Transcript

World Reacts FURIOUSLY To Trump's Venezuela Invasion

From Pod Save America · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 48 min · 23,002 words · 321 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "World Reacts FURIOUSLY To Trump's Venezuela Invasion", an episode of Pod Save America published January 6, 2026 (1 h 48 min, about 23,002 words). It mentions 43 people, works and ideas, including Congress, Western Hemisphere, Mara Lago, Donro doctrine, Pete Hegsth.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on Donald Trump's aggressive military strategy towards Venezuela, highlighting his intent to capture its leader, Nicolás Maduro, amid ongoing economic and political turmoil in the U.S. The segment critiques Trump's imperialist ambitions as a diversion from domestic issues, detailing the violent outcome of the raid that resulted in significant casualties and the subsequent arraignment of Maduro and his wife in the U.S. on drug-related charges.

Key takeaways

  • When empire calls, the law says 'just kidding'—Rubio serves legalese while Trump rewrites the playbook.
  • Trump's 'arrest operation' feels more like imperialism in disguise; democracy takes a backseat to oil profits.
  • Maduro’s vice might play ball, but Venezuelans remain the unwitting pawns in this crude geopolitical chess game.
  • Using 'court orders' for foreign interventions begs the question: are we still following laws or just our interests?
  • In the world of high-stakes oil, even 'law enforcement' can seem like a cover for imperial ambitions.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Deli Rodriguez, Western Hemisphere, Caracus, Chrissy Gnome
  2. – 20:00: Hugo Chavez, Wild Grain, Congress, Gang of Eight
  3. – 30:00: Western Hemisphere, colonialism, Donro doctrine, Abe Lincoln
  4. – 40:00: Congress, Donro doctrine, Lindsey Graham, Mara Lago
  5. – 50:00: Congress, Deli Rodriguez, Donro doctrine, Hugo Chavez
  6. – 1:10:00: Department of Justice, Susie Wilds
  7. – 1:20:00: Mara Lago, Nicholas Maduro
  8. – 1:30:00: Pete Hegsth, Western Hemisphere
  9. – 1:40:00: Congress
  10. – 1:48:27: Congress, Chuck Schumer, Gang of Eight, Pete Hegsth

Notable quotes from "World Reacts FURIOUSLY To Trump's Venezuela Invasion"

  • The biggest story of the week, Donald Trump's campaign to become emperor of the Western Hemisphere, which follows a welltrodden path of authoritarians who respond to economic…
    about Western Hemisphere · at
  • Government has decided to leave that regime in place, which will now be led by Maduro's vice president, Deli Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump…
    about Deli Rodriguez · at
  • He's got an archavist. He's South American viceroy. A lot of jobs. And then you see him at Mara Lago doing like this to like a vanilla ice concert just wanting to kill himself…
    about Mara Lago · at
  • Also, as you're watching that video, you slow watch the kind of flush slowly come across Lindsey Graham's face. She's never been more kind of psychosexually aroused by a…
    about Lindsey Graham · at
  • Yeah. It sounds like they got a better briefing than Congress, including the gang of eight.
    about Congress · at
  • Matters because it does. There's no safe like Simplysafe. This episode of Potsafe America is brought to you by Wild Grain.
    about Wild Grain · at
  • Together. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland. The Donro doctrine.
    about Donro doctrine · at
  • Reassurances to the serious people in the kind of deep within the article the Susie Wilds style articles where they can get into the deep of actually it's a smart group of people really running things carefully.
    about Susie Wilds · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Pete Hegsth — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    Then Arizona Senator Mark Kelly talks to Love it about all the latest news, including Pete Hegsth's decision to cut his pension and demote him because of that video he made…
  • Nicholas Maduro — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    Venezuela where he ordered the military to capture the oil rich country's tinpot dictator Nicholas Maduro along with his wife in a raid on Caracus last weekend that has killed…
  • Deli Rodriguez — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Lindsey Graham — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Hugo Chavez — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    17% of the world's known reserves. But there's some there's some question as to where that number came from. Maybe Hugo Chavez's ass is potentially one of the sources. Then…
  • Susie Wilds — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • John Favro — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro.
  • John Love — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Tommy Etor — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Vanilla Ice — Person · 1 mention · first at
    American viceroy. A lot of jobs. And then you see him at Mara Lago doing like this to like a vanilla ice concert just wanting to kill himself and watching a football game on…
  • Katie Miller — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Wanting to kill himself and watching a football game on you see Katie Miller has been Katie Miller has been just tweeting out a whole bunch of videos that I'm sure that her…
  • Chrissy Gnome — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Videos that I'm sure that her friends in the administration probably wouldn't like. There was also Christy Gnome and Steven Miller dancing I guess to Vanilla Ice at Mara Lago.
  • Sean Duffy — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Repeatedly how important it is to dress well for flights. Sean Duffy would be pissed. And just like another example of the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing. Yeah. Look, couldn't have brought a Delta couldn't.
  • Maria Machado — Person · 1 mention · first at
    You said, there was a legitimate winner of the 2024 election there. There's the opposition leader, Maria Machado, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Robert Dairo — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's a niche reference, but there's a movie called Ronin starring Robert Dairo and Shawn Bean is in the movie and he's sort of a gung-ho, but a little too gung-ho, a little too into the fight and it's because he's not totally prepared.
  • Shawn Bean — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's a niche reference, but there's a movie called Ronin starring Robert Dairo and Shawn Bean is in the movie and he's sort of a gung-ho, but a little too gung-ho, a little too…
  • Nicholas Cage — Person · 1 mention · first at
    I might point you towards a document once stolen by Nicholas Cage called the Declaration of Independence that was specifically against it. the biggest fact check for Steve there is he says.
  • Abe Lincoln — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Of Grant because they're like he's a he's a he's an alcoholic. Your general there is an alcoholic. And Lincoln, apocryphily says, well, whatever he's drinking, send it to my…
  • State Hillary — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Was oh, Trump's trying to take us back to the 1950s. remember that was the thing, Hillary said it or Biden said it, I can't remember. But this is way beyond this is way before…
  • Chuck Schumer — Person · 1 mention · first at
    There's going to be a war powers vote by that Senator Schumer is going to force.
  • Adam Grant — Person · 1 mention
  • Kamla — Person · 1 mention
  • Lisa Murkowski — Person · 1 mention
  • Vladimir Putin — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

  • Donro doctrine — Concept · 4 mentions · first at
  • Gang of Eight — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Yeah. It sounds like they got a better briefing than Congress, including the gang of eight.
  • colonialism — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    The thinking behind the Dawnro doctrine where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism quote built the modern world and then when it ended after World War II the West…
  • War Powers Resolution — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Western Hemisphere — Place · 8 mentions · first at
  • Mara Lago — Place · 4 mentions · first at
  • Caracus — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    To capture the oil rich country's tinpot dictator Nicholas Maduro along with his wife in a raid on Caracus last weekend that has killed at least 80 people. The former first…

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm John Love. Tommy Etor. Welcome back, guys.

Happy New Year, guys. Happy New Year. Great to be back. Welcome to you and welcome to our new compatriots in the southern colonies

in our vassel state. Yeah. Who will soon uh have the honor of pumping crude to fund his majesty's palace renovations.

Vice Roy Millers. A new a new a new majesty's palace renovations. Yeah, exactly. Um so yeah, we got a lot to cover today. Hey, uh, we'll get into the latest with Venezuela and all the other countries that Trump now wants to invade. We'll also talk about Tim Walls's decision to end his campaign for a third term as governor uh, because of the fraud scandal that's become the latest MAGA crusade. We'll get into what we've learned so far from the DOJ's release of the first batch of the Epstein files and some other news you may have missed over the holidays. And then Arizona Senator Mark Kelly talks to Love it about all the latest news, including Pete Hegsth's decision to cut his pension and demote him because of that video he made about following illegal orders. Uh but let's start with the biggest story of the week, Donald Trump's campaign to become emperor of the Western Hemisphere, uh which follows

a welltrodden path of authoritarians who respond to economic and political failures at home by pursuing imperialist ambitions abroad. Now we have it right here. Trump has chosen to start with Venezuela where he ordered the military to capture the oil rich country's tinpot dictator Nicholas Maduro along with his wife in a raid on Caracus last weekend that has killed at least 80 people. The former first couple of Venezuela was brought to the US and arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom on Monday where they pleaded not guilty to various drug trafficking and narotism charges.

Uh, and in case anyone still thinks the people of Venezuela have been liberated from Maduro's brutal regime, the US government has decided to leave that regime in place, which will now be led by Maduro's vice president, Deli Rodriguez, who seems to have cut a deal with the Trump administration, where she gets to stay in power as long as she gives American oil companies access to her country's vast but underdeveloped oil reserves. Uh realizing that the American people may have some questions about the wisdom of this novel arrangement and uh and the motivation behind all this, the Trump administration sent Marco Rubio, one of the masterminds behind this operation, out on the Sunday shows to give some answers. And here's Marco giving it his best shot.

Why wasn't congressional authorization necessary? It wasn't necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn't occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This is a law enforcement operation that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met and that's what we intend to do. So that leverage remains that leverage is ongoing. We'll set the conditions so that we no longer have in our hemisphere Venezuela that's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world including Iran and Hezbollah. And as far as what our legal authority is on on the quarantine, I'm very simple. We have court orders. I don't know. Is a court not a legal authority? So is is the United States running Venezuela right now?

What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward and that is we have leverage. This leverage we are using and we intend to use. We started using already.

So that's Marco Rubio uh kind of sort of answering who looks just comically exhausted. I mean I feel for him. He's got like four jobs. A lot going on.

He's got an archavist. He's South American viceroy. A lot of jobs. And then you see him at Mara Lago doing like this to like a vanilla ice concert just wanting to kill himself

and watching a football game on you see Katie Miller has been Katie Miller has been just tweeting out a whole bunch of videos that I'm sure that her her friends in the administration probably wouldn't like. There was also Christy Gnome and Steven Miller

dancing I guess to Vanilla Ice at Mara Lago. Hell is having to hang out with that crew. Uh, so Rubio gives these this this these carefully constructed non-answers and then uh Donald Trump uh just hours later does the thing that he does where he removes the lipstick that one of his advisers just tried to put on some pig. Let's listen.

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

What does that mean? We're in charge. Have you spoken with her? We're in charge.

What do you need from Deli Rodriguez? You're you've you've threatened total access. We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country. We were prepared to do a second strike if we need it. We're totally prepared.

We're still prepared. That's off the table now. No, it's not. If they don't behave, we will do a second strike.

Also, as you're watching that video, you slow watch the kind of flush slowly come across Lindsey Graham's face. She's never been more kind of psychosexually aroused by a president. is just so I cannot believe how horny I am for what this guy is saying.

Yeah, since I rock since 2003. Yeah, speaking of Iraq, he actually went to the bathroom right after that. Um anyway, where to begin? Uh let's let's take Rubio's argument, which is clearly the argument the White House wants to make. uh that this whole thing is just about as Rubio said I think on Meet the Press. No more drug trafficking, no more Iran Hezbollah presence in Venezuela and no more using the country's oil to enrich America's adversaries like China. Um JD Vance also took a cut at a version of this argument on Twitter where he writes all his best stuff. Um claiming that we can't we just can't let communists nationalize oil facilities that belong to American companies. Uh which Venezuela did about a decade ago now. Um, Tommy, what would you say to these arguments?

