Transcript

LIVE: Trump Puts ENTIRE WORLD on Edge with MORE INVASION THREATS

From MeidasTouch · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 2 min · 11,514 words · 121 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "LIVE: Trump Puts ENTIRE WORLD on Edge with MORE INVASION THREATS", an episode of MeidasTouch published January 8, 2026 (1 h 2 min, about 11,514 words). It mentions 8 people, works and ideas, including Alex Epstein, Celia Maduro, Caesar Chavez, Jacob Fry, Nicholas Maduro.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Alex Epstein
  2. – 20:00: Celia Maduro, Caesar Chavez, Deli Rodriguez, Nicholas Maduro
  3. – 40:00: Celia Maduro
  4. – 50:00: Celia Maduro, Alex Epstein, Caesar Chavez, Harry Truman
  5. – 1:00:00: Alex Epstein

Notable quotes from "LIVE: Trump Puts ENTIRE WORLD on Edge with MORE INVASION THREATS"

  • And GOP infighting continues. We'll give you the latest. Despite all of that news, Epstein leaks and takes, they're not going away, so we're going to give you the latest there…
    about Alex Epstein · at
  • US military conducted air strikes in Venezuela and captured President Nicholas Maduro. The DOJ announced that Maduro and his wife were indicted in the Southern District of New…
    about Celia Maduro · at
  • To refine and pull out of the ground and how outdated the infrastructure has been since the Yugo Chavez regime essentially decimated the infrastructure and that it would take a…
    about Caesar Chavez · at
  • Who we put into place matters. It is Harry Truman famously said that history is not the result of circumstances.
    about Harry Truman · at
  • He's saying. But then here's a clip of Steven Miller, the deputy chief of staff, talking to Jake Tapper about this important topic. The premier of Greenland and the premier of Denmark and other Danish officials are responding to.
    about Jake Tapper · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Alex Epstein — Person · 8 mentions · first at
  • Celia Maduro — Person · 7 mentions · first at
  • Caesar Chavez — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Jacob Fry — Person · 2 mentions
  • Nicholas Maduro — Person · 1 mention · first at
    US military conducted air strikes in Venezuela and captured President Nicholas Maduro. The DOJ announced that Maduro and his wife were indicted in the Southern District of New…
  • Deli Rodriguez — Person · 1 mention · first at
    The you know we don't we could call it what it is but the vice president Deli Rodriguez was sworn in as interim president and Trump has announced the US will assume control of…
  • Harry Truman — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Jake Tapper — Person · 1 mention · first at

Full transcript with timestamps

Breaking news. An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis this morning. Uh the story is developing as we speak. So, we're going to come back to it through the hour, but we're definitely going to start with it uh after we get through that awful, awful story. The insanity of this Venezuela thing stacks up by the minute. We're just trying to keep up, but we'll recite and an we'll recite and analyze the latest. Then we got to talk about Cuba and Greenland. You know, those two massive threats to America. encouraging new polls regarding young American men bailing on Trump. Plus, this week we got fresh revisionist history from the White House on the January 6th insurrection and GOP infighting continues. We'll give you the latest. Despite all of that news, Epstein leaks and takes, they're not going away, so we're going to give you the latest there, too. Welcome back to the podcast for the 54% of Americans

who regularly vote for progress in every election want to convince their friends and family members to join a majority. This is Majority 54. Ravi, I think you have seen this video and I have not. It just happened. Yeah, we're we're loading it up now to play. Uh I've seen a couple of angles. Oh, here it is for people on video. So, you can see this maroon truck, which is the uh the person

like a little SUV. Yeah, it's like a SUV. This is the civilian and then the truck next to it, the pickup truck is ICE agents. You can see them approaching the truck here on the side, the driver side door. The truck backs up and then pulls out. Um, and as it pulls out, um, and Jeremy, you could rewind that back. Um, as it pulls out, uh, it appears that one of the ICE agents, uh, on the driver's side door, from what we can tell, uh, opens fire into the driver's side window as the car pulls out. Um, and we don't have a perfect angle of it. Um, but, uh,

it looks like she's trying to leave. Yeah, Jeremy, if you could if you could bring us back to that moment. Yeah, we'll do it one more time here. So, if you watch it here, watch. So, you've got the the SUV and the truck pulls right up, right? Uh, and what we could see here is uh the car is about to leave, right? And pay attention to the the the one guy closest to the driver's side door. He's the one who I believe uh if you could see him opens fire. You can see him with his hand out. And I think the from what we could tell here uh and the mayor seems as we'll get to seems to share at least my reaction to this. Um anything's possible in terms of like we don't have a full angle on what's on the other side of this, but there is absolutely no evidence based on this video that this this truck posed imminent danger to any of those ICE agents. Uh, and the person who shot it uh is still standing as the car peels

off and leaves. Not in the direct not in the direct way of the way it's going. It looks an awful like an awful lot to me.

Like the driver began to back up as they were approaching and then saw a weapon brandished and started trying to speed away which is

Here's a better fire. Yeah. Watch this. This is an even better angle. I think this is going to give us more information. So, you could see the two ICE agents approaching the door right here. Right? Watch the other agent. Ready?

There it is. He was a little bit in the front of the car, right? So, Jeremy, go right back to the that one part right there because that's going to be the

So, one one agent is trying to pull the driver out of the car. The driver doesn't want to be pulled out of the car. So, the driver is pulling is driving away. And the person who has positioned themsself in front of the car takes that as a threat and instead of stepping well steps to the side and as they step to the side fires through the windshield and hits the driver.

