating. I put the link in the chat. It's a wonderful song. It came out in Spain in 2002. So I completely agree with you.
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It's super catchy. It's called the Ketchup Song.
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It's called the Ketchup Song by a group called the Ketchup. The Last Ketchup. Last Ketchup they did the daughters of a, of a flamenco singer that was called Tomatillo Tomato. So they named themselves the Ketchup Group. And it's a great song. I just put the, the link in. Sorry, I don't want to, I don't want to take off your. Your time. But you have the link there in the chat.
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Oh, I love, I swear to you, I'm putting it on in the car as soon as I get out of Here today. I've got a list of this thing. It's really great. So, Mike, let's talk about this operation. A stunning operation to go in there, grab Nicolas Maduro and his wife, get out of the country. All done within in the course of about three hours. They said to get it all done and over with.
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What did you make of was land, sea and air? We suffered very few casualties. We suffered about seven wounded. None of them are in critical condition. Apparently we killed 40 to 50. It's not known. What is known is that 32 of those killed were Cubans.
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Yeah, 32.
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So if we killed 40, that means three fourths were Cubans.
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More than three, four Cubans. And why are Cubans protecting Maduro?
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Because he could not trust Venezuelans. The Cubans have been. There's about maybe an estimated 15,000 Cuban henchmen in Caracas right now.
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In.
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Trump won, according to Carlos Fuente, the former Mexican foreign minister. He was ready to leave. He was ready to get on a plane to Havana or New York, sorry, or Sochi, Russia. And the Cubans said to him, no, you're not leaving anywhere. You're the president. Go back to the palace and act presidential.
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Yes.
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And these Cubans were surrounding him. And the Cubans have always denied. We have nobody in Caracas until last night when they had to acknowledge that 32 of the people killed were Cuban agents.
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Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the justification for this. Why is it in the American interest to see Maduro brought to justice in this way?
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C
So I think they just. And more should be made of this, is that the people, the hundreds of thousands that are dying of drug overdose, a lot of them are MAGA country. They're very important to Trump and J.D. vance. If you read J.D. vance's book Hillbilly Elegy, you understand that these are people. If you travel America like I travel America, I went to a very beautiful town in Idaho. Not in Iowa, In Iowa about two years ago. And I said to the waitress, this is a beautiful town. She goes, yeah, it's really beautiful, but 90% of the people here are cooking meth. So a lot of. A lot of these towns in America are falling into desolation, unemployment. And I think this is very serious to the administration. So in order to address these twin threats of narcotic smuggling, which Venezuela, you have to understand, the Venezuelan government was not a government, it was a cartel.
- [36:51]
A
Yes.
- [36:52]
C
He had the legitimate leader of anything Maduro. He was the head of a cartel.
- [36:56]
A
It's what they call it, the Cartel de los Solas.
- [36:59]
C
A cartel of the Suns. And they were trying to not just sow havoc on our streets with narcotics. But I have, you know, I've talked to a Venezuelan defector, a former senior official, who told me that Chavez gave a lot of money to Black Lives Matter, for example, to one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, even before the group was founded, to sow mayhem on our streets. So these are people who were committed to, to create havoc. And if you want to take care of that, these are Americans who were not absent under the Biden administration and now they're not absent anymore. They matter a lot to Trump and Vance and to Rubio. And I think that's really at the bottom of this. And I think we'll be looking at activities in Mexico. Mexico has also lost control of its territory. I've talked to, to northern politicians, politicians in the north. They've told me that extraditions are already taking place, American planes landing, taking out drug kingpins. Colombia also has to look out because Colombia is the world's top exporter of cocaine. And Petro, another Marxist president, does not really have control. He may be cooperating himself with the narco traffickers, but not to the degree that Maduro was. So I think that this is the, this is really an operation that is focused on America, on our streets, on our urban areas and our towns across the U.S. make sure that the scourge of narcotics is wiped clean.
- [38:40]
A
So priority one is to stop the deaths, the deaths due to drugs in the United States. And by the way, they've had a lot of success. Massive plummeting in drug deaths over the course of the last year. They deserve a lot of credit for that. But also there's the oil component to all of this that I've been talking about, which is that America built Venezuela as we know it. We built the oil industry there. Hugo Chavez and Maduro in succession were both seizing all of this American energy infrastructure. And then they didn't, despite their false promises, give the wealth to the people or something like that. Instead they used it to enrich themselves and then send all of that oil in illicit ways to our adversaries, especially China. Can you talk about the impact on the global oil economy now as a result of this?