Yeah, I mean, Marco is trying to say it's just a simple law enforcement operation, one backed up by 150 war planes, 15,000 troops in the Caribbean, a couple aircraft carriers. And his argument seems to be that all you need to invade a a country is a simple indictment of its leader and then you can just invade. That's that's his argument, I I think,

which is easier to get when you control the DOJ. When Pam Bondi works for you, it's easier. I think I'll get to the dark stuff in a second. I think what this is about is Trump thinking that he is the king of the Western Hemisphere and that he gets to dictate events in Venezuela. And in practice, that means if you don't like Maduro, you take him out, including with military force, and then you make Rubio and Steven Miller the viceroy. Uh it means that if you want Venezuela's natural resources, not only can you claim them for America, but you can decide uh that you deny China access to them. That is explicitly part of their national security strategy that they released last year. And it means that in other situations, Trump has used US diplomatic and economic power to prop up leaders he doesn't like in Latin America. Remember when he gave Javier Mille a $40 billion uh bank bailout in advance of an election there. So the

fentanyl argument is Fentanyl is made in Mexico with chemicals from China. It is uh most fentanyl interdictions according to the CBP, according to the government's website, is that the border crossings uh cartels pay American citizens usually to smuggle it across the border in their cars. Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine, but it's a transit point for like 10% of the world's cocaine. That's not nothing. But if you really cared about cocaine, you could take a bigger whack at the supply problem through enforcement in uh Colombia and Ecuador.

Um Trump has said over and over again, and he said it there, that he wants Venezuela's oil. That is what this is about. He doesn't care about democracy, doesn't care about human rights, doesn't care about the 2024 election that was stolen by Maduro. He wants to decide who leads the country, what oil companies get access in Venezuela, what banks get to finance those, you know, oil fields going forward, and which of his cronies are going to get to play in that sandbox and the kickbacks that he will get along the way. So, um, you know, like we can do all the throw clearing we want about Maduro being a bad guy. It was admittedly an incredible military operation. The fact that they pulled this thing off without a single casualty, without a single aircraft going down is astounding. Um but um sometimes removing a bad guy can lead to an even worse outcome and so we're a long way from knowing like how this is

going to go. Love, what was your reaction to this show? When I saw the photo of Maduro on the plane in that sort of Nike athleisure, uh sort of a shocking

image in part well yeah in part because like this administration has told us repeatedly how important it is to dress well for flights.

Sean Duffy would be pissed. And just like another example of the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing. Yeah. Look,

couldn't have brought a Delta couldn't have brought a suit. The team, not the We're trying to elevate the flying experience. We all have an obligation, including deposed heads of state, woken up in the middle of the night by the Delta force, unable to get into their safe room. This

You want a lighter door on that safe room. You're going to want it to be user friendly.

You want it to open and close. You got to get it closed quick. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Uh Yeah. Look, it's all this is insane. Like to uh now we've had uh uh administrations that have lawlessly toppled uh uh South American uh and Latin American regimes in the past and then claimed they did not need congressional approval. That's something the US has done several times. One of our favorite things to do. the like what makes this all so strange is it's done with the kind of mix of like neocon logic kind of layered on top of it but like underneath that is Donald Trump whose motivations are in [snorts] egotistical personal kind of capricious uh based on whoever spoke to him last right like let's say you take the best version of this that Marco Rubio or JD Vance would lay out.

It would involve Donald Trump saying, "We're not running Venezuela. The leaders are running Venezuela." Why? Because it's in the interest of his policy for that leader to seem strong at home. But he doesn't care about that. So, this is like old school uh old school American imperialism in the hemisphere run by a corrupt group of claws and buffoons. And it's it would be dangerous if it was the best and brightest that Republicans had to offer. They have failed when they have done this in the past with their smartest guys. But that's not who the who's running this. It's Pete Hgsth and Steven Miller and a bunch of jokers.

It's a small thing, but Pam Bondi put out this statement uh after we found out that this was all because uh it was a law enforcement operation and she said Maduro will will face the wrath of the US justice system. There is no wrath of the US justice system. It's actually not supposed to have wrath. It's supposed to have justice because it's not a wrath system. It's a justice system. And what happens when you go to the justice system is it's not up to you anymore. It's up to the judge and the jury and the process, right? But like they're so kind of unserious and immature and not thoughtful about any of this.

No, they're just honest about how they feel for sure. The ma the mask is very much off. They're not uh they're not mincing words. Uh everyone remember the the no blood for oil signs from the first Iraq war and you'd be like, "Oh, you know, I'm not against this war, but those lefties saying it's blood." Now he's just like, "Oh, no, it is blood for oil. Fortunately, we didn't spill any of our blood this time, but um you know, it's definitely for the oil for sure.

For oil and Cuban blood, for sure. Yeah. And we were told it was, you know, Maduro is this

brutal dictator and we should be glad he's gone, but it's like uh well um as you said, there was a legitimate winner of the 2024 election there. There's the opposition leader, Maria Machado, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. though I don't know if you guys saw in the Washington Post that uh two sources close to the White House said that um even though she dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, the fact that she didn't actually give it to him really stung and if she had she'd be the president of Venezuela right now.

just the fact that we live in a world where that is a possible thing to say out loud or that by the way that there's somebody betting on the poly market uh to make a couple hundred grand. The fact that Maduro is not going to be in power anymore. All of this is so yeah so brazen and despicable and like all the like the intellectual layers on top of Donald Trump just being a kind of uh like kind of careening maniac

and the hubris that none of this is ever going to come back to bite us in the ass.

Yeah. you know that you could just like we are the strong ones, we are powerful, we have the big military and so we can do whatever the we want and consequences be damned and if I get the short-term win and the good headlines and this episode of the Trump show ends well, then no problems. And if and if there's a huge problem down the road, if there's a terrorist attack or a war or a country that falls into civil war and mass migration crisis, all that stuff, yeah, someone else will deal with that. I don't have to deal with that. Uh, one more point on the on the oil. Um, basically as soon as we learned about the operation, we saw reporting that American oil companies were getting ready to go back in. Um, and on Monday their their stocks were way up. Also, Trump on that flight said uh that we just watched that uh someone asked, "So, did the oil companies did you tip off the oil companies about the uh about the

operation?" And he said, "Yeah." Yeah. It sounds like they got a better briefing than Congress, including the gang of eight.

Gave a heads up to the oil companies. Maybe maybe that was one of the traders that made that account. Who knows?

Smart. Um, and but there's been other reporting about how hard it would actually be to rehabilitate Venezuela's oil infrastructure. Venezuela, of course, does have like the the biggest oil reserves, I believe, in the world, the very underdeveloped question about that right?

Yeah. Well, so the this number you always see is 300 billion gallons, uh, 17% of the world's known reserves. But there's some there's some question as to where that number came from. Maybe Hugo Chavez's ass is potentially one of the sources. Then it's literally it's a great example of just how stupid everything is cuz it's like nobody seems to know where that number came from and they're all kind of basing all this stuff around it but it may be something that was just sort of inflated decades ago.

Yeah. They have a lot of oil. We don't know if it's the most but they seemingly have a lot.

Yeah. And so but like now we're finding out that maybe big oil isn't as enthusiastic about this or maybe they don't because it's just going to cost so much money.

So I've heard competing views on this too. I think the most honest answer is we just don't know yet and we won't know for sure until first of all oil companies need to get on the ground. They need to see like what do the fields look like? What do the wells look like? What equipment needs to be upgraded? Um they need to figure out what contracts have already been negotiated. Like the Chinese have contracts with Venezuela for a lot of these oil fields. Are we going to negate those? Um also like the political situation is going to matter a lot. I mean so just on the investment side, the estimates you see are this could take years. It could take tens of billion dollars of year uh year investment to really ramp up oil flows and that but to get there like the oil companies are going to want legal certainty. They're going to want licenses or sanctions relief or something to ensure that

I'm sure they'll get that from Donald Trump. Well, yeah. I mean, this is where he'll probably like dole out licenses one by one to companies that, you know,

show the oval and give them a peace. Exactly. But they don't want that rolled back by either the Venezuelan government or by Democrats if we take power, inshallah. Um they they want political stability

and power. What is that? I don't know. I've heard about it. I've heard it. I've read about it.

Um so the political stability part will be key too, right? Because that that's clearly I think why Trump uh chose Delsey Rodriguez who is Maduro's VP is now the acting president because she is seen first of all as a competent administrator who can who has done a better job overseeing the oil industry and then also installing her isn't necess isn't a threat to the entire patronage system that Chavez and the Maduro have built up. Right? You imagine if you install the opposition leader uh that is going to uh rile you know the powerful officials running the military or the interior ministry um who could be displeased. They might be displeased anyway but we'll find out.

Also by the way people that have been part of a brutal crackdown on uh civil society on disscent there's murder horrible sexual assaults like this is an abusive and despicable regime that they are leaving in place.

Yes. And are are also corrupt. I mean, there are people in that government facilitated with drug cartels, etc. But, you know, there there's other things that could go wrong. I mean, there are remnants of these guerilla groups on the border like the ELN or the FARC that could stage attacks and like scare off oil companies. And the big question I have is like, who's going to defend all this infrastructure? Is it the US military? Is it Blackwater? Is it the Venezuelan troops? Like, we don't know.

I mean, let's even take it a step further and say that everything goes perfectly well and the oil companies all get there and then they are just pumping away, right? It it Hugo Chavez was right and that's it's the most oil in the world. So, uh best

that's what that's what a a very handsome man whispers into Lindsey Graham's ear before hitting him.

Jesus Christ. The whip. Oh my god. Getting all the oil. Lindsay [snorts] smack. Austin, you should be confused. I know. I know. Um

so as soon as you said pumping away, I knew I knew it was coming. So it's like there we go again.

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So it's like a hundred billion to get this thing going. You probably don't get oil until I don't know like a decade maybe years.

Well, you might be able to increase production in like a year or two, right? But like to really get the most out of it, you could

you could double it from 1 million barrels a day to two I mean I think the peak in the 70s was three and a half million barrels a day

for sure. My point is uh the way that the world oil market works is that there's a lot of oil coming from a lot of places including the United States global and so maybe by 2030 your gas prices are a penny or two cheaper uh because if all goes perfectly in Venezuela and it is very ironic to me that um uh it's very like uh old Trump brain that he is obsessed with taking the oil which of course he's been obsessed with taking the oil forever. He used to say that about Iraq. They should have taken the oil in Iraq. So, he's been obsessed for a while about taking he's like he has this obsession with uh the most important resource from the last century at the same time and and China potentially getting access to it.

Uh when we were just talking right before the break of how he just lifted the export ban on the AI chips that we sell to China that we now going to sell to China, which is the most important resource of the next century

and got nothing for that, by the way. Got nothing for that. That was for free. But we're taking the oil even as the rest of the world is moving away from oil as an energy resource. Yeah, good stuff.

Just wanted to know. We're all be like, "Oh, but the oil is is the oil going to be is is that going to help us?" Like, no, the oil's not going to

Well, it could help a couple. It will, you know, will help a privileged few make a ton of money potentially. Of course, that depends on a lot of people going along, including China uh and and and and Russia and others who will have a lot of could have a lot of fun making trouble for us down there, which by the way, again, a a nice part of our history of countries having little proxy battles uh uh to to slow us down.

You see a lot of the the maggot chuds out there being like, "Oh, you guys wanted him to focus on affordability, affordability, now he's going to bring down gas prices." Like, this is not going to bring down gas prices as long as Donald Trump's president. It's just not. Um, so, uh, so maybe the most ominous news that came after the Maduro raid is that Trump seems like, uh, maybe he wants to conquer the entire Western Hemisphere.

Here he is again on Air Force One, musing about other regimes he'd like to change and territories he'd like to take.

Colombia is very sick, too. Run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he's not going to be doing it very long. Cuba is ready to fall. You know,

by the way, you have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get their act together. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland. The Donro doctrine.

The Donro doctrine, guys. Donro doctrine. That's where we are now. The Donro doctrine. What a dumb stupid world we live in.

Really reminds me of uh you took it from the New York Post. Did you see that? Well,

a year ago in January, they had a I think when he was first amusing about Greenland, they had a Don Row Doctrine um uh Front Page and he's trying to make it happen ever since. And there here it is. He's got it now.