And and Jeremy, I don't know if you could pause it in the key moment, the moment I want to pause is when the person who opens fire is out of the way of the truck but still has the gun pointed at the windshield and shoots. If you can get to that point, that I think is the key moment there because this is a person who's not in danger anymore.

Yeah. Um and Jeremy, I don't if you could pull that back, but um so uh that's my read on it, Jason. I don't know what your read on it is.

Yeah, there's no imminent danger here judging from this video at all. Yeah, that that angle I think gives us I think everything we need to know. There's not there's nobody else that we that conceivably was in the path of this truck.

We know so far from reporting is that this is an American citizen who was there as a legal observer. Uh that they are the wife of a prominent activist. Uh and yeah, let's if we have the videos of Mayor Frey, let's go to those. His reaction. There's little I can say again that'll make this situation better. But I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the [ __ ] out of Minneapolis. So, they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is [ __ ] This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.

Yeah, I'll go further. I mean, this is this person was murdered. And I want to be clear for people like Robbie, I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to meet Jacob Frey. He is not a an inflammatory person. He is not a person th these are not things that Jacob Frey would say lightly like he's not a person who's looking for attention in this sort of way. Um you know that's not who the guy is. Uh I I trust his judgment on this and believe his feelings to be very genuine.

Yeah. I mean he's looking at what we just saw, right? Which is we just saw two angles. one that I think is fairly definitive and listeners if you're on the podcast you'll you'll probably have seen them uh if you want um and

your audio you mean? Yeah. Yeah. on the on the audio side of things. And you know, like the the key thing here is if you could pull a gun out and shoot it, you can get out of the way of the truck. And at that point, you could press charges on this person for whatever the equivalent uh of pulling out in that way. Like if we and you could have a you can that is there's plenty you could do there. They had the license plate number. The person's leaving. It's not like they're going to go to Mexico, right? You can knock on their door and arrest them if you feel like a crime has been committed.

If you think if you think of pulling out like we're watching it again here. You've got a person calmly walking up to the vehicle. They're starting this conversation. The vehicle window is open. They start trying to open the door. The vehicle starts to back up. Somebody from the ICE agent from the other vehicle had positioned themselves in front of the vehicle. So clearly what they're doing is they're trying to tell the person to move, but the person who fired the shot positioned themsself in front of the vehicle presumably to block the person from leaving. So there

but the thing is and they got out of out of the way and they were out of the way when they fired the shot.

Yeah. Uh and they just got out of the way, right? So like the the very fact that this person got out of the way like I think tells us what we need to know about whether they were like you know what I'm saying? Like

this is the [ __ ] we've been talking about for a while that we've been warning about that you've got a bunch of people who want to play paramilitary and want to dress up in all the gear and want to do this stuff and maybe took their $50,000 incentive to join and you know I don't I don't know the person who pulled this trigger but it sure looks to me like a situation somebody who wanted to do this wanted to be in this this is I mean you you know you're saying truck because where you're from in the east coast, folks call this a truck. This is a This is a midsize SUV. This is a maroon midsize SUV. This looks like the kind of vehicle that I don't know who this person is who was shot, but I'm guessing it's probably what they take their kids to school in. It's a drop off. It's a mom vehicle. Okay, that's what she's in. And um this does not look from the video that we're looking at here like this person was any kind of a

threat. This looks a lot like a person who came to work wanting to kill somebody. Um, and they did.

Yeah. And you know, again, we got we have people in masks, which we've been talking about for a while. Like, what is this? Like, we now have masked people walking our streets shooting at people, right? That's that's the federal government. That's where we are in 2026.

This is this is Kent State. Yeah. And so, you know, we'll see what the we'll see what the fallout from this will be, but um obviously the mayor's on fire about this. I haven't seen yet the reactions from across the spectrum, but uh we have to draw a line in the sand here. Like the the courts helpfully uh drew a line in the sand and and forced Trump to at least pull some troops out on over the past few weeks. And we've got to make a big moment out of this. Like this is the kind of thing that we have to get our backs up about. And when we talk about what matters enough to rise to the level for mass action, this has got to be the kind of thing that brings us into the streets um and brings more people out there to make uh in a civil disobedient way, in a peaceful way, makes ISIS's job harder uh through civil disobedience, through um safe and peaceful protests. Uh, we need to tell ICE and show ICE and the Trump

administration that the way they're conducting themselves in cities is unacceptable.

Well, the mayor's right. They need to get the [ __ ] out of Minneapolis. Like, Jeremy, roll this again because it's not just the shooter. There's another piece to this. Uh, and that is that the the first agent who approaches the vehicle is clearly not approaching to deescalate. This is a this is a car parked in the middle of a residential street. They walk up, the the driver gets out, walks over and is immediately trying upon like no conversation is immediately trying to yank this door open and pull the person out of the vehicle. There's no deescalation happening here at all. By the way, there was no escalation in the first place. Um there's just an escalation by ICE.

There's there's where the escalation comes from. So, all right, we can stop watching it.

Yeah. Um, well, obviously we'll continue monitoring this as we go. Uh, and you know, it's it's breaking, so it's possible we'll come back to it even throughout the hour.

Sorry, I'm going to say one more thing about it. Like, if I'm parked in the middle of the street because I'm, you know, exercising a first amendment right or I'm I'm, you know, being an observer of what's going on with ICE and somebody rushes up to my vehicle and starts trying to pull me out of it, I'm going to try to move my vehicle. It's the It is the natural thing to do. Like ICE is the aggressor here. Um and and they murdered this person. So I I I'm spun up about it. I know we have other stuff to talk about. How about we take our first break and then come back and talk about those things. So we'll go to break here.