- [39:27]
C
Yes, I mean, Chavez basically expropriated the oil resources Pedevesa, which was a very well run company, oil company was collectivized the same way that Mamdani and his tenant person, Sia Weaver, want to expropriate property from landlords in New York and have the city buy it and run it because, you know, because cities are such great landlords. Just talk to the people of Havana and Moscow about this. You know, Chavez and Maduro did the same thing to pay the vessel. So what you end up after, you know, this whole thing begins in 1999, after 30 years, 30 plus years of collectivism. You have a country with the deepest oil reserves, the proven oil, the largest proven oil reserves in the world, which sells a fraction of what we sell in the open market because the government doesn't know how to run anything.
- [40:32]
A
It's wild. And so what President Trump says is that we're gonna try and recoup the stolen costs of all of this for the American energy companies and then simultaneously, for the first time, actually benefit the Venezuelan people. If you're Venezuelan, you must be dancing with joy right now at your change in fortune.
- [40:57]
C
And they are. The Venezuelans are very happy. The only people who are not happy are the China aligned groups here in the us The Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ancient coalition. All of these groups that you're seeing demonstrating on the streets, they're all China aligned and they're there. These are the same people who were demonstrating for Hamas, for the terrorist group Hamas. These are the same people who were demonstrating with Black Lives Matter.
- [41:24]
A
So you mentioned the New York City mayor. Unfortunately, now Zoran Mamdani, and I kind of want to talk to you about him a little bit. But there's a link here because he released a statement condemning the Trump administration for this action this weekend and suggesting that it was somehow illegal according to the Constitution or international law or whatever. But it seems like just like every other communist I've seen through the years, the only common cause they seem to share is with Marxists, is with Communists, not with American citizens. Is that what's happening here? Basically, the commies in the United States are rooting against this progress for our country.
- [42:00]
C
Well, we were told not to call Mandani a communist. And then on his first day, its inauguration, he said he was going to replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Collectivism killed 100 million people in the world. The person he's appointed to run the tenant groups in New York City, Sia Weaver, has been very clear in her writings and her comments that she's going to put the screws to the landlords so they have no choice but to sell their property to the city of New York. This is expropriation that is taking place. He's a collectivist. He put out a Ridiculous tweet yesterday saying he had been briefed on the. On the Maduro arrest. Just the same way as my wife briefed me yesterday morning on my need to blow the leaves. You know.
- [42:55]
A
So funny. Well, let me. I want people to see this, what we're talking about. Here's. Here's Cut nine. Fellas, if we could put this up. This is Mamdani in his inaugural address, by the way. He was sworn in by Bernie Sanders. This is unbelievable. And here he is talking about the glowing warmth of collectivism or whatever. Cut nine, watch this.
- [43:16]
E
We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of. Of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share. New Yorkers.
- [43:45]
A
By the way, a city whose population is dropping, especially if people have the means to get out of the city. In light of all of the collectivism that's been happening for years there, he wants to take it to a new level. Sorry, refresh my memory on this. You're the expert on the subject. Isn't the warmth of collectivism responsible for the deaths of nearly 100 million people in the last century?
- [44:05]
C
That's right, yeah. Most of them in China and the Soviet Union, many in Cuba. I think one third of the population of Cambodia was wiped out by collectivism. It is beyond chilling, Vince, that the new mayor of New York says he's a collectivist and he wants to bring collectivism to New York. I have lived on the very. Under many bad mayors. I lived under beam in the 70s. I lived under Dinkins in the 90s. And New York is, I'm sorry to say, because I'm a New Yorker at heart. I'm a Yankee fan and a Giants fan. I'm sorry to say. New York is not going to fare very well if Mamdani is able to. To do the things he wants to do. And he. So just another reminder that Maduro is not the only collectivist in New York at the moment.
- [44:54]
A
Yeah. And by the way, also, this is another reason why they should handle Maduro in Florida, not New York. I mean, New York's a mess for a bunch of reasons, but now that Mamdani's in charge of the city, my instinct is the last place that I want the communist fake dictator Venezuela is to be in New York City right now.
- [45:13]
C
He should have Been sent to Miami, which is where Noriega was sent. Obviously, the model here is Manuel Antonio Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who. Who, by the way, imprisoned me and threw me out of the country when I was a young journalist in my 20s, in the 1980s. And a year later, George H.W. bush arrested him the same way we just arrested Maduro. And he was tried and ended his life in a prison in Miami, which I think Maduro will do. Maduro is going to cooperate. I think he will be very cooperative. I hope he gives the goods on how much money he's given to US groups, how much money he gave to Black Lives Matter or to Antifa. He was also a big supporter of Antifa, these groups that are demonstrating in the streets of New York today on his behalf. Went to Caracas, trained in Caracas, attended conferences in Caracas. It's all connected.