Cool. It's a niche reference, but there's a movie called Ronin starring Robert Dairo and Shawn Bean uh is in the movie and he's sort of a gung-ho, but a little too gung-ho, a little too into the fight and it's because he's not totally prepared for it and he gets kind of exposed in it. But there's this moment when he's like hopped up on the adrenaline of the fun of the action. He's like, "Oh man, this is going great." And the action slows down. He just has to puke outside the car window. Uh that's what that reminds me of. They're they're they're high. They're high right now.

Was bouncing. This is this is shock and awe. This is the immediate aftermath. Uh the US military uh is is able to do what it is ordered to do and they and they are high on that. And let's see where what happens next. And so people know because obviously Trump has had quite a few uh gaggles on Air Force One where he just, you know, shoots his mouth off and says something kind of crazy that then the rest of the White House and his advisers try to clean up. Like, you know, the the Trump team uh account uh tweeted out a picture of Trump a stride the Western Hemisphere, taking a on it.

Yeah. Stepping over so with one foot in basically Greenland and the other in South America over it and saying the Donro doctrine. And then uh I think just on Monday the state department has just a picture of him that says like this is our hemisphere.

So I think there's something happening by the way where the social media people in each of these departments are the kind of like biggest Trump freaks and they spin they spin the whole media and left up. That's what happens when the that they're posting out of DHS. That's what the State Department posts the White House post. And like

these are the people who excitedly read the I love Hitler group chat story in Politico.

Yeah. [snorts] The one that the one that wasn't released that they're in. But but but no, like I I think like they are they are there to spin everybody up and they just don't see a cost to to to acting like this and getting everybody worried because they think they can do their little reassurances to the serious people uh in the kind of deep within the article the Susie Wilds style articles where they can get into the deep of actually it's a smart group of people really running things carefully.

Yeah. And in case you're not like a meme person, but you like sort of the rhetorical flourish of a uh a C plus Santa Monica fascist, Steven Miller, who apparently is going to um have a big role in governing Venezuela, perhaps vice roy Steven Miller.

He's finally he's finally got that class presidency he's been gunning for for half a century. he uh he took to Twitter uh in an attempt to expand on the thinking behind the Dawnro doctrine uh where he argued that the era of empires and colonialism quote built the modern world and then when it ended after World War II the West engaged in quote self-punishment uh by sending aid to its former territories and opening its borders to immigrants thereby betraying our quote native citizenry. So, do we have to make the argument now that colonialism was actually bad?

You know, Stephen, you know who didn't love colonialism? The founding fathers? Okay. Boom.

I might I might point you towards a document once stolen by uh Nicholas Cage called the Declaration of Independence that was specifically against it. I mean, the the biggest fact check for Steve there is he says he says um suggests that uh empires and colonies were dissolved out of the goodness of their hearts. I think there was some armed conflict in there that Steven seems to be forgetting. And it is it is shocking that we do have to argue that colonization was bad. But it seems like we do.

I actually the most the most prosperity this country has ever seen came immediately after World War II and the decades after when we uh welcomed immigrants into this country and and had sort of like built the greatest economy and the biggest middle class the world had ever known. Just just that's just some interesting history as well. Yeah, notable.

It's not like everybody was walking around 1945 and being like things are great. We got to keep this going. Like, you know, we just uh been on the other side of the greatest conflict in the history of human civilization. And then what follows,

which who knows, maybe not the right side anymore according to according to the history books that Donald Trump wants to write.

There was I was whatever reason this reminded me of it was uh you know there's those uh people were critical of of Grant because they're like he's a he's a he's an alcoholic. Your general there is an alcoholic. And Lincoln, you know, apocryphily says, uh, well, whatever he's drinking, send it to my other generals. It's like, okay, you have a problem with the way in which we welcomed immigrants from 1945 to 2025. The greatest period of economic transformation in the history of planet Earth, not just for the United States, but for vast numbers of people all around the world. And by the way, not just for the richest people. If you look at the bottom 80% talking about an incredible improvement of of quality alert neoliberal alert before been watched lefties clip this and get them right you're right decline like air conditioning decline in m maternal mortality and infant mortality wealth cars

NAFTA sure just I'm just speaking for no reason agree with you completely agree with

you know and so like what are you talking about it's so it's such a pathological point of view and it points to something so deeply broken about him and this worldview which is you care so much more about preventing people you don't like from having anything that you'd be willing to hurt the people you claim you're advocating for which are Americans because we built this system and benefited from it tremendously problems flaws of course but the idea that you're going to tear it all down and that's for us and not just to hurt people that you don't like for reasons that have to do with the color of their skin or or or where they come come from or who was mean to you in high school.

Like it's just it's all so perverse and obvious. It is just frightening that you would have to actually argue with Steven Miller that it taking away someone's self-determination through colonization is bad. Like treating someone as just a treating a race or a country as inferior is bad. Extracting their resources is bad. I I don't I don't know that he would agree with me when I when I said those things. And like the rest of the world is taking this very seriously. Like the UN Security Council met Monday about the United States. We were condemned by a bunch of our allies uh at that meeting. Leaders across Latin America, the Brazilians, the Colombians, Mexicans, especially leftist leaders.

They're holding emergency meetings about how to deal with the threat from the United States. The the prime minister of Denmark has said she thinks the Greenland threat is a serious one. Like that conversation was kind of tinged with like, oh, he's just, you know, Don being Don, he's trolling, whatever. Like you said, like the social media idiots were just like having fun with it. No, I don't think so. I think the everyone in Panama is probably thinking, "Oh, that all that Panama Canal talk, that was pretty serious." Like, we are still in the midst of a diplomatic and economic rupture with Canada because Trump kept threatening to annex their country and and like everything what he just did in Venezuela is terrifying people around the the planet. It's also I think I remember I can't remember if this the 2016 or 2020 campaign or whatever it was, but there was like, oh, Trump's trying to take us

back to the 1950s. remember that was the thing, you know, Hillary said it or Biden said it, I can't remember. But um this is way beyond this is way before that where this is like n this is even like before 1900s 1800s. I mean this is like you know the strong do what they can the weak suffer what they must that that is the that is the Trump Miller worldview and it's not it's also seeding some power and influence to China and Russia in this like China gets to control Asia Russia can that's the question can Russia does Russia control Europe and then we get the western hemisphere but it's like so it is not a world anymore of uh it's not a rules-based international order anymore there is no international law it's just the strongest company, the strongest countries with the most nukes uh get to divide up the world and hopefully then once the world is divvied up, Trump and she and Putin uh you know can get along

pretty well. Yeah. You saying that this is our hemisphere and that's your hemisphere is actually a much weaker position for the United States. Yeah. Look, you know, Vance says this in in one of his various defenses about how like I don't think living in a palace in Caracus should protect you from from the law. I don't think that lends you any special legitimacy. I actually think there's some truth to that, right? Like no, like claiming you own a country, that you run a country even though you stole the election. Like I I actually don't believe that makes you legitimate. I believe in democracy. I believe in those things. Uh but

the question is what to do about that? The question is what to do about that. Justify killing 80 Venezuelans 30 Cubans on the ground.

Well, the reason you say that, you say, well, what does lend legitimacy and it's a a legal order, a rules-based order that we defend that has certain values and precepts in which people which which individuals with the most power don't get to decide what happens. letting the opposition that was the rightful winners of the election take power. That would be one

suggesting that you're doing it on their behalf, which of course they don't. And and the reason that's important is not just because it's right and just and all the rest. And I actually find people saying like, oh, this is going to be permission for China to go into Taiwan or Russia to do more in Ukraine. Like they've already taken that permission because they don't believe in these rules.

Well, I I think that I think it's different for I think for the Russians, they have gotten every signal they ever could have wanted that Ukraine can be theirs. At least 20% of it, maybe more. Um, the the China piece is an open question, I think. Like I think Trump would trade away Taiwan for an economic deal. We don't know that yet. It gets a little more complicated when we're talking about like the Skaku Islands, like some disputed territory between them and Japan, a treaty ally of ours. What happens then?

But the point I'm making is only, yes, I agree with that. My point is only that these are other places that do believe in a power-based system, and perhaps the only reason they're not going into Taiwan is because they're worried about the consequences. But the the deal we made and what made our system attractive. And by the way, one argument that the Soviets made and that that our enemies made in the cold war was that our ideology was inherently expansionary because freedom is expansionary and and democracy is expansionary because we believe it is something fundamental people deserve. And the deal we offer, right, is you get to become part of this order and not only will you be protected by our power, you'll be protected by these rules. These rules will be good for you because you will be safe inside of them. And when we attack that, we attack the thing that allowed us to become not only like this hegeimon, but

also incredibly wealthy because we built a system in which you didn't need as many walls, which meant you could have trade and you could have bridges and all the rest uh that came along with the success of America of half a century unprecedented in in human history. And I think that the the aging of that system and the failures of that system has now left uh people who are in favor of that system making a lot of arguments about like but the rules, but the international order, but the institutions, right? And this is the this is the this is the the need for a renewal of that argument because the arguments that start crazy on their side become like their main open public arguments. like in the 2028 primary on the Republican side, if there is one, like they're going to be making the case that like what's so bad about a world where Russia and China and the United States split up the world and there's

and they and the strong countries make sure that the weak countries don't cause any trouble and everyone lives in peace. What's so bad about that? And like we're going to have to have an argument.

Yeah. The the other part of this I was thinking about I don't know Tom if you remember this but like for whatever reason it came to mind because maybe it was in Los Angeles but remember when there was the summit of the Americas in 2022 and uh Biden decided not to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Uh and then there was this revolt by Mexico and a few other countries and those leaders refused to come and this summit that was supposed to be about American leadership in the region became a story about conflict and American weakness and Biden's fecklessness and in the story Kamla is on the phone begging the head of Guatemala to come to the United States and it was just pathetic. It was just pathetic and I like I look at all this and I say all right I am against uh regime change wars. I am against this kind of like empire, but what is the Democrat? What is this? What is like the policy that Democrats offer? Like what

do we say about what it means for us? And not just and not just Democrats as in the Democratic party, but like pro-democracy forces, liberal democracies all over the country because I mean, you mentioned the UN too and I my my mind went to like, oh, did the is the UN going to write some strongly worded letters because we have like the UN has become toothless at this point.

Well, I mean, yeah. Were they going to censor us at the security council? We're going to veto it, right? It's just silly.

It's a bunch of people saying illegal. Yeah. No, but it's bad. I mean, we like, you know, every once in a while you look in the mirror and like, am I the baddie? And like we're we're pretty firmly there. And look, before people, well, actually me, like I the Obama administration made a bunch of mistakes. And like I'm talking about this from the experience of watching the Libya operation and thinking it was launched uh with good intentions to prevent Gaddafi's forces from massacring everyone in eastern Libya and then watching over the years as how it is unraveled. It has led to a horrible security situation for people in Libya.

but also destabilized all of Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East. I mean, it would like these are these things uh once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you have no idea what is going to happen. And I think all the triumphalism on day one of a regime change operation is so shortsighted and stupid and it feels like a rock all over again. The oil was going to pay for itself kind of arguments are just like everywhere. And I just it's hard to it's hard to watch this happen.

And I will all of that is true and I completely agree with you. I think the there is a difference too which is a lot of times debates over the use of force and whether to get involved are like tough calls. I think Libya was a difficult call and I think you're you're right it turned out like a disaster but you know Gaddafi was like in the process of massacring his people and that you know so it was like do we stop it? Is it going to get worse if we stop it or is it going to be worse if we don't do anything? Right. And you can go through all the different interventions like that and and some are should have been easier calls than others for sure.

But this one is like, oh no, no, no, no. We just want the oil. There's no national security advice. The rationale changes every other day. Sometimes it's fentanyl, sometimes it's drugs, sometimes it's Hezbollah

or now or now, which I did you hear Steve Bannon was like, I don't know what Rubio was talking about with Hezbollah. He's off message there. We got to make it about the cuz then now Hemisphere was opposed to this and now he's like, "Oh, it was masterful." Okay, Steve.