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Well, early Saturday morning, Jason, I think most people know this by now, the US military conducted air strikes in Venezuela and captured uh President Nicholas Maduro. The DOJ announced that Maduro and his wife were indicted in the Southern District of New York on charges including naroterrorism, conspiracy, cocaine importation, possession of machine guns, and destructive devices. Uh this was a joint operation involving over 150 aircraft from 20 different land and base uh sea bases from across the western hemisphere. Um Maduro was captured without resistance. No US troops were killed. One helicopter was struck by gunfire. Approximately six soldiers were injured and Venezuelan uh officials say uh at least 80 of their folks were killed including military and civilians. Um the country is now under the uh you know we don't we could call it what it is but the vice president Deli Rodriguez was sworn in as interim

president and Trump has announced the US will assume control of Venezuela until a safe proper and judicious transition and that we're not afraid to have boots on the ground. We also just got an announcement yesterday that Trump has claimed that Venezuela would send 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the US which is roughly$ 1.8 83 billion worth at the current prices. Uh unclear if Venezuela gets anything in return. Uh where do we start? So there are two competing camps that wanted this in the Trump administration. Um and I guess they both won. one uh and the most obvious one is the oil companies and the oil executives that back Trump help him get his second term. uh and you know they have this very Putinlike view like the way Putin views Ukraine of sort of you know we had oil interests in that country when they nationalized uh oil and therefore that's really our oil under the ground and so

we've got to go in and take it back which is why you know all this first of all none of this has to do with narot trafficking obviously at this point right like neither camp was really about narot trafficking uh we don't really need to get I think that's pretty well established at this point because they they just gave up the ghost on talking about drugs ever since this happened other than you know that's what the old indictments for and that's what he did so that's what he'll stand trial for but everything else has been about oil so far uh with the exception of the people who you know understandably are saying and this gets to the other camp that the people of Venezuela were suffering under Maduro. Um, now I have a lot of questions as to whether that suffering is going to be alleviated by Maduro's vice president uh coming into power instead of the leader of the opposition coming into power. But let's put that

aside for a moment. That's the Marco Rubio camp, right? That that wanted this the, you know, anti-Cuba or hawkish on Cuba, hawkish on Venezuela. Um, South Florida politics thing. And as I said in some posts this week, this is the danger in my opinion among many others of having your secretary of state also be your national security adviser. It's only ever happened one other time in American history. That was Henry Kissinger who was pretty hawkish uh and seen as somebody who got us involved in a lot of foreign entanglements militarily. Um, and so when you are in the situation room or whatever the hell that room at Mara Lago is and you don't have your national security adviser who has an entire apparatus that ha that that talks about military tools uh at their disposal arguing for one thing and your secretary of state who has an entire diplomatic corps on the other side of the table arguing for something

else. Instead, what you have is Marco Rubio in both roles from his South Florida politician ideology just pushing and pushing the president to do this. Um, and ultimately that's a huge win for oil companies. And I don't know, to me, it's pretty obvious that this was the president of the United States ordering American soldiers to go into harm's way and take the lives of other people in order to enrich American oil companies. Yeah, I I think it might even be worse than that because I think in Trump's like simplistic brain, uh we can just take the oil from Venezuela and our companies can operate. But um the more I looked into it, the more complicated it is because of the nature of what the Venezuelan crude is and how hard it is to refine and pull out of the ground and how outdated the infrastructure has been since uh the Yugo Chavez uh regime essentially decimated the infrastructure and that it would take a long time

actually to be able to significantly increase output. And I saw some estimates that said it would take a decade to get it to the mid90s levels of output. Um, and so, uh, putting that aside, like that's certainly Trump thinks this is what it's about. Uh, and you could follow the fluctuations of the oil company stocks. They they spiked and now they're they've leveled off, I think, as people started to realize what I just said, right? But the administration has given us Maduro is a drug kingpin killing Americans which is patently absurd given that they pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras who was actually indicted for running one of the largest drug trafficking operations in the world and that's just one of many drug traffickers that he happened to be a head of state but there are plenty of others like Ross Elrech who uh ran um the Silk Road online drug marketplace. I mean this is not an administration

serious about the war on drugs. They said that Venezuela stole our oil and we're taking it back. I just talked about that. They said they want to keep China, Russia, and Iran out of the Western Hemisphere, although those ambassadors were standing right next to the vice president when she was sworn in and seemed totally happy about it. Um, they said they're putting everyone on notice. Cuba, Colombia, maybe even Greenland. Um, maybe there's some truth to that. The American public, I think, will have some obvious questions about all that. I mean, we haven't really been given a clear rationale. And I think the biggest part of this is we have been through it. You you've been to it with Afghanistan. Um and I've spent a brief time in Iraq just flying through. You served in Afghanistan. Uh we have we are old enough, Jason, to know that uh taking out a foreign leader is the easy part. Uh, and I would

imagine there are probably at least a hundred leaders across the world that if you gave us a week's notice, we could take them out. Whether it's through a bombing or something more sophisticated like an extraction like that, we we have the most powerful military in the world. Taking out leaders is not uh in any way surprising. Our ability to do that. This was a obviously a sophisticated operation, but they could have easily have bombed two and it would have the outcome of removing the leader. Question is what comes next? And we know from Iraq, Afghanistan, and from history, that that's the hard part. And that's measured in decades, not in days or hours. And you could already see like you have these collectivos, which are the government um uh militias out enforcing Karacas, interrogating people, searching people's phones for support of the US attacks. Uh they issued a 90-day emergency decree. Um the sort of

strongman who's in charge of the security apparatus uh is still in charge. And there are just a lot of questions like what is this? It's not like we've removed somebody and now the democratically elected opposition leader as you mentioned is in power. It's just the vice president under the same regime with the same security apparatus except really riled up in charge.