- [46:10]
A
Vince, I want to talk more about that in a moment, but you just brought up something about your own biography that's super interesting. So Noriega arrests you for your journalism in the 80s, and then a year later you see Noriega captured and brought to the United States to stand trial in Florida.
- [46:28]
C
Right.
- [46:29]
A
And how. Just so if you could give me the perspective of what a Venezuelan must feel right now, how elated were you by the capture of Noriega?
- [46:39]
C
Oh, I was. I was very, very happy, along with most Panamanians who. Panama, by the way. I was just there. I visited the president in the palace last year and all he wanted to talk about was my being captured by Noriega because he was also captured by Noriega. And I was looking, I was a member of a delegation, said, look, sir, we're here to talk business. And he said to me, you cannot deny your history. This is part of your history, so don't try to deny it. So I'm like, I'm not trying to deny it. This just happened many years ago and I was only put in prison overnight. So, yeah, no, I think Venezuelans are going to be super happy about this. They did not want Maduro. This is. Can you imagine a country run by a cartel? This is what we've had in the person that would. We're trying to work with right now, the vice president, Delsey Rodriguez, is also a drug kingpin. But we're gonna try to make her do the things we wanna do.
- [47:36]
A
Yes, we've kinda got her in a headlock right now. I know a lot of people are being like, well, she's a commie too, so how have things changed? Well, it really comes down to whether or not Trump and Secretary of State Rubio and others, if they feel like they can control her through this transition phase, because that's really the key math here.
- [47:54]
C
I was talking to an administration, somebody in the administration yesterday, and I said, what if she doesn't want to cooperate? And he said to me, we have options. Two hours later, Trump pretty much said, if she doesn't cooperate, we're going to kill her. And immediately after that, she issued a statement saying that she was going to be very, very cooperative.
- [48:15]
A
Yeah, sometimes a little bit of muscle goes a long way, especially after what they just experienced. We shut the power off in the whole city and grabbed the guy who was pretending to be leader. Let me end on a point that you just made a moment ago that I think is worth dwelling on. This is a feature that you and I have talked about for years of these Marxists around the planet. Insofar as they interfere with American politics, which they do a lot. They often do it by fomenting the kind of chaos we see from regions like Antifa and blm, these operations that cause a lot of trouble in the United States. The point you keep making, Mike, is that it's often orchestrated by these communist governments outside of our country, places like Venezuela and the ChiComs, for instance. How often is that a feature of all of this?
- [49:02]
C
Well, I tell you, I'm going to come out with, I'm going to break news here. I have a paper coming out this week, a very long paper on how really the whole thing is orchestrated by Cuba. And in fact, we have two senior Venezuelan officials in prison. In December, they both wrote letters to President Trump saying the whole thing is a Cuban plan to sow dissent here in your country. And it's Cuba's ideas with Venezuelan money and muscle from the Colombian guerrillas, the narco Marxist guerrillas in Colombia. And these are the people who have been smuggling drugs. Cuba has really been behind all of this since 1959. I'm going to give chapter on verse on this in a paper. But yes, obviously China today very much. A lot of the groups that are creating havoc in New York and other cities today on behalf of Venezuela are paid for by a millionaire who lives in Shanghai with very close connections to the ccp. I write about him often. Many people do. Asra Nomani has done a fantastic job on this data. Republican on Twitter also does a very good job on this, on detailing all these networks. I don't know why we allow these networks to exist since they're really Chinese and Cuban agents. The People's Forum is run by a Cuban agent who trained in Havana for years, Manolo de los Santos. He is, again, involved the People's Forum, headquartered in New York, again, very involved in these demonstrations. So just as a rule of thumb, if you see promodoro demonstrations, they're not grassroots. They're organized by pro China groups. If they're anti Maduro, these are really spontaneous outpourings of emotion by Venezuelans who have been suppressed for decades now.
- [50:55]
A
Amazing. It's just amazing. What a change in fortune for them. Thank you as always, Mike Gonzalez. Great to get your insights. And happy New Year to you, sir.
- [51:03]
C
Happy New Year to you. Vince, you're looking great. How are you managing so much weight?