But it is the the oil thing and now it's the we want to control the western hemisphere. Now they're just going for

and that's the Donro doctrine. I mean that was in the national security strategy. So we all like in some sense should have seen this coming. I I am like I know we're going to talk about the politics for Trump. I I think you know I know you want to talk about the polling there too.

Let's do let's do that. Um it's you know it's obviously like too early to know how all the politics are going to shake out but uh early clues in some polls. We love polls. Uh, a Reuters poll out Monday found only 33% support for the operation and 72% worried that the US will become quote too involved in Venezuela. The Washington Post conducted a poll by text message of a thousand Americans. Um, that was about evenly split on the question of the US sending the military to capture Maduro with 42% opposed and 40% supportive. though more lopsided on the question of whether Trump should have gotten authorization from Congress, 63% said he should have and Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela and choose a new government, which only 24% support. To me, that's like the key number. Um, you also have your Marjgery Taylor Greens and Candace Owenses and Thomas Massiey's out there criticizing this, uh, which is driving a new round

of, you know, is is is the MAGA base dividing over this? What do you guys make of the politics on this issue for Trump and for other Republicans? And you can take it separately if you want. Is this something that further divides MAGA or brings Republicans together? So I I'm very worried about the political lesson that Trump is going to take away from this operation and from the Iran strikes no matter what the polling eventually says because so far there has been no cost to him politically, right? from like relatively limited military actions, at least in terms of time frame. Like no US service members were killed. Uh Congress hasn't done about it. Most voters probably don't know this is happening, right? Like most people just as crazy it is to people listening to this show are just checked out. And so meanwhile, Trump himself is surrounded by hardline anti- Maduro, anti-Cuba forces every time he's in Mara

Lago. BB Netanyahu visits him like every other day wherever he is. And I fear that Trump is going to take these military actions, love the wall-to-wall press coverage, love being told how bold and daring he was and historic this action was, and then decide that, you know what, I actually love intervention. I love like helping the Delta Force guys solve our problems. And that could mean, like he said earlier, like toppling or doing something else to topple the Cuban government. Maybe does something to around Colombia. He's already threatening air strikes in Iran if the Iranian regime cracks down on protesters. We've talked about Greenland. We talked

he did air strikes in Nigeria over the break. Air strikes Nigeria over the break like for no reason. And so, you know, look, if if these encourage these military actions are limited to like one night of air strikes, then he walks away. I honestly I don't think there will be a MAGA revolt. I think they'll mostly be fine with it. um even though he's basically adopted the Lindsey Graham foreign policy after years of calling him like a bloodthirsty lunatic neocon wararmonger. But if this turns into this prolonged occupation of Venezuela, I think that will be a massive political problem. And that's already showing up in the polling. 70% of people are like, "What do you mean run Venezuela? We don't want that." You're right though, he's very um because he's a a TV president. I mean, he he said he's like, "Oh, I was watching the whole operation on TV." He does think he's playing video games that and so these interventions

because everyone's like oh the hypocrisy of you know he he said he was going to be a peace president but he's doing all this war. Well in his mind probably what he doesn't like is quagmires right where we're spending a lot of money and uh we lose a whole bunch of American lives um

or lose period. That's where Americans land on wars. We don't like losing. We don't like looking humiliated.

And Donald Trump the TV president who just watched politics on TV that is where he is. And so he thinks to himself now that he's got all his toys because he's in the White House. Well, I can bomb this one and that one and fire this and you know, air strike here and I look strong and it gets me some good headlines and then that's it. I mean, I I don't I when people say, "Oh, is he going to send in American troops to Venezuela?" Like, I can't see him who knows we could who knows what will happen. I hope this doesn't happen, but like I can't see him sending in a huge ground force in Venezuela if things go bad there. I can see him just being like me, let it

Why is he leaving? I mean, he's leaving. Let them deal with it. He's leaving the regime in place in part because he doesn't want to put troops on the ground. I think he draws a hard line in his between I think military interventions that include troops are very different to him than just bombing or raids like this. I think he views the raids this is exciting and and daring and luckily nobody was uh uh uh killed on the American side. So it looks like a perfect success to him. Um and air ra you know he Solommani the most recent strikes in Iran like he'll keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah, I think the question is what happens if this doesn't go as planned and all of a sudden there's chaos in the streets and the only way you can get uh what you claimed you were getting is with troops. What happens there? And I agree with you. I think he is extremely reluctant uh to deploy American troops.

That that is the big question like what happens if Deli Rodriguez, the the acting president says you and doesn't let Exxon get access to the oil field Donald Trump wants. He said like the the stakes for her could be even worse than Maduro. Was he threatening to kill her? Because that's sure what it sounded like to me. What if there's some rogue general in the Venezuelan military who stages a coup? you know, like Bolta Chavez. Um, are we going to reinterven then to disrupt that? What if like the FARC or the ELN or one of these groups like just does a bunch of things to make political instability? So, there's just, you know, it's chaos down there. There's more migration. Like things get worse.

There's just so many ways they could break badly. If I'm if I'm Trump and that happens, I send in another round of air strikes and then say, "Let them deal with it. Screw it." And then the migration problem that you're talking about is real, but it happens, you know, then then he closes the borders and he gets tough on migrants, right? I even like god forbid that there is some kind of a terrorist attack either here or abroad against Americans and American interests even then he's going to be like well that's not my fault that's the fault of this these foreigners that's why we got to bomb them more

right I mean this is what happens like most V like something like 8 million Venezuelans have left the country I mean Hugo Chavez and Maduro ran the country into the ground I think they their GDP was cut by like 75% people were impoverished it went from really the richest country impoverished. Most of the people who left Venezuela though um went to Colombia or Ecuador or Panama or Brazil or other countries in the region. Like if more people flow out of Venezuela, it's going to further destabilize the entire all of South America and in reverberate in ways that we just can't see right now. In the same way like we didn't see in the early days of the Syrian civil war the way it would lead to like the rise of right-wing neo-Nazi parties in Germany, you know, a decade later. So

yeah, that happens and suddenly the Donro doctrine uh ends at the southern border. What I didn't talk about the

I meant the the quadrant though the um so Democrats unsurprisingly have been roundly critical of this but obviously because it's the Democratic party there's some drama. Uh Axio had a story about some Democrats having misgivings uh about this whole thing. They quoted uh three centrist and or vulnerable house members anonymously of course.

Emotionally vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah. emotional and they courageously went on background here. One of them one of them said to Axios quote I think it looks weak. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country then you lose all credibility. Uh another said quote as Democrats we can't just condemn what happened. And then another the third one said Maduro is bad. Glad he is gone. You can't have it both ways.

Anyone want to respond to the uh to the Centress House Democrats? Just not really. I mean, I just think like there's no doubt that Maduro is a bad guy. He's corrupt. He stole elections. He locked up the opposition, right? There's no doubt the US military is the most dominant fighting force in the world. They will win every battle we put them up against. But I what I'd say to this House Democrat is like, you have no idea if this was a win for our country. No one does. We can't tell the future. Like, it felt like a win when Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hole.

How'd that turn out? It felt like a win when Gaddafi was toppled. How did that turn out? Right? Like again, Trump has said, "We want to run the country of Venezuela going forward

to take their oil and left the regime in place of the guy he just replaced." If you can't look at that and say what Seth Molton said, which was this is he this Seth Molton was great. He said, "This is insane. What the hell are we doing?" Yes. That that to me that's every that should be everyone's right. Ruben G was out there. He was excellent. Um

Cory Booker had a good statement. Cory Booker. What What did you guys think of the other Democrats who are out there from the statements you've seen? I I thought the Cory Booker statement, I think, stood out if only because it put it in the the broader context of what got us to this moment, which is a completely uh slobinly and pathetic Republican Congress that has not uh been willing to assert its constitutional authority in any way at any time. Right? That Donald Trump couldn't even do the courtesy of uh the briefing the uh uh leaders of the intelligence committee and the leaders of Congress the way you would about a covert operation. They're claiming because those people would leak. Meanwhile, he's telling us he told the uh oil companies advance or at least they may have known it was coming.

Although I think that's probably him just I who knows what he means. But regardless, like the reason we are in a situation where Donald Trump feels so uh um emboldened is because he knows that he will face no accountability from Republicans in Congress. And so I think I do think when people go out there and say like this was illegal, this was illegal. Uh um it sounds pretty feckless and silly because to who? And and to what end? And so what? and and and at least pointing out like there is a world in which we have a Congress that's willing to hold an administration accountable is a world in which doing illegal things uh could have consequences

unilaterally launching a regime change war is a bad idea we know this from a lot of pretty recent history and I don't think we should be scared to to make that case I also think like the key on these statements is to make it bigger like Seth Molton was great like this is insane Mark Warner uh made strong points about China and Russia he made he talked about the hypocrisy of pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez the actual whole narco kingpin uh from Honduras that Trump just gave a pardon to. Tim Kaine was good. Thomas Masti was strong. But like again, go big. Like this is not about whether Maduro was a good guy or a bad guy.

There are a lot of bad leaders in the world. We are not going to depose them all. I thought we'd agreed that we don't want to be America's policeman. And then you start to wonder, okay, how are we picking and choosing? Why aren't you deposing Kim Jong-un? Well, it's because of Trump getting love letters from him, but also because he has nukes, right? So if we want every country that is scared of us to suddenly race to get a nuclear weapon, like this is a great way to do it.

Yeah. And by the way, also just pardoning uh the Honduran leader uh who uh uh was a drug trafficker, right? Like just the the the lack of any standard any any kind of ideology behind any of this. It's just it's all so capriccious and dangerous.

I totally understand focusing uh if you're a Democrat in Congress, focusing your eye on uh Trump not going to Congress. you are in Congress. It's your job. It's your prerogative. I think that is important. I do think that when something like this happens, the focus the the focus of the statement at the beginning is just what do you think of this?

Exactly. Because there I I did see a lot of like uh you know throat clearing about the congressional authorization, but then you can tell they're too scared to say that this was just a bad idea. And it's like, you know what, Donald Trump's never going to Congress. It's it's not happening. And we don't control Congress. Democrats don't control Congress anyway. And Republicans are shameless. So the most important thing you can do right now is to help shape the public debate by telling people exactly why this is such a horrible idea, you know? Like that to me is like number one.

Yeah. But this is where I do like I know it sounds I like I was like actually before we even recorded I was like am I just like is this a bias that I have to just like think about the ways in which Joe Biden failed. Uh but but I do think that like one of the reasons you see Democrats kind of like unmorted a little bit. I do think for the most part people have been critical and this is a few random people speaking on on background but I do think there is a kind of well when they say it's weak what they're really getting at is well Maduro was bad and it would be a better world if Maduro wasn't in power and that that election had had been allowed to carry through to the to the to the rightful winner. What did Democrats do to make that happen?

There was democratic backsliding in South America while Joe Biden was president while claiming all these values claiming to speak for all of these values. So, what is a fullthroated like moral righteous policy that Democrats would embrace that doesn't seem kind of feckless and weak in the face of authoritarian uh uh rule of of China's expansion of Russia's expansion? Because I I don't know the answer. I'm not an expert, but like that does seem missing.

Yeah. I I think the challenge is, you know, military action, things getting blown up, but it looks strong. It looks divi decisive. and Democrats have all these scars from the Iraq war in 2003 and you know thinking that like the military actions automatically coded as strong and diplomacy is weak but I just think voters are actually smarter than that and like so so like you know where they should have scars for uh all the ones who cast the vote in favor of Bush's war which is a haunt that a vote that haunted most of them for their political careers.