Same people who lost the last election and refused to leave. If that sounds familiar to anybody. Okay. Our northstar in this show is about helping people have these conversations with people in their lives.

So I because I've been talking about this a lot. I've had a lot of incoming from people who have been saying things and this is I bet what a lot of people in our audience are hearing saying things about how well look at what Obama did, Obama used drones, Obama did this, Obama did that. There is a difference. Now, first of all, you need to understand you don't actually need to defend every single military action that Obama or Biden or any other Democratic president took. Not all of them were good. All right? Uh for instance, Libya and Gaddafi. At the time, I thought that uh what Obama was doing was correct in Libya. So did Obama. And I think it's important to point out that that was about trying to stop a massacre because there were protesters in Libya. It was during the Arab Spring and and Gaddafi was preparing to slaughter those people.

And so Obama took steps, bombed the security apparatus there. What that resulted in is instability in the country. Libya was overthrown. and Gaddafi was taken out and killed by the people of of the country and then it was thrown into chaos. And I think it is important to point out that in that case Obama said afterwards that that was the biggest mistake of his presidency because we used to have leaders who admitted and they made mistakes. Here is the important distinction here is that yes, there are attacks that were carried out by drone in many cases, not always by drone, things like the bin Laden raid by the Obama administration without getting specific uh you know uh permission from Congress or alerting Congress right away necessarily, but all of those fit into the authorization of you for use of military force that was passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11 because those were in the global war on

terror. I've had so many people sending me chat GPT screenshots over DM of, you know, listings of attacks that Obama did uh about the global war on terrorism. And I keep wanting to reply with like, okay, thank you for explaining what the global war on terrorism was to a dude who was in the global war on terrorism. But there is a huge difference here is that in each of those cases, what Obama was trying to do was act in the national interest of the United States against people who were direct threats to the United States and often times in a way that would directly affect humanitarian interests on the ground. And in none of those cases, none that anybody can show me whatsoever did Biden or Obama use the military as a private mercenary force to enrich the profits, further enrich the profits of American oil companies. And that is a humongous [ __ ] difference because somebody who served in the army

and went overseas, it makes a big damn difference when you know that you're not being sent to make rich people in your country richer. you're being sent because the president genuinely believes that your country has an interest that's not just about money for rich people.

Yeah. I think like you know remind people that just two months ago the director of national intelligence Gabbard declared the US strategy of regime change was over. Trump ran as an isolationist. Uh, and you again you I mean you nail it like anybody who lived through that period of time whether they agreed with it or not and I hated things like the Iraq war under Bush for example could tell you what the war on terror was and why it mattered like whether it was being waged correctly or not. I would ask anybody to tell me why it is we need control over Venezuela's oil reserves and how that's going to change their lives. Like, do they even know what the price of oil is today versus what it was two years ago?

It's not actually not that high right now, right? Um, do they know that the US production has massively increased over the past 30 years? Uh, and that we're like quote unquote energy independent as a country, right? Do they know that? Uh, what is it that we're fighting this for? The president won't explain like with everything, whether it was Bush or Obama, and I hated a lot of Bush's policy and I I agreed with a lot of Obama, but not everything. He could explain it when he took out Anar Alaki, right? Like these are all things that you could explain whether people agreed with it or not. This is inexplicable.

And it's also being tied to a much larger, much more aggressive policy, uh, which we should probably talk about where number one, uh, Cuba is now unstable. And

actually, before we even get to that, can we finish this point about the difference between going to Congress and not going to Congress? And then I I do want to get to Cuba. But you just made you made a really good point about you know the strikes like like Alawaki. You know I had this you know on social media somebody some MAGA person was coming at me talking about you know all the time. So Obama you know had these strikes without going to Congress. And again the authorization for use of military force in regard to the war on terror was passed by Congress. It gave authority to the president of the United States I any president of any party to do these things. And for example, and one thing you can say to people when when they bring this stuff up with you, I don't have a problem with Trump's strike in his first term on Albagghdadi and which he did not go to Congress and get permission to do that. And the

reason I don't have a problem with that is because that's part of the war on terror which was authorized by Congress for use of military force. This is entirely different. And and two two things that we need to note here. one, this is why they've been setting the stage by inventing the term naroterrorist for the last, you know, year since they took office, so that they could sort of vaguely make the argument that this fell under an anti-terrorism mission, that it somehow fell under the old AUMF, it's all bogus, but that's what they've been trying to do. But also if if we have any doubt that Trump is doing this for the same reasons that Putin went into Ukraine or that the Soviet Union did what they did or that the Nazis went into Poland and the rest of Europe and it's just to have to get the resources or by the way whoever was president during Avatar went into Pandora to get unoptanium. It's the same move and if

you have any doubt of it I would I would point you to two things. One, Trump said today in reference to the things you were talking about earlier about the difficulty of getting that oil for American companies. He said today that we are going to heavily subsidize American oil companies going in to do that so that they can make a lot of money. And and he said to make the people of Venezuela rich and to make more Americans rich. All right, that's number one. But number two, Trump has been saying for years, first of all, he pretended for a long time that he didn't support the war in Iraq. And one of the things he said when he would make the false claim that he didn't support the war in Iraq was that he believed we should have kept the oil.