- [51:08]
A
I'm gonna go listen to that music. I'm gonna go. Y' all pumped up in the car? Thank you very much, brother. Good to see you. There's Mike Gonzalez from the Heritage Foundation. He's been through it. He's been through it. Can you imagine? Imprisoned by Noriega. Yeah, he's got some perspective, for sure. Mike's great. Okay, so today, as we are, as we're launching today's program, we get the breaking news, and this just happened ahead of us. Beginning to do the podcast today. Tim Walls. Tampon. Tim Walls is officially bowing out of his race for reelection as the governor of Minnesota. In other words, we've reached. I guess it takes $19 billion in fraud to run a Democrat out, or at least you knowing about it, to run a Democrat out of office. Tim Walz has announced today that he is no longer seeking reelection in Minnesota. And his statement is about as absurd as it gets. Let me. I'll just summarize it this way. He claims the reason he's not running anymore is because he wants to spend more time pursuing the fraudsters. That's like a spit take. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. That's him. No, come on. That's him waving with both hands and saying, please stop focusing on me. Please. This guy deserves to be behind bars. Forget the fact that he shouldn't be on a ballot. It's good that he's not running for office. This guy should be behind bars. At the very least, he knew this was going on and turned a blind eye to it because it was a political coalition that supported him. It's as simple as that. At the very least. Worse than that, he was involved in aiding and abetting it. And there's already plenty of evidence that this guy was a campaign beneficiary in terms of political money. You see how these back scratching operations work is. The same is true in California with greasy Gavin Newsom. What ends up happening is these left wing disastrous operations. Outright fraud. They get money from taxpayers and in return for receiving that money, they turn around and they give cash to Democrats for their election campaigns. And then those Democrats in turn don't scrutinize or allow law enforcement to pursue them. That's what happened here. We get like these fraudulent operations through something called Feeding Our Future. Taking all this money, pretending like it's about feeding hungry children. In the end all it's doing is lining the pockets of Somali fraudsters who are stealing a ton of cash. The same is true of the daycare operations run by these Somali fraudsters in Minnesota. Just stealing tons of cash, no kids being taken care of. And in fact there's a massive intersection between these things. Massive intersection. Did you know that some of the daycare operations that were taking money were also part of the Feeding Our Future scam? Look at this. This is Daily Caller headline on the subject. Vacant Somali daycares in viral videos. You know, the ones captured by the great 23 year old reporter Nick Shirley. These vacant Somali daycares are also linked to $300 million in the feeding Our Future fraud. Multiple Somali daycare centers highlighted by Nick Shirley are at the center of a $300 million scam. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, the now infamous videos from Nick shirley posted on December 26, Merry Christmas showed several purported Somali run daycares receiving millions in taxpayer funds despite any evidence that children were actually present at the facilities. Now it turns out that five of the 10 daycare centers that Nick Shirley visited were operating as so called meal sites for Feeding Our Future, which is the Minnesota based nonprofit implicated in a massive fraud scheme that has already produced dozens of convictions. So not only do you have daycare fraud going on, the very same people who are committing fraud there are committing fraud with the food program in Minnesota. And the end result is we're looking at upwards of $19 billion of either proven or suspicious payments that are all believed to be fraud at the hands almost entirely of Somalis in the state of Minnesota, allowed to do that by the Democrats who run the state. And yes, that includes tampon Tim Walls who is now bowing out of his race for governor because he's annoyed that you noticed his role in all of this. Now of course he's pretending like I just need to focus on the fraud. I can't focus on a political campaign. He's just bullshitting you. It's Just a lie. He's been caught and now he's become once again, just like last year, a liability for Democrats and their electoral ambitions in 2026. You know what happened here? Tim Walls didn't just step aside of his own volition. They gave him the heave ho. They gave him the Biden treatment. They threw a hook around him. They dragged him off the stage. This is how Democrats operate, by the way, as a party. They got rid of him because he's an albatross around the neck of the entire party. It just reached a level of noticing that they couldn't withstand anymore. Now, one of the things that's hilarious is Democrats are running around saying that. Some Democrats are claiming that this is awful. You allowed a conservative media campaign to take out Tim Walls. A conservative media campaign? What campaign are you talking about? The one where we just simply tell you the truth. If the truth leads to your extinction as a political candidate, you should have never been a political candidate. Sorry. We noticed what you were up to. One more person to thank in the midst of all of this. While we're on the subject, thank you to Kamala Harris for taking the bright light of a vice presidential nomination and putting it right on Tampon Tim Walls. The best decision Kamala Harris ever made was to put Tim Walls in front of the rest of us so we could spend a couple of minutes just observing his two handed waving and his theft of the American people and his role in it. Thanks, Kamala. You did something useful. Tampon Tim Wall is no longer running. They say Amy Klobuchar wants the job, though. The senator? Yeah. She's something else. We'll get to her. We'll get to her. I got a big national radio show coming up today, the Vince Show. You can get your local listings thevinchshow.com to find out where you hear me on radio. Or you can watch us on rumble. Rumble.com Vince, we do it live. We got the chat going. It's amazing. And we're going to have a great program today. And I'll be back with you tomorrow. It's an exciting new year and I'm glad to be doing this with you. The best audience anywhere. See you soon.