Exactly. And like you know to your point about the kind of mealymouth process focused statements like a lot of Democrats made those kind of statements about the Iraq war and they were like well actually what I voted for was for him to go back to the UN with firmer footing. And it's like guys history is not going to remember this that way. Like are you for this? Are you against it? Are you for the Don Row doctrine and the next phase of toppling the Cubans and the Colombians and taking Greenland and Panama and whatever else?

And I would also say like this is this to me is an easier one and and I know Dan wrote about this in his message box. Uh this is an easier one than the than the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites for Democrats, which some Democrats were like, you know, it's it's good that he did that because that was about like, okay, there are these nuclear sites, we bomb them. Do we get them all? Do we not? That's, you know, the question. But

the Trump administration told us after the Maduro raid that it wasn't really about Maduro, that it's about the oil.

So threatens us. People can die if Iran is a nuke. There's no threat to the United States from Maduro. They're trying to call fentanyl a WMD. But yeah, this whole thing is like Maduro is a bad guy who But but they're not saying that it's because Maduro was a bad guy. That's not that's not what they're saying because Maduro didn't give them the oil.

They still the regime's still in place. Yeah. The same group of people. One they're just they're down one guy.

I will say too, not I haven't seen a lot of 20 28 contenders that have that have put out statements. Pritsker I saw tweeted GGO all the all the ones in Congress said something because it's Congress. Little quiet out there from the rest of them.

Kamla had a very long Yeah, that's right. Kla did and we think of her as a 2028 candidate.

We for now for now we do. Yeah. Yeah. The other part of it I just what would we have what would have this like as you both were going back and forth about um how quickly we be able to exploit the oil reserves of Venezuela. I was [clears throat] saying what would this show have been about otherwise, right? And what would we have been talking about today? And it would have been our next bucket. But it just like like he has decided that he wanted us all like he he did he chose this. He chose the timing of this. We're all now talking about this rather than the failure on to get any kind of Obamacare extension through the failure to attack any of the problems he claimed he was going to attack. And like that doesn't go away. Yeah. He gets a a couple days of of of tough guy bomb guy news stories, but like the the the

apparently he wanted it he wanted it to happen on Christmas day because he likes the dates, but then there's some some weather stuff and they had to they they basically had to the weather sort of and the and the conditions and the political reality is also kind of like determined

wet and it was windy and you can't fly helicopters and that kind of weather. But it what a There's a lot of service members and government officials who have to work when you invade a country and do it on Christmas just cuz I guess it's my consolation prize. I'll bomb Nigeria instead because I couldn't get the Venezuela thing done on Christmas.

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Positive America is brought to you by Article. Uh we love Article here at Cricut Media. We got a bunch of stuff in the office. We've got chairs, we got couches, some desks, like all kinds of things. Uh they look great. They were affordable. They showed up really fast. Um, and that's because Article offers a curated range of mid-century modern, coastal, and Scandi inspired pieces that not only shine on their own, but also pair seamlessly with nearly any other Article product. This thoughtful design approach makes it easy to mix and match, helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article takes great care in curating its collection, focusing solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. There's no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftsmanship, design, and lasting value. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for

professional assembly if you prefer a hands-off experience. Article's customer care team is available 7 days a week, offering knowledgeable support and even free interior design services to help you get your home just right. With Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you could easily return it. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/crooked and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com/crooked for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Uh so yeah, the story we would have been talking about. Speaking of Democrats, uh Tim Walls made a surprise announcement on Monday that he will be ending his campaign to seek a third term as governor of Minnesota. Walt said that he decided to step aside because of the

political attacks he's been facing over a massive social services fraud scandal in his state that's become a MAGA obsession and spawned all kinds of right-wing conspiracies. Um, we covered the fraud scandal briefly in a previous episode. I honestly can't even remember when, but we did. Um, but basically, uh, a nonprofit stole tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funding from the government by saying the money was going to meals for kids. Uh, it was called Feed Our Future. It was the nonprofit

and some features were pretty handsomely fed. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Not not the correct ones, but yeah. Uh Biden's DOJ investigated dozens of people were indicted in 2022. So, this is an old one. Um many were convicted and Walls announced uh new oversight policies. Then, right after Walls uh announced his re-election bid in September, this September, Trump's DOJ announced investigations into other Minnesota social services programs. uh and they are currently arguing that as much as 9 billion may have been stolen.

Uh and so far 90 people have been charged altogether both in the feed our future uh original case but then there have been a couple other cases. All these investigations are kind of blurring together but they are separate cases. Um but what made this an even bigger deal in MAGA world is that most of the people who've been charged are Somali Americans. Um, and then the day after Christmas, a right-wing influencer named Nick Shirley released a video that's since gone viral where he made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims about alleged fraud at Somalun daycare centers in Minnesota that he visited. Uh, that led to the Trump administration announcing a freeze in child care funding nationwide while they investigate. uh as well as just a general freakout uh on the right among everyone from Donald Trump uh and Elon Musk to nearly every [snorts] Republican and conservative influencer. It was just

like the the couple days on on Twitter and online and on YouTube before Venezuela were just this is all they were talking about.

Um and uh this included calls including by Elon Musk who has jumped back into posting about politics. uh calls for all Somali American citizens to be denaturalized and deported, including Ilhan Omar, and for Tim Walls to go to jail uh and be tried for treason. That was one that uh that Elon Musk also promoted. Uh [snorts] Trump continued the attack in response to the Walls news on Monday and accused the governor and Ilhan Omar of quote stealing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, which of course isn't true at all. Um, now that Walls is out, Amy Clolobashar may jump into the race, uh, where she may have the honor of facing my pillow guy, Mike Lindell. Nice.

If they both win their respective primaries. Amy Clolobashar, uh, holding a a hairbrush, tapping against her hand as a bunch of fraudsters come and bring cash back to the governor's mansion. Just put it in front. That's awesome. I think that's cool.

Uh, what that is cool. She'll clean it up. Yeah, she should do that. Yeah. What do you guys make of the fraud story? uh and the uh and the MAGA obsession over it.

So, there was fraud. It was very serious. The people that committed the fraud should go to jail. Many of them have. Not only that, they've recovered tens of millions of dollars. Well, not all of it. You can't recover all of it, but they've tried to recover a lot of the money. That's what you do. You find people who committed crimes and you prosecute them. You don't punish communities because we don't believe in collective punishment. Uh if just because somebody that committed a crime is the same ethnicity as you doesn't make you in any way whatsoever responsible. That was sort of a to me a kind of status quo antie that I came to the table with, but apparently others uh no longer have it. Also, there was so much pandemic fraud. There was so much.

This is one example is at the top of the list now. Sure. I get maybe maybe a lot the the PPP fraud PPP fraud

very huge that that's that's like way up there as well too. Tons of other Small Business Administration fraud. Remember there was you go there are all kinds of reports about people taking millions of dollars for the government uh from the government really wealthy people taking millions upon millions of dollars from the government but this is what they care about this is what they're focused on why because it affects a community of immigrants they don't like and so they are making this the issue does that mean that it wasn't a situation in which given the scale of the theft it shouldn't have been caught earlier earlier or I guess more to the point once it was seemingly exposed stopped earlier like what were the reasons it was allowed to continue? Some of that is legal and judicial, but some of it clearly is administrative. Like these are all really important. You ask them, we don't support fraud. Uh but the idea

that now this pain needs to be visited on every daycare in the country or every Somali immigrant is just it's just racist. Yeah, it really is combining um the two passions right now of like the because Elon and like the all-in boys um were all over this and it's like their thing is uh is you know Doge 2.0. They want this to be Doge 2.0 even though um when they were running Doge 1.0 uh they didn't seem to find any of this fraud.

Weren't so good at doing. No, they weren't so good at doing. But now they're back and they are saying things now like most of the money that you that most of your tax dollars now go to fraud. The government is just one big some 30% of all your tax dollars go to fraud. Now, this is the greatest scandal in the history that if we just cut out the fraud in the government, we would balance the budget and no one under $500,000 would have to pay any taxes anymore. This is the that they're all pushing. And then you've got Steven Miller pushing the like, oh, this is a great this is a great way to show that uh any immigrant in this country, even those who've become citizens, are uh are bad and should be deported.

Yeah. I I think it's sort of like a three-part MAGA obsession. And yes, like the fraud is it's horrendous, right? It's a ton of money, like billions of dollars. But also, it's like you're defrauding uh you're pretending to feed hungry kids. You're pretending to provide services to kids with autism. Like, these people. Lock them up. Throw them away forever. Make sure it can never happen again. The the mega obsession though, I think it's like one, it happened in blue state, right? So, you can blame Democrats and you can blame and you could use it to attack the social safety net and the welfare state generally, right? And that is part of their project. attack the value of government in service of slashing taxes for the richest people in the country.

That's like Republican 101. Second, because you know it's a bunch of Somali descent, people of Somali descent are uh have been arrested. That gets right the Steven Miller like nivists going. It also gets the racist going. And then third, like social media algorithms are designed to explode stories like this, especially on Twitter. Like if you if if a right-wing anti-migrant anti- you know liberal video appears on Twitter, Elon Musk is going to find it and retweet it and respond to it and juice the out of its reach. And then I think journalists scroll past that video and they see like 170 million views. A totally madeup number by the way. I do not believe a single metric that man puts out on about view counts on social media or his businesses or whatever. But then they decide like oh this has been under discussed. This has been ignored by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, like Google, three weeks earlier, a month

earlier, the New York Times had a bunch of really great reporting about this fraud. Minnesota news outlets have been covering the story.

It's often they say, "Why won't the media cover this story I learned about from the media?" There's a link. Yeah.

The the other part of it, too, and the Justice Department, which has been on the case since 2022. The other part of this too is I do think like one of the reasons there should have been more enforcement and checking is because it was a pandemic emergency and they were trying to a get money out the door and b they were worried about sending they worried about people interacting like that was part of a lot of the decisions that were being made uh in the early days of the pandemic to try to kind of uh uh uh uh help people in the crisis and part of what we're seeing is just a a desire to rewrite the history of COVID which is all of this was unnecessary all of it was fake the the the the social distancing, the protection, the need for people to stay home, which is why people couldn't work.

All of it was manufactured, right? Like that is part of this too, the erasing what was happening during co.

The other thing that feeds into this is as you know, I saw that Tim Walls gave an interview back when this happened in like 2022 and someone in his I believe it was Department of Education or Health and Human Services, whatever it was there, and in the state like flagged the irregularities and they were like, "We're going to have to stop this." And then um Feeding Our Future sued them and then in court and said it's because um this they were racist that they were trying to do this which is even more disgusting.

Yeah. So that's feeding into now now the right takes that is like Tim Walls up because he thought no no the walls administration actually tried to stop it earlier and then there was a corridor. It was like a whole

But this feeds I do think this feeds into a like what is the kind of deeper critique from the right that they want Americans to absorb which is Democrats are afraid of being called racist and they'd rather money go out fraudulently than deal with racism. And by the way like I don't think that that is a totally unfair allegation uh in some cases, right? Like there is absolutely Democrats who are afraid to attack a problem like this because they were afraid of being called racist. Certainly this this auditor who who reached out to these communities was like look if you don't want to see you know headlines all over the place calling you racist for targeting our you know nonprofit then you know let us go. I do think it's really important for Democrats there's you're seeing a lot of

like what about what aboutm well actually look at Trump look at the cryptocrumption and that is 100% right and it is totally valid. There's this most corrupt white house we've ever seen. I do think Democrats, we need to take this really seriously first. Lean into uh prosecuting the hell out of the perpetrators, like fix the oversight problems, uh fix the social safety net challenges because like like this is like when healthcare.gov went down, right? Like if you if you want to sell people on the role of government in your lives, being good and helpful and being worth your tax dollars, like we have to go that extra mile, whereas Republicans have a much easier task, which is they just attack attack and then say, "I see government's worthless.