I mean, it's not hard to understand that this is the exact same thing except this time Trump wants to keep the oil. And by the way, two things can be true. you can still be incredibly impressed with the professionalism of, you know, US special forces and of Delta Force who clearly, you know, working with our intelligence community and the CIA had a lot of help from people on the ground. They had done a lot of ground work. I'm not saying I think the operation was a good thing to do. I think it was a terrible thing to do. But to your point, we have the ability to do these things because we have the most lethal and most professional military in the history of the world. You can say that, believe that, appreciate those people's service, and be very upset that they were sent to do this.

Well, let me advance a slightly alternative, even less justifiable emphasis on what I think Trump is doing here. Uh, and again, this is we're we're throwing darts at the board here. Obviously, it would be nice to have a president who we could trust to actually tell us what the rationale is. But, uh, here's another theory. Trump. It's I'm going to combine a couple two two different things in one. Uh number one is that uh Trump is really just about uh relationships and spite. So he's uh the New York Times reported that this that uh that Maduro um was uh dancing in a way that appeared to mock Trump, right? Um and uh one could be like ah that's a silly theory but we have so much evidence that Trump is motivated by personal slights or by people flattering him you know Zillinsky Putin Boullle Netanyahu Ben Salman like Trump is really susceptible you know Kim Jong-un you know he's very susceptible

to either flattery or uh you know any perceived slight and Trump himself mentioned this week the dancing let's go to this clip years and uh you know he's a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit,

but he's a violent. Yeah. So that's one, right? So it's the perceived slight thing. He just doesn't like the guy. That's one. Two is I think Trump uh is has, you know, the attention of a, you know, sugaraddicted 16-year-old video game player. And I think he he loved getting into the situation room and telling people in uniform to carry out these uh these types of operations. I think he loved whatever the Iran thing was and he loved watching himself on TV and Fox News um being commanding. Um and I think he loved he loved every aspect of this getting the updates on how the what the troops are doing and all this kind of stuff. Uh I think that's his primary motivation here. A combination of personal slight plus boredom.

Revie, there is a direct line between how a president who watched all these, you know, action movies and says when he watch when he's watching these uh operations play out live that it's like watching an action movie, right? Who really doesn't believe in the humanity behind, you know, of the people in the uniform. And we have lots of, in my opinion, evidence of that and what happened today in Minneapolis, right? To me, it's the same kind of personality, the same kind of insecurity that causes a person who uh, you know, is in the situation that the ICE agent was in to immediately go to violence to believe that that is the move uh and and a person like Trump who is who, as I believe you're right, who gets off on the idea that he can have a completely nonsecure room in Mara Lago where what's up on the monitors is Twitter. uh and you know act like he's the president in a war movie. Um and just

when you have the secretary of state and the national security adviser in the same job and you have a secretary of war who is an empty suit and you put him there for the purpose of you being able to be the secretary of defense which you now you know name the secretary of war and then on top of that you hire uh a director of national intelligence with no experience in intelligence whatsoever. You're doing that because you don't believe in the intelligence community and you want that job to be done by you as well. You're doing it because you want to be at the center of all this and you for as much as you say you're the peace president. What you want is to be a wartime commander-in-chief because that's what dictators do. That's how you consolidate power and and that level of insecurity gets a lot of people killed and it got somebody killed in Minneapolis today.

Yeah. We also uh we we don't need to talk too much about this, but the plans actually leaked, I don't know if you know about this, to major newspapers and they didn't print the story because of the uh journalistic practice of not sharing information that could put our soldiers at risk. Rubio confirmed that. So, this actually could have been way worse. Like there's some Keystone Cops elements to this for all the sophistication of the extraction itself. But let's take a break and come back. We're gonna talk more about this. Can I add though before we go that if it that if it leaked that way if you're having these meetings in Mara Lago which is probably the most foreign collected signals intelligence location in the world at this point in a in a room that's not secure. If they leak to journalists and newspapers then I promise you China and Russia knew about this stuff beforehand too.

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One last time, that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com/mmajority54. Well, let me take through a couple of other items here related to this. Uh, one is, uh, people have been asking me, well, isn't this guy a head of state who enjoys immunity? And I looked into this, uh, and it seems like there's the Noriega president here, uh, from when the US captured Manuel Noriega where essentially the executive branch gets to say who they think uh, is a head of state or not and the courts have given it deference historically. I mean that was an 11th circuit case but that's that's where we are and that you know and I don't have a lot of faith in our in our current makeup of our courts to uh break with the you know the very little precedent we have on this. Um and so I doubt that this that the immunity is going to be a successful defense and that's probably his only defense if what

I from what I can imagine. Um the other thing I was wondering Jason is you know I worked at the United Nations. You got to think that a lot of these countries, you know, they send their head of state to the general assembly every year and and at various points other years, including tons of diplomats and whatnot. You got to imagine a lot of countries are going to think twice about ever sending their head of state on American soil after this.

I would think so. And sadly, um, that seems to be exactly what the Trump administration wants. Now, what I will say about the immunity claim because look, I don't I I want to be clear for folks like we are not uh and and neither should you be when you talk to people in your lives about this. People who just automatically say that every position that the Trump administration takes that we take the opposite one. I would agree that immunity would not extend to this person because there was an election and this person lost. By the way, so did you know their vice president who is still there and has been blessed by the Trump administration to stay in office. But from that point of view, I agree. I don't think that the head of state immunity would apply because

they weren't supposed to be the head of state. They stayed in office um in what was essentially a coup by staying in office which

yeah, a perfectly acceptable outcome say on January 7th. Yeah. perfectly acceptable outcome from their perspective is uh the vice president takes over and essentially everything stays the same except Trump looks tougher

and we get oil we get oil that's yeah and that's that's what he wants you know that's that's

anyway I think we said it well you know on the oil question just a little background for people here um Venezuela sits on the largest pro proven oil reserve in the world. And as I allude to this is 303 billion barrels approximately, so more than Saudi Arabia. Uh the problem is that there's it's a particularly extra heavy uh kind of crude. People compare it to like asphalt, liquid asphalt or molasses. And the peak uh of oil production was in 1998 and ever since then it's kind of gone down especially with Chavez as I mentioned and basically Chavez and Maduro have treated it like a a piggy bank uh and have uh invested Chavez especially just decimated the oil industry uh and installed his own people who didn't know what they were doing. Uh and then under Maduro, we've had this regime where uh there's like a combination of Chevron who got a Treasury license to take about a quarter of the uh oil out of um out of Venezuela

and be able to circumvent the sanctions. So they get about 25% of the production and China has about 75% of the exports is the primary buyer through a series of different intermediaries. But one key thing to keep in mind is that they've been sending somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 uh barrels per day to Cuba and essentially keeping Cuba afloat. Uh and with with this spigot literally being cut off, um Cuba is descending into uh extremely dire circumstances. Uh and the administration is cheering this on and hoping that this will be a tool of regime change, you know, not too far from our borders.

Who we put into place matters. It it is Harry Truman famously said that history is not the result of circumstances. History is made by the to paraphrase by the the people who were in power and who were making the decisions at the time. Marco Rubio is a CubanAmerican politician whose politics and his his originating ideology in politics is one of hawkishness towards Cuba. I in no way begrudge him. Uh that point of view, somebody from that background, that makes sense to me, right? But when you make that person both the national security adviser and the secretary of state, you are going to have a foreign and national security policy that centers Cuba right in the middle of the crosshairs.

And look at look at what they've been saying the last couple days. They've been really emphasizing the fact that Maduro's security apparatus around him and and the the guards that were killed by our Delta Force operators that went in were largely Cubans who were being provided to him by Cuba. And then they are embracing what you just pointed out that oil being cut off to Cuba will probably or have a good chance of destabilizing the long, you know, long in office starting with Castro Cuban uh dictatorship and communist regime. And so it starts to feel like from the point of view of our secretary of state and national security adviser that the reason that we have gone into Venezuela and detained their president and brought him to the United States is to affect a regime change that will lead to a regime change in Cuba. And it just happens to be the case that Trump had all this backing from oil executives and oil

companies who were cheering him on and doing this because they had something to gain, otherwise he can't accomplish this. So, it really does feel like the point of this was Cuba.

Yeah. And and I the way I think of it is we've traded global uh leadership under pre-Trump for regional leadership at best. And and when I say regional leadership it's

it's not even leadership because if you think about it, Canada hates us. We're insulting Mexico now too. We're insulting Colombia. Um obviously we just talked about Venezuela and Cuba. So leadership with like air quotes around it right?

Um so this is the bargain that we have now. Um we also have the Greenland question. And uh there was, you know, Rubio is quoted up and down all over the place saying that, you know, the only uh you know, the only avenue here is by purchasing it. they're not going to do military action, whatever. That's what he's saying. But then here's a clip of Steven Miller, the deputy chief of staff, uh, talking to Jake Tapper about this

important topic. The premier of Greenland and the premier of Denmark and other Danish officials are responding to a Twitter post from your wife Katie Miller, herself, a former Trump White House official, showing Greenland covered with an American flag, saying, "Soon after that was posted, President Trump repeated the claim that the US needs Greenland for national security reasons. The Danish prime minister um responded to this in an interview earlier today as reported by Bloomberg. Quote, I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says it wants Greenland, but I will also make it clear that if the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War. Can you rule out that the US is is ever going to try to take Greenland by force?

Well, let me let me go back a step. The president has been clear for months now, so I know you're treating this as breaking news. The president has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus. The United

Right. But your wife posted that like hours after the Venezuela operation. That's that's why it's newly relevant.

No, no, and I I'll I'll talk with you about it for an hour. I think it's really important conversation. I just wanted to I just wanted to reset Jake by making clear that has been the formal position of the US government since the beginning of this administration. Frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration that Greenland should be part of the United States. The president has been very clear about that. That is the formal position of the US government.

Right. But can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table?

You wouldn't be mean military action against Greenland. The the Greenland has a population of 30,000 people. Jake, the 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 NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States. And so, that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country. That's a process we're going to have as a as a community of nations.

So, you can't take it off the table that the US would use military force to seize Greenland. You can't take it off the table. Jake, I understand you're trying very hard to which which again is your job. I respect it is great to get exactly the headline, right? That catchy headline trying to get an answer that says that says Miller refuses to rule out

the the United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.

One last question, Stephen. Doesn't make any sense. One last question. What he just said at the end is the same thing as saying we could take it without resistance.

That's what he's saying. And that's clearly what they're thinking. the, you know, in the same interview, Steven Miller said that the United States is a superpower and is going to start acting like a superpower now. And what bothers me about that was many things. One of which is they clearly have the same approach to foreign policy and national security that they do to masculinity, which is lead with insecurity and imagine that everything is strength and that nothing is warmth or kindness and everything will work out well. But that's how you end up in Iraq, right?