Let's drown it in a bathtub, cut your taxes." Couldn't agree more. When Kathleen Sibilius opened up that computer and there was just an exhausted pterodactyl

trying to connect the wires, that was such a bummer. Yeah. You don't you as a Democrat like you don't care about fraud because it's an issue that Republicans are going to attack you with. You care about it because if you want to propose policies like this that change people's lives, like you have to you have to make sure that people trust you with their tax dollars, right? Like when the the better example of that is the recovery act. Remember we like made a big show of appointing Joe Biden as the uh remember he was like the inspector general. Well, he was going to make sure that none of the money was wasted on the recovery act. And you know, they found like there's a million how how much money there found Celindra, right? And that was like the big thing. Um, but that's we we took that seriously because we're like, if this much money is going out the door, you better believe we're going to make sure that it's not

wasted and that there's not fraud. And I do think that's an important like, you know, think lessons for Democrats to learn as they're proposing policies.

Yeah. The energy department uh loan program that Sylinder was a part of ultimately turned a profit. Well, I can't. The idea that if you're going to bet on the whole point of betting on companies that some of them are going to go down, but on the whole it's going to work. That whole like cylinder was not I don't want to do a cylinder thing.

A guy with a a guy with a cool car startup uh ended up benefiting from What was that guy's name?

Yeah, I don't know where he went. Okay. Um, what do you guys think about Walls's decision and uh and Clobashar jumping in the race possibly?

I mean, look, I I respect anyone who like decides that for the good of, you know, the team step back. Yeah,

when there's time. Yeah. You know, not referencing anything specific here, but you know.

Yeah, for sure. Well, why not? I think it's better than Yeah. other people hanging on. But the uh Yeah, look, I I I do think it's a little bit of an admission against interest here, right? Because he's he's saying it's because of right-wing attacks and that it's important to continue fighting right-wing attacks, but you're also conceding to them by stepping aside. And I like I've seen some people say some version of like I can't believe Tim Waltz is giving into this kind of right-wing attack. And I think two things can be true. One is this. There's a lot of unfair being circulated, a lot of ways in which is being exploited completely unfairly, but also he's the governor of the state and there's a massive fraud and the scale of it compared to what they expected the program to be um is just so gobsmacking that I understand why he would uh step aside.

But it's clear he cares about cares about the seat, cares about the state, and that he wants a Democrat to win that and he thought it would be harder to to do for, you know, reasons that are fair or unfair,

right? Um, and then on Clolobashar, just so people know, so there if she runs in 26, um, she uh, and she wins, there's also a Minnesota Senate race. Right now, there's a primary with Lieutenant Governor uh, Peggy Flanigan uh, and and, uh, Representative Angie Craig. And so, um, that's for Senate. And then if Clolobashar wins and she wins as governor, she would be able to appoint her replacement in the Senate. That would then be up in 28, I believe. Um, and she also wouldn't have to get rid of she wouldn't have to step down from her Senate seat. So, it's a freebie if she wants to run and then if she loses, then she'd go back to the Senate.

Yeah. I wonder how that affects the primary if you let that primary play out or sort of because now there's an extra slot.

There's an extra slot. Yeah. Oh, I guess you let it play out and then maybe potentially the loser of that primary could be appointed by a potential governor, Clolobashar. So, we'll see. Getting ahead of ourselves there.

Strong candidate. I mean, I also think Wall stepping back probably speaks to how miserable politics is if you get in like Trump's glare like the eye of Sauron. I mean, do you guys see like over the weekend Trump retruth some video that basically alleged that Tim Walls had had some role in the murder of Melissa Hortman. Oh my god, the Minnesota state legislator who was killed uh along with her husband last year. I mean, sick sick stuff

because she spoke out about immigration or something. I think about the scand I think she spoke out about the fraud and was like one of the few Democrats. And so this has been I remember they this was going around when she was first murdered that like maybe this was a left-wing person because she took this unpopular stance among Democrats. It's

I mean her kids were like begging Trump to remove the video and as far as I can tell he's not. He's [snorts] just the crulest person on the planet.

Um all right so we knew this was going to happen because of where the deadline fell but the Department of Justice released the first big batch of Epstein documents on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week. Uh and we haven't had a chance to talk about it because we were like peace out. see you later. Uh, the new law gave the Department of Justice until December 19th to release what they have on Epstein. Um, that day they posted a searchable database containing hundreds of thousands of files, including redacted documents, emails, photos, and more, most of which lack context or order. uh some of the quote unquote highlights from the trove, photos of Epstein with celebrities like Michael Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, investigations into 10 co-conspirators of Epstein's and revelations that Trump, despite claiming otherwise, flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times in the '90s. Um,

however, DOJ admitted that it hadn't been able to get through all the files by the deadline. And there were reports just before New Year's that they're trying to borrow at least 400 government lawyers to help process over 5 million more Epstein documents.

They kind of bum a lawyer off you. Such a weird way to phrase it. Clearly they're not doing a lot of work in the rest of the government. Their lawyers right?

Not a lot of legal. I don't think they're doing a terrible job redacting because apparently they could just highlight the black text and get the actual information.

Um, any takeaways from the documents that we've seen from you guys? I mean, you highlighted the three big ones I took away. Like the it's pretty notable that this federal prosecutor was flagging in January of 2020 that Trump was on Epstein's jet many, many more times. Why was he sending that email? What what was he doing on that plane? Um the 10 co-conspirators point uh seems to completely contradict Cash Patel's claim that there was no client list or other group of people that he could have charged. And then I think you just come away thinking like the FBI screwed up this case so unbelievably badly over the course of decades because there's all these credible tips uh and witness testimony even including from like the sister of one of the victims that could have been used to arrest Jeffrey Epstein so much earlier and they just completely screwed up

the Yeah. the the fact that this all begins with Palm Beach police basically having this guy on sexual abuse of minors from the jump from the beginning multiple victims and that it never moves forward. It gets it gets uh pled down from the beginning and never leads to anything else. The other thing that jumped out to me uh first of all the the fact that he was on the plane that many times was was news to me. Maybe I I I like I didn't know if I had a real view of it before, but I I suppose I had internalized that he hadn't been on the plane because there just hadn't been evidence of it.

We hadn't seen it, right? He denied it outright. The first we heard of it was Susie Wilds saying it like

Yeah. Yeah. He was on in that interview. Yeah. And the fact that he was one of the people that was just on the plane over the time. There were people that had just a rationale of like, of course he wasn't on the Epstein plane. That's not his style. He would fly himself. He wouldn't go to a place like that. He would do things like there was just a whole story about how Donald Trump wasn't on the plane. That's a lie. Many, many times. Do you also do you see the the Wall Street Journal article that um Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a frequent visitor at the Mara Lago spa? The spa would send young women to his house on house calls for massages.

I mean, it is if you're wondering like why is Trump trying so hard to cover this up? Why has he tried so hard to cover this up for so long? That does not um where the explanation is not that he was in on it, that he was, you know, participating in this. It's that there's so much bad behavior from him around it being on the plane. Marjorie Taylor Green uh said over the break too that Trump told her his friends would get in trouble. Uh friends of his would get in trouble if the files came out. This whole thing about the Mara Lago, right?

Like there's enough behavior that's maybe not chargeable criminal or you know, but like pretty embarrassing.

The cover up the cover up has always had to be the second worst outcome for Donald Trump. I will say also one other part of it is just as a sort of a whatever a silver lining to the Epstein cloud is only that Donald Trump does not believe he has the power to cover this up. They don't believe they can delete this stuff, erase this stuff that there's too many people that are not loyal to Donald Trump that have the information which is why they feel so stuck, right? Like if they they would obviously love to shred this. They would obviously love to make this disappear.

They have no compunction about they're not into records retention. Uh but they are trapped because inside of DOJ it is not MAGA one one inch down it is a bunch of people that are not going to go along with a cover up which is like I do think a little bit heartening.

Yeah. Um all right. There's plenty of other news from the last two weeks we haven't had a chance to cover uh way too much but we did just want to mention a few items that uh probably flew under your radar unless you're one of the real sickos out there. Um which is why we asked Crooked's biggest sicko Elijah Cohen to help us out. Um, one of Elijah's many roles here is host of Terminally Online, which is our most hilariously unhinged pod for subscribers only, which is yet another reason you should all become subscribers at cricut.com/friend.

Become a friend of the pod. We're going to have a lot of new awesome stuff behind the payw wall this year. So, you're going to want to sign up for that. The number one way you could help independent media is to be a subscriber. So, if you like the show, please subscribe. If you really, really love the show, go to crooked.com/friend. Consider becoming a friend of the pod member.

Yeah. And uh so because Elijah uh spends his days never taking his eyes off the internet, he gave me a list of stories, takes, and tweets, um none of them had flown under my radar because I'm just as much of a sicko. But I'm curious how familiar you guys are with some of these.

I was pretty offline, by the way. And every once in a while, I would like go into my my phone and I would see that like that like basically it's Yeah. Well, just it's also just sort of like sticking your head up on Normandy and on Private Ryan, that opening scene. I always think about that with Twitter. It's like they're they're under the water and they're go back under the water.

Well, there sort of like it's it's almost like I like you guys just been in the casino the whole time. I went to bed. No,

there are definitely days where it's like you're like I it's been off for like two weeks having a great time with my kids like spending great family time. Saw my mom, saw Hannah's parents, and then you just like log into Twitter and you're like it is designed to enrage me. And I'm like ignoring my daughter to like fire off who's that the hedge fund Who's Bill specific? Stop drafting. Stop drafting.

I know. I was good until Elon and and Chimath and the All-in people and Bill Aman, they all got they started doing with the fraud stuff. I was like, h I I I had like a good week and a half.

I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I was out. I was out. Um All right. First one. Uh did anyone catch the marble armrest story? Does that mean anything to you guys?

I actually missed this. I missed it. I didn't really care about the Kennedy Center stuff.

Okay, so uh Donald Trump, can we put up the uh for for people who are watching on YouTube? You should all watch on YouTube. Uh Donald Trump decided to post right before Christmas what's next for the Trump Kennedy Center. Uh which is marble armrests. He said nothing's ever been done like this before. It's like Yeah. No Unbel What? That is the craziest marble armrests.

You want a You want a wood a nice soft wood there. Or Yeah. Or something padded.

Yeah. This is what the Venezuelans are going to have to be pumping oil for, right?

I can't believe people don't think he's focused on their problems. I know. I know.

Uh okay, here's a tougher one. If someone asked you what you thought about Gen Z looks maxing influencer Clavvicular's take on Gavin Newsome mogging JD Vance in 2028 because Newsome's a Chad and Vance is subhuman. What would you say?

I have to tell you something. I don't know that that interview I didn't know about that interview but I sadly do know all those terms. I do. I do.

I'm I'm a little too deep in this one unfortunately. So looks maxing as I believe when you it is what it sounds. If you just do all the things to make yourself look better, including testosterone injections, plastic surgery, you know, remember the dude who got calf implants on that MTV series?

I do remember that. Remember the end of that? His c he and his calf influence are still along. He never got that girlfriend in that.

Vinnie's older brother. Who is that? Apparently the looks maxing as kind of an ideology that is adjacent to kind of white nationalism or or the right-wing bees. You always see clvicular talking to like Nick Fuentes and their buddies. And then uh Clvicular uh like ran over a guy, hit a guy with his car over the bridge.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Didn't get prosecuted. Cyber truck. Yeah, he took a cyber truck.

So anyway, so he thinks JD Vance is ugly. And we have we have the clip. We should Yeah, let's play the clip.

I mean, like this next election cycle, who's going to win? It's going to be Gavin Newsome against JD Vance because JD Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsome bugs.

JD Vance is subhuman. Yeah. What What makes you say that? uh he's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's obese. Uh very recessed side profile whereas Newsome is like 63 Chad.

So I just want to say that's manly by the way 63 Chad was Michael Nulls of the Daily Wire.