Because what are we talking about here? We're talking not about making the the influence of the United States larger. We're actually, as you pointed out right before we went to that clip, talking about making the influence of the United States smaller. Why? Because it means everything we will have to do militarily or diplomatically, we will have to do ourselves, right? Which is how we got into Iraq largely by oursel versus Afghanistan where we had a large coalition. They're talking about taking territory from a NATO ally. To give people context for that, uh I for my deployment in Afghanistan, the military authorized me to wear two combat well four, but two functionally combat patches. One US Central Command, which was the higher authority, a couple others that it doesn't matter we can get into and one of them is the NATO patch because we were under NATO, right? We fought with NATO. Other countries fought

beside us, which is how we were able to do what we were able to do. I worked alongside soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines from all sorts of different countries. And you make your country smaller when you concern yourself only with things like what's going on in your hemisphere or taking things from your allies and therefore causing them to no longer be your allies. Well, I we're running out of time, but I do want to talk a little Epstein because I do think in some ways it's related like obviously like do I think this is a straight wag the dog on on Epstein? No.

Do I think it it it in somewhere deep inside the recesses of his brain and in his White House? They love us talking about anything but uh the cover up on Epste. Of course,

I don't think it's that deep in the recesses. Yeah, it's a nice benefit for them. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna play you two clips, Jason. Let's start with Representative Massie uh talking about the Department of Justice.

The fact that these Epstein files still millions of more documents that they're still reviewing at this point,

you know, if this were a private law firm with 5% of the resources of the DOJ, this would have been done by a deadline. And they just missed another deadline, which is the report to Congress, which is supposed to list all the politicians that are in their files. And also, they're supposed to justify all the redactions 15 days after the first 30-day window. But the the the biggest problem isn't that they're me missing the deadlines, is what they're redacting. So, they're citing the Privacy Act and they're trying to pretend like that overrides a law that we just passed that says you can't withhold records to prevent embarrassment. They're also citing FOYA standards which don't apply to our law when they're trying to say that they don't have to release internal decisions, but our bill specifically says release internal decisions.

So, what are you going to do about it? We're looking at that. So, I don't know anything about Massie other than what we play on this, and I'm sure there are a million things I disagree with him on, but I'll tell you this. So many of the people who stand up to Trump do it with one foot out the door. Uh, this guy is just he's going in with two barrels. Like, he's just going full on with a smile on his face and full and full gusto on the things he cares about. And uh, for that, I am grateful for him. You got to hand it to this dude. And the other person you got to hand it to honestly is Ran Paul because Massiey's in Kentucky, right? I mean, and and he seems to have a pretty good hold on that district. And Rand Paul seems to have a pretty good hold on that state. And there is a clearly I think Rand Paul had a lot to do with this. There's a libertarian streak in that state. And there are plenty of

people in that state who support Donald Trump and will vote for Donald Trump and at the same time feel like, yeah, I like that that I have a Republican member of Congress who's holding Donald Trump accountable, particularly because it seems to work for them because often times they are holding Donald Trump accountable from either from the right in some cases or from somewhat of a partisanneutral place, right? The Epstein files, that's kind of a partisan neutral place to hold them accountable from. um the military intervention and adventurism around the world. Not only a partisan neutral place really frankly sort of a like really coming from the vibe of why a lot of people voted for Trump because they thought there'd be less adventurism. Um so yeah, I don't think Massiey's going anywhere and I agree with you. um whether you have to consider that person part of the resistance or whatever they are like um

I I appreciate I appreciate what they're doing what he's doing in that regard. Well, one more clip here on the Epstein front. This is from the alt media universe. This is Theo Von the podcaster with Dave Smith who's the comic who like is a sidekick to Rogan very often who loves to talk about Israel stuff. But uh you'll only you only see a faint insertion of the Israel stuff here. This is mostly just straight Epstein. Uh, and this is how they're talking. And Van, I think, endorsed Trump or at least had Trump on his podcast. So, uh, let's listen to this.

There's some photos. This is the best thing. Look at these photos. Everything redacted in them. Here's These could be photos from anybody's phone. Everything redacted. And then one mark of the Beast or something from Zodiac Killer on the one that he drown. Just bizarre.

I mean, it just like it's so strange. Why why would they just show us some of this stuff right before the holidays? Are they just trying to like everything now you start to you have to think is this like is it trying to distract my attention from something else? You know, and the news reports they don't even tell you about the real [ __ ] that's going on anyway. Yeah.

So most of the stuff that's happening here's the crazy part. We don't even know anymore.

Like most of the most serious [ __ ] that's going on. Yeah. We don't even have a clue. Well, I think part of the thing, look, the Epstein, the whole story is so like it's so dirty. I like it just stinks. I mean, you just look at it and you're like, dude, look, we know what we know, but knowing what we know, how could you possibly piece this together that it's not some huge scandal. I mean, like already when you just go, okay, so there's a guy who was convicted of pedophilia or convicted of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, you know, then a decade after he's convicted or at least eight years after, he's still like in the most influential circles with all these and then for national security reasons, you're telling me that this has to be hugely redacted. Like what the hell? What? This just makes no sense. and his connections to Ahood Barack and MSAD now all being known. It's just too crazy. And Donald

Trump I mean I think I think I think covering up the Epstein thing the way he has like profoundly hurt him in a way that isn't even measurable on polls and like his poll numbers are lower than they were and I'm sure that's a big part of it. But there is something where like look the the fundamental animating spirit of Donald Trump's political existence his his central promise was drain the swamp.

Yeah. You know, like the the reason why people love Donald Trump is because everybody on some level knew that DC is just corrupt as [ __ ] and that they're screwing all the rest of us over and they face no consequences for it. And

thanks. There's something about covering up the Ebstein thing that it's like, oh, when it really came down to it, you didn't want to drain the swamp. You wanted to protect them. And maybe because you're pretty close to it.