I want to conducting that interview. The the the the look all you people out there with your horoscopes, I just want you to know that you and Fernlogy are coming into into into into the light together. Uh but yes, the return of phronology was inevitable in our kind of uh demon haunted world. But yes, JD Vance has a recessed chin, therefore he does not have what it takes to be a leader.

I I also saw that guy saying that um he takes so much testosterone that he no longer produces it. So I'm not sure that he is able to have sex. [clears throat] Um like look, we we've all lived in a world where obviously optics and looks of a candidate is like seen as part of how they get elected, right? Like Barack Obama's a good-look guy. There was all this thing about the tell the taller candidate always wins, but this guy seems to have turned

looks maxing into a political ideology and I think that that was new to me in the last couple weeks. Did

you see that uh Newsome got in on this Newsome the Newsome press office account just like

they they posted a picture of um JD Vance's face a little fatter than it used than than it than it is today.

And not the not the fake one the the meme that the like an older picture of him when he was a little little heavier.

Got it. So that's something that happened. Yeah, that's that's what they do. Total chatalad try muingtad. You got to start you got to get that mouth tape.

Moging is uh means someone looking significantly better or outshining others in attractiveness, style, or confidence.

That's Gavin. Moging the competition. Um all right. How about the phrase globo homo?

Oh, all up and give you a hint. It's related to the Maduro raid. I do know. Is this about the homo nationalists? [snorts]

Uh maybe. Elaborate. So, there was a report about uh increasingly right-wing gays uh uh not the right-wing gays where you uh wish somebody had higher cheekbones and filler lips, but but right-wing homosexuals who are embracing anti-immigrant rhetoric because they are homists who want to be free to be gay, but also don't want to be surrounded by immigrants. That's what I thought this was related.

Didn't know. Didn't know about that. Let's take a friend Tucker Carlson has the

You're not going to believe what this was. Yeah, I know. We're not going to go kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. That is a distinct possibility, but no one will say that out loud. Not defending the regime. Just saying. And by the way, the USbacked opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out, is of course pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela. So to those of you who thought this whole project was global homo, not crazy actually. What? What's global homo?

Nope. Definitely crazy. What's [snorts] global homo? Globo homo is him thinking there is an international conspiracy to take out Nicholas Maduro because it's a conservative country that didn't allow gay marriage. That's his theory that I guess a super gay deep state forced Donald Trump to launch this military operation to take down Maduro.

Wow. Uh would that sadly it wasn't the gays? It was the Jews in this case. Why not both?

Why not both? Why not have both? Why not have both? Remember the kind of like um the Megan Kelly Ben Shapiro moment when he was like I don't give a about Maduro being a conservative. That he was sort of referencing that in the

right the idea that right that that that that doesn't matter. Conservative. That's right.

It's crazy. Uh finally cuz his point by the way was we should remove dictatorships. That's what Ben's point was there.

Well, Benzo was like he's a terrible guy. Like we shouldn't like him because he's super conservative on social stuff.

Right. Right. Right. Um all right. Finally, Zoran Mdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City just after midnight on New Year's Eve and has already increased discourse supply to record levels. Uh, which one of these Mayor Mumani takes aren't real? One, the buses aren't free yet. Mani lied. Two, Mandani needs to free Maduro. Three, Mandani defeated abundance by implementing Yimi policies. Wait, one of those is not real or the two of those are real.

I got to guess what? I think the bus one is fake. I think that one's fake, too. They're all real. They're all question

cuz I I I saw in the wild a couple versions of the free Maduro tweet. Okay. Amazing.

Yeah. The defeated abundance by imple because he said the word abundance in his speech in his inaugural speech. And so then the lefties were like, "Yeah, he's basically he's taking it. He's co-opting it because he's now he's using the word but it's like the socialist version of it.

He's getting he's getting democratic. He's Hey, you're getting socialism all over my abundance. I wasn't done with that abundance yet and now you've got your socialism all over it. That's gross.

There's another big like abundance dust up right before Christmas and like I didn't know any of the people involved but like it's the the

I kept thinking I'm like Tommy's uh what did you say on the pundy's so he was so right. the fever pitch of it, like the the the rage compared to the stakes.

We got to build more houses. So much rage. Got to build more houses. Yeah. However, we get it done. It's great.

I'll just be bad about a new book in 2026. I just, you know, build more houses. Sometimes it's going to be zoning and regulations. Sometimes there's rich people doing some bad I don't know. It's both. I just What the

Just build Yeah, just build problem. I don't even care about the underlying policy. Just fight about another book. Just get another book.

Oh boy. I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. You did? Great. I love that book. It's a good It's like that's one of my favorite books.

I've been reading it's one of the books you've read. That's it. Yeah. So all five.

Been reading Fort Bragg Cartel. I'll give you a very different um window into the Delta Force community.

Oh, it's very good. Finished Dead Wake. Oh, great. Great. Really great. Really great. God damn it.

I'm halfway through George Packer's uh novel, The Emergency. I interviewed him on offline and uh told him I was going to read the book and I I started it.

You know what book I read that I I read? Um uh why nothing works the is it dunleman?

You got through that? Yeah, that is the the rageless abundance. But that's the supercharged abundance. That's the longer abundance. That's an abundant abundance.

I want to have a conversation with that author about how many times you're going to say the phrase, is it Hamiltonian or is it Jeffersonian? I got it. I got it, man. I'm reading your book. I'm here. You've got me. Stop saying it. It's very niche. Is is it worth the read? I'm learning a lot, but how many times are you going to reintroduce the thesis?

An abundance of thesis. Yeah, there's a thesis abundance. How stupid do you think I am? I'm following your logic, man. Trust me.

It's like genuinely getting annoyed at that Professor. I'm also reading the interesting um uh history of the intelligence war between East and West.

Wow, you're really spies. Well, Kindle, you flip around. Let's keep Let's keep the escalation going. I'm also reading the Steven Pinker book when everybody knows that everybody list guy. Good for you.

Who else are you celebrating on Epstein's list? Everybody did not know that. Did not know that. Uh well, it does not come up. You might find it hard to believe it's not in the book. Uh and also, by the way, before I even knew that, which was at this moment, I wasn't going to recommend it.

So good. Good So good. Uh okay, when we get back from the break, you'll hear Love's conversation with Senator Mark Kelly. Um, but uh, one reminder before we get to that.

We're headed to New Zealand and Australia in February, guys. I think it's like 5 weeks away.

Crazy. What? Got to get we got to make sure with our visas. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Again, we might be staying. [snorts]

Yeah. Which Which sphere of influence is Australia going to be on? I don't I don't think Australia's going to like it.

I Is that going to be the she the the the she sphere of influence? Depends on how much money how much money they're going to put in crypto in the next two years.

How does the Western Hemisphere go? Yeah. Are we crossing the line? Crossing the dayline. Are we moving the date line? I can see Trump moving the date line. Anyway, we're going to be there. Uh, the Pod Save America hopefully just visiting tour comes to Auckland on February 11th and then three cities in Australia after that, Melbourne on the 13th, Brisbane on the 14th, and Sydney on the 16th. If you're a listener in one of those cities, or if you want to fly there, we'd love to see you. Uh, tickets are on sale right now.

Head to crooked.com/events to grab yours. When we come back, Mark Kelly. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one web platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Whether you're offering consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Create a professional website to showcase your offerings and attract clients with their complete library of professionally designed and award-winning website templates. With options for every use and category, no matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, onbrand AI content, and more ways to list what you offer. No experience required. Make smarter

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Possive America is brought to you by Built. It's 2026 and if you're still paying rent without Built, it's time for a change. Built is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense, rent. With Built, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. And here's something to get excited about. Starting in February, Built members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. Soon, you'll be able to get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits with more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, and other neighborhood partners. Some great things you could redeem them for are the travel portal. You can figure out that trip you always wanted to go on. There's Amazon for just basic stuff like anything you need around the house. So, you can use built points to get it. And then lift

rides. Like, if you need a ride, then you want to have a drink or two, you want to take a lift, you can use built points to pay for that, too. It's simple. Paying rent is better with built. And soon, owning a home will be better with built, too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com/crooked. That's join nbt.com/crooked. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Joining me now is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Senator Kelly, welcome back to the pod. Thank you for having me back.

All right, so Secretary of Defense Pete Haggath posted today that in response to what he called sedicious statements and a pattern of reckless misconduct, the Defense Department is moving to censure you to potentially reduce your rank, cut your retirement pay. He also threatened further action. The claim here is not just that you called on uh service members to refuse illegal orders in that video. It's that you've also described lawful orders as illegal. What's your response to this? That's a bunch of The entire thing. It's ridiculous and it is uh you know stifling the first amendment rights of all Americans, especially retired people like me. You know, I said something that the president didn't like. He said I should be hanged. I should be executed.

I should be prosecuted. And then his minion Pete Hegsth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we've ever had, you know, he makes a decision that he's going to court marshall me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for saying what is in the UCMJ, saying something that is lawful, telling service members they need to follow the law. They didn't like that. Uh, in that censure letter, by the way, they also put all these other things that I said that they didn't like. Now, think about this for a second. What message does that send to other retired service members or people who have left the military, people on active duty or just any US citizen?

Don't cross this president. He might try to get you hanged, but if that doesn't work, he's going to demote you in the military if you're a service member or take away your pay. You know, this is u I I I gotta say, I mean, as as I spent 25 years in the United States Navy, [snorts] and I've been retired now for another well, 15. Uh I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this is what we've become as a country where people can't speak out against the government, can't disagree.

So, I did you find out via the tweet? Is that how you found out? Did you get notified in any other way? So, I found out initially today via the tweet they did send a letter to my attorney. This is the first time they've actually corresponded with my legal folks at all. Uh, but I think this says shows the unseriousness of these clowns here. You know, they're more concerned about getting, you know, likes on Twitter and views than they are running seriously running the Department of Defense. Were you surprised that this was the attack that they took?

Obviously, you know, Trump has threatened all kinds of things. They they've threatened you with court marshal. This is an administrative action. You know, they they're making all these claims about how what you've done is so dangerous and now they're going to kind of come after your pay. It seems sort of weak to me.

Sedicious in this in this century letter sedition, right? Well, I think they realized if they would have put me in front of a jury with a court marshal, I think they would have been laughed out of court even by a military, you know, whatever military case here. So, I think they reverted, you know, to this option where they don't think I have a lot of recourse. But I'm going to, you know, I I've got to stand up for the American people here. This is not just about me at this point. They're trying to shut everybody up. If you're a retired guy like me in the military or you're a former service member or you're just somebody speaking out against this president, Donald Trump wants you to shut up. That's not acceptable.

So, you made what set this off was the video you and and uh several of your colleagues made basically saying that members of the military h have to refuse uh unlawful orders. Uh clearly you knew this was going to spur this kind of a fight or fight of some kind, right? No, I thought that even this guy, even Donald Trump would say in if he said anything in response to what we said, he would say, "Of course, of course members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders." That's what I expected. I actually expected him to ignore it.

Yeah. And so I guess part of this is that look like we've watched over the last several decades as presidential authority has expanded. Congress's role has been minimized and you know presidents operate in this kind of a gray area about like what is the lawful use of of military power like some of this right there is a a genuine kind of philosophical problem here of when presidents aren't going to congress at all what is an illegal order.

Yeah. Well, these are different things though that you're talking about constitutional authority of a president, and you're right. Over decades, we've seen an erosion of Congress's role and an amplification of the president's. There are some exceptions to that. The first Gulf War, 1991, I flew 39 combat missions over Iraq and Kuwait. That had an authorization for the use of military force by Congress. That's the way this is supposed to be done. But you're right, presidents often just kind of go it alone. And this Congress, especially, my Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate have abdicated to the White House. Basically, cart blanch, do whatever you want. We're not going to get in your way. That's not what the founding fathers intended. You know, we are the article one branch of government. We come first for a reason.