You're a gator. Yeah. Everybody has a everybody has a constituency and an incentive here. And the constituency of folks like Theo Vaughn seems to be telling people that there's a there's a conspiracy all the time and that they're not on the inside of it. And you know, now Trump's in power and he's he is part of a conspiracy with regard to the Epstein files, it appears. And they're not immune from this because they're not Republicans, right? They're podcasters.

Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end. Uh, one for us, Jason. Um, what's happening in your world?

Uh, I went into 2026 with an intention, um, to speak my mind more and to, you know, and I thought a lot about it over the break, over like while the kids were on break and everything of how I wanted to do that. Um, running for office did not enter my mind. Um, but you know, going on cable more, you know, doing more events, showing up at more things, campaigning with candidates more. Uh, and ultimately what I settled on is that I want to be able to do it more on my terms. And so, you know, I decided like I'm I have a decent sized social media platform and I'm going to use it more.

So, in the last few days, I've been, you know, opening the video, uh, you know, just turning my phone toward me and hitting record and and, you know, recording two-minute videos a couple times a day. And it seems to be wellreceived by people. It's also giving me either actual or the illusion of agency, which is helpful to me. And so, I'm going to be doing that more. So, if people are interested in hearing more of what they hear from us on the show, uh, from me, if you don't already follow me on Instagram, it's it's Jason Cander.

And so, I'm I have a lot more to say, uh, and I'm I intend to say it in 2026. It's an intention I have set.

Yeah. Well, hopefully you can get competitive with your wife, who I know has been has a one-year head start on that intention.

She uh, yes, I used to have the largest social media platform. I guess maybe I still do if you take it ac I do if you take it across all the uh different platforms, but uh certainly on Instagram, yeah, she's she's got a she has a lot of followers.

Um well, that's awesome, man. I think we haven't been on here in a bit. I think we talked on the phone about this, but I uh I got in a motorcycle accident here

and then seem to have immediately rebounded like the freak you are. I try, you know, I uh for the audience's sake, I was I was riding a not even fast. I was just riding this motorcycle uh and I skidded out on it was like a dirt road and run up in a ditch with a the inability to get up and I wasn't exactly sure what was going on. It was scary for a bit and these these security guards wound up pulling me out of the ditch and walking me down the street. Thankfully down the street there was an urgent care center which actually happens to also be in the building I'm staying at here and they popped my shoulder back into place and there doesn't appear to be any other major damage. So I've been rehabbing from that. Uh and yeah, there's certain things I can do and not do. Like I still haven't been able to surf since then.

That was over that was two and a half weeks ago now. Uh and uh I've been playing like a little bit of tennis like mini tennis uh and and trying to work my way back there. Strangely, I could do some weightlifting but not others, but not the things you'd think. Like, I can actually do arm exercises and things, but I can't do back squat because of the weird way that your arm the angle that your arm does on a back squat. So, yeah, I've been just rehabbing and I just uh yeah, motorcycles are dangerous. Um, and I've been warned about that by many people, including my parents, for a long time. And I had to uh experience it myself to truly understand it.

Well, you were clearly wearing a helmet. Yeah, we we'll we'll we'll say that. Okay. I was not I was not wearing a helmet. I am I normally do don't I I I'm going to get a ton of DMs about this. I normally wear a helmet.

I was going a couple blocks. I should have sto still worn the helmet there, but I didn't. But now I've learned my lesson.

Does it hurt when you sleep on that side? Sleeping is the worst. I don't sleep that much. Yeah, it's sleeping is the main obstacle now because also is a prime opportunity to mess with it because of the angles you sleep. Well, when you get I know because of the mattress sponsors we have that you sleep on your side.

There you go. And I happen to sleep on the wrong side, so I have to retrain my body. Yeah, I sleep into that shoulder usually. So,

uh when you get back to the US, you definitely are going to need an MRI. Yeah, I haven't gotten one here. And um

or you can get one there. Yeah. No, there you can't get one in anywhere around here. I have to go a couple hours like

Yeah. When do you when do you head home? Um I will be going on the 24th uh back to New Orleans. Uh okay. For a month. So yeah.

All right. Well, um this is a crazy awful day. Uh but I enjoyed talking to you about it or at least it was better to talk to have this conversation. So thank you. Uh I guess I'm supposed to end the show. I'm so out of sorts from the way we started this and how pissed off I am about what happened in Minneapolis today. Thanks everybody for listening. Uh you can follow Ravi everywhere, Ravi Mgupta. You can follow me everywhere as I said, Jason Cander. Uh and uh please do leave a fivestar review for the show. Let us know, you know, how we've been doing lately. Um thank you to the Midas Mighty. And remember, we all have a platform. Make sure to use yours today.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "LIVE: Trump Puts ENTIRE WORLD on Edge with MORE INVASION THREATS"?

In order: 0:00 Alex Epstein; 10:00 Celia Maduro, Caesar Chavez, Deli Rodriguez, Nicholas Maduro; 30:00 Celia Maduro; 40:00 Celia Maduro, Alex Epstein, Caesar Chavez, Harry Truman; 50:00 Alex Epstein.

What is mentioned in this MeidasTouch episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Alex Epstein, Celia Maduro, Caesar Chavez, Jacob Fry, Nicholas Maduro, Deli Rodriguez. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "LIVE: Trump Puts ENTIRE WORLD on Edge with MORE INVASION THREATS"?

The episode runs 1 h 2 min; the transcript is about 11,514 words in 121 timestamped sections.

More from MeidasTouch

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.