And most of the power was put there. They're giving this up. But that's not what you're referring to in

No, no, no. What what what I was referring to are those things that are so obvious to um a reasonable person that hey, I'm being ordered to do something specific and that's got to be against the law. That's what we're getting at. We're not talking about big constitutional responsibilities and roles that the president has over Congress. No. And do you think that there are specific orders that members of the military should have already refused?

Well, I mean, sometimes you don't know, right? So, what we did was a friendly reminder. We repeated the uniform code of military justice. It is the law. Um, there's when a service member gets in a situation, you know, they they they can go to their chain of command and say, "Hey, I've got questions about this. Can we can we talk about this issue?" That never happened with me. I mean, in the early 90s, you know, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, every order I ever got, even sinking two ships, very obvious we were well within our rights to do this.

But it has happened historically where members of the military have been ordered to do things that people should know that's against the law. Um, and when the law and orders are in conflict, it says this right outside of West Point on a plaque. you go with the law. That's all we were trying to do is remind members of the military because we have a president who has talked about killing the family members of terrorists. Family members, that means women and children. He has talked about shooting US citizens, protesters in the legs. He's talked about sending troops into US cities to use those US cities as training grounds, which means you're going to use US citizens for training for the US military. So that's why we did the video. Now on, you know, afterwards, you know, at the well at the same time, those had strikes that already started in in in the Caribbean.

And I do and continue to have a lot of questions about the big picture legality of that. [gasps] Um, but we were, you know, our goal here was just to remind, you know, service members because I don't want to see some young, you know, Navy, Marine, Air Force guy, Guardian, you know, I don't want to see these people finding themselves in a really bad situation.

Well, aren't people already in that situation? I get like the reason I'm pushing on this is only because we don't need to be hypothetical. We have reports in the Washington Post that that the administration ordered uh uh people to be killed who were uh uh clinging to the wreckage of a ship and there are people that had to execute that order. Should they have gone to their uh uh superiors and say I I worry this is unlawful?

Well, I've been briefed, you know, on that and at in the skiff in a secure facility about that strike. I've seen the videos. I I have more questions coming out of that than I had going in. And um I think the American public needs to see that video and needs we need to have an open hearing on this and people need to answer some, you know, hard questions about why we are taking those kind of actions. Uh but that is the that's kind of an example. We didn't know about that when we made the video, but that's that could be pointed to as a kind of an example of one of the things we're we're getting at.

We talked about the broader issue of of Congress not being involved in military action by the White House. Obviously, this is uh uh uh we're days after uh the uh uh intervention in Venezuela. Axio's got a couple of Democrats to say on background, of course, that criticizing Trump looks weak on this. Uh you've been very critical of the administration for what they've done here. What's your response to that?

You know, I I I think when it's appropriate, it is our job to uh be critical of this president, any president. I was critical of Joe Biden on things. It's it's it's, you know, a constitutional responsibility. And when it comes to the military, I sit on the armed services committee. I'm the ranking member of the airlines subcommittee. I'm on the strat forces um subcommittee as well and others. I sit on the intelligence committee. You know, one of the reasons I actually enjoy, you know, this job is the the military stuff, the intel stuff. It's in it's consistent with my background. I understand, you know, stuff about this, but it's also my job when this administration is doing stuff that makes us less safe, less prosperous, putting service members at risk, it's my job to say something. Um, I mean, does this make us look weak, strong?

We're we're in the beginning of whatever this thing is going to turn out to be, right? He extracted Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy. He needs to be prosecuted. It would have been better if maybe he was overthrown. You know, we're extracting a foreign leader out of his country. What precedent does that set? But Donald Trump has a habit of breaking And he has no plan here. He says he runs the country. We're running the country. These guys beh like Hegath and Rubio. These we're running the country. They're not running the country.

What would you like to see? So, there was also a report, by the way, in the Washington Post that the White House is potentially playing a larger role for Steven Miller uh in quote running uh Venezuela. Uh what

I I didn't see that. So, what what should h I mean, look, we're in this now. What should happen?

I think we should push for an election in Venezuela. We you know, pretty much know who's going to win. I think at this point the opposition party won 70% of the vote in the last election. Venezuela was a democracy for decades until Chavez and then now you know this this joker showed up. So um you know that we need at this point to try to help them get back to that us running Venezuela. How does that help Americans with the cost of their rent and their groceries and their health care? This president has destroyed the prospect for Americans to have affordable health care. Millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance because of this president and Republicans in Congress because they wanted to give a big tax cut to billionaires. And now his whole plan is, well, we're going to we're going to take over the the the oil operation here.

More profit for more rich people. What are the consequences to US service members if they have to go in there and try to really take control of Venezuela when when this happened in Iraq and we toppled Saddam Hussein? Remember the jubilation in the streets, the statue coming down, the Iraqis are all happy. How long did that last? Country winds up in civil war and we're in the middle of it and there's a lot of dead Americans. I do not want to see that happen here.

So, I remember in 2022 uh President Biden held a Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and there was this debate about excluding Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. Then a bunch of leaders from other countries refused to intend in protest because those leaders had been excluded and it became know it was supposed to be an assertion of American leadership in the hemisphere and it became a story about conflict and and weakness and obviously it's just one one summit but to me it does speak to some kind of a vacuum of American leadership that's existed and I and I wonder if like in seeing what Trump has done and how dangerous it is. Uh, have we offered an alternative of what it looks like to really stand up for American values, democratic values in the region?

Well, this isn't standing up for values. I agree. I agree. But I'm saying what is our alternative? Like, do we have an altern principles when they're convenient? And if they're inconvenient, screw it. That's what we've seen from this administration threatening Canada. Do we have a closer ally than than Canada? Who is the moral authority in the Western Hemisphere at this point?

I you're I don't know. Well, no, I mean what I agree with you. What I'm saying is this. Look, Trump is doing a regime change. He's uh uh pardoning uh drug trafficking leaders. He's uh he's obviously entering into all kind of corrupt bargains here. He's he's uh playing footsie with Boule. He's terrible. There's no moral leadership and no kind of ideological leadership whatsoever. I'm saying what is our alternative?

What's the alternative now? What's an alternative vision for what American leadership in this region should look like?

The alternative vision. Yeah, I get it. So, the alternative vision is what is in the best interest of the United States of America and our allies and our partners across the globe today and into the future. We need to be thinking, the Chinese think out 100 years. We can't be about like what is in the best interest of us right now, this second. We've got to be thinking decades into the future. Evaluating all the time, what are the threats to our national security? What are the threats to our economy? What are the threats to our future? How does this thing that Donald Trump just did in Venezuela, how does this affect us five or 10 years from now? And I can tell you this, it's going to have an effect. Is this a justification that she needs to go and take Taiwan, kick out the leader? He'll say, "Hey, you kicked out Maduro. We've got interest here. This is this is 90 miles from our shoreline, a lot closer

than Venezuela is." So, is that the justification? Or is this a justification that Putin needs to go beyond Ukraine and say, "Hey, you know, Kazakhstan used to be part of the Soviet Union and they've got a lot of oil that they're not exploiting the way they should. We're going to we're going to work on that." And and by the way, Donald Trump, it's kind of the same thing you just did in Venezuela. So, what should we we need to have a government that can that is playing chess and not checkers? I mean, Stephen Miller running Venezuela, that guy's a I mean, you talk about you want to ruin that country, you want to, you know, set this up for a a situation that is not going to be in our best interest, put him in charge.

So, I mean, we we have to be thinking ahead. We've got to have serious people in these jobs. We can't have a bunch of sickants and yesmen. Pete Hegsth, is he ever under any circumstance gonna speak truth to power? I don't think so.

So, there's something so obviously uh uh ugly about somebody like Pete Hegsath going after you, somebody like Donald Trump going after you. You've served your country for decades. You've sacrificed a lot.

Yeah. And Donald Trump's a draft dodger, right? Five times. You know, we we we see a lot of stories about the ways in which Trump is politicizing the military, deploying National Guard into into American cities, doing these uh uh uh uh kind of lawless raids in the in the Caribbean. Uh they're coming after you and other service members who have spoken out. Uh what are you hearing from people in the military who are maybe not hardcore Democrats but are certainly not MAGA about what they've about their response to this about what it's like seeing the military being uh uh used and abused in this way?

Well, it's it's quiet, right? They're not doing a lot of this stuff publicly. And I've been told by on more than one occasion there are folks inside the Pentagon there's the Donald Trump people, the MAGA people, and they're the quiet people. And when they see them go after a US senator for something I said, that shuts them up. I mean, are they going to speak out when they see some defense contractor that's a buddy with Donald Trump, you know, fleecing the US taxpayer, or are they going to be afraid and they're going to think, "Wow, man, they they went after that US senator over something he said. I can't speak out about about this." So, [snorts] they're stifling, you know, free thought and speech.

And what I hear from people, I mean, I I was uh, you know, at a military base uh not too long ago. I'm not going to say where. Um, and as I got into the car, uh, one of the very senior people thanked me, you know, thank you for for speaking out. Thank you for what you're doing. We need it. So, yeah, there are people that, you know, that that they get it and they understand the, you know, situation. we are, you know, currently in and we have a president that doesn't obviously doesn't listen to anybody and he's got a bunch of yes people around him and that's dangerous. So, last question.

There's also now a move in Congress to try to reassert some kind of congressional authority over uh military uh involvement in Venezuela and beyond. There's going to be a war powers vote by that Senator Schumer is going to force. Is there any hope that you'll be able to get uh Republicans on board to pass it? Uh behind the scenes, are Republicans uh questioning uh the administration's uh uh refusal to

even let members of the the the gang of whatever it is, five or eight, the gang of eight know that this was coming? Like is there any hope that Congress is going to reassert its authority here? There's a serious lack of spying on uh the Republican side of the aisle right now. There will be some people obviously that will speak out against this. I mean, Rand Paul being a an example. There will be others, Lisa Marowski, and I think you'll see a few other people's people, but is that enough uh to really put pressure on the administration? Probably not.

Um, but I do show up, you know, every day for work being optimistic and hopeful things will turn around. That's what we need. I mean, if we're going to if we're going to keep this, you know, you know, keep this administration in check and possibly keep them from I mean, a few days ago, I would not have said this, but keep them from invading Greenland. I mean, it sounds crazy, but in the last couple days, you know, after we just saw what happened here, and then he's talking about Greenland again and Steven Miller's wife saying soon Greenland is going to be part of the United States. If we're going to prevent things like that happening or maybe even going after Canada, I mean, how crazy does that sound? But who knows? At this point, we're going to need the Republicans in the Senate and the House to stand up and say something.

I was once at a uh some sort of, you know, fancy conference that I had no business being at, and uh somebody was talking about what would happen if someone tried to invade Greenland, and this I think Danish academic was describing the mile high sheets of ice and the temperature and the and the conditions on the ground. and he said in his Danish accent, "If someone were to invade Greenland, we'd be begin immediately an effort to rescue them." Uh, Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for your time. Uh, really appreciate it. And, uh, uh, good luck in the fight.

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. That's our show for today. Thanks to Mark Kelly for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then.

Questions about this episode

What is "World Reacts FURIOUSLY To Trump's Venezuela Invasion" about?

The discussion centers on Donald Trump's aggressive military strategy towards Venezuela, highlighting his intent to capture its leader, Nicolás Maduro, amid ongoing economic and political turmoil in the U.S. The segment critiques Trump's imperialist ambitions as a diversion from domestic issues, detailing the violent outcome of the raid that resulted in significant casualties and the subsequent…

What is mentioned in this Pod Save America episode?

43 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Congress, Western Hemisphere, Mara Lago, Donro doctrine, Pete Hegsth, Nicholas Maduro. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "World Reacts FURIOUSLY To Trump's Venezuela Invasion"?

The episode runs 1 h 48 min; the transcript is about 23,002 words in 321 timestamped sections.

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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.