Where Will Trump Invade Next?

welcome back to pod say the world i'm tommy vitor i'm ben rhodes uh ben happy january 6th fifth year anniversary feels like just yesterday you and i were rampaging through the capital yeah shits behind pelosi's desk or whatever we were still hadn't found my pence yeah we've been looking for that guy for five years still can't identify him we recorded pod save america yesterday we had a whole like editorial meeting to think about like what else we should cover besides um venezuela not one of us even it didn't even occur to us that the episode was going to be coming out on the january 6th anniversary maybe that's is that a good thing i don't know that's probably not a good thing it's probably not a good thing yeah meanwhile i got between our last podcast and this one i got like this devastating flu um so i was basically like hallucinating and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die through the first 48 hours of the post-maduro venezuela regime but i'm i'm here i'm on the mend tommy this is your uh this is your jordan flu game uh yeah i'm sorry i'm not there in person though but uh you don't want this ben's healing himself exclusively with essential oils like any good la west sider i did my own research i did a bunch of home cures yeah yeah well you look good i'm glad you feel better the flu is the absolute worst i got a flu shot over the break uh i went with my three-year-old to the pediatrician and i had to show her that i was brave and get the flu shot first um which did not feel great to be honest with you then she got it and then we got ice cream and we i let her eat the ice cream before we had lunch so it was honestly well really good time that's a that's uh you know my kids are older and it still works ice cream still works chocolate sprinkles baby uh all right we got a great show today um we're going to focus just on three big topics so the first is the latest from venezuela we're going to talk about the backstory about how trump got from negotiations to invasion why he jenisoned opposition leader and embraced delce rodriguez who is maduro's hand-picked vice president then we're going to go deeper on the so-called dunrow doctrine uh we're going to explore what trump's newfound love for regime change and expansionist foreign policy at gunpoint might mean for the world so that's a that's a fun one for everyone to figure out and then finally we're going to cover these massive protests that we've seen in iran for well over a week now um that appear to pose the most serious threat to the regime since i know probably 2009 ben i mean 2022 were the last protests of this scale but it feels like 2022 is going to be the last protest of this scale so i'm going to talk a little bit more about that but i'm going to talk a little bit more about that and then we'll talk a little bit more about that and then we'll talk a little bit more about that and then we'll um significant in terms of threat to the establishment there um so there's a lot of people who are watching this closely and then ben you just did our interview who are folks going to hear from yeah i talked to joaquin castro uh democrat a member of the house from san antonio who's also the uh ranking member ranking democrat on the house subcommittee that deals with the western hemisphere so he's kind of the senior guy dealing with this region we talked about his reaction to the operation of venezuela um congress's role or lack thereof uh in the terms of how they found out about this uh his effort um that he's engaging with thomas massey and jim mcgovern to pass a war powers resolution that would kind of compel trump to come back to congress not just on uh use of force of men as well but greenland mexico the other places and just kind of where this is all going um and and what democrats are saying about it what republicans are saying about it what his constituents are saying about it so it's a good good conversation with joaquin great that's great i'm very important piece of this i'm excited to um i also did want to say thank you to everybody who listened to our bonus podcast from saturday then we hit number four in the apple rankings of the top podcast episodes which means we at least temporarily were beating uh ben shapiro tucker carlson npr even the uh the juggernaut that is pardon my take my favorite sports podcast about candace did we did we catch up to candace now she was probably accusing someone of having a dick so i don't know if we beat her but um it was great it means a lot to us if you're watching this on youtube please subscribe to potty the world on youtube if you're listening to it as a podcast please subscribe to potty the world on youtube if you go could go from casual listener to subscriber it really helps the show it's also free also if you're a super fan of crooked media or potty the world um or you generally just want to help out progressive independent media consider becoming a subscriber go to crooked.com friends you get uh ad free episodes tons of bonus content but also just it's the number one thing you could do to help us reduce our dependence on these big tech platforms and build a media company so thanks for listening um all right let's get to the show ben so we're gonna kind of tick through some of the venezuela operations since saturday when we recorded that breaking news episode let's start with some of the things we learned about the operation itself we'll get to the evolution of the policy and then how trump decided to jettison the uh duly elected opposition and back the regime in the form of delce rodriguez maduro's handpicked vp um but first here's just a little bit of trump talking about the venezuela operation during a speech this morning tuesday january 6th to republicans on capitol hill i believe let's listen you know people are saying it goes down with one of the most incredible it was so complex 152 airplanes many many talk about boots in the ground we had a lot of boots on the ground but it was amazing and think of it nobody was killed and on the other side a lot of people were killed unfortunately i say that soldiers cubans mostly cubans but many many killed they've been after this guy for years and years and years and uh you know he's a violent guy he gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit but he's a violent guy and he's killed millions of people he's tortured and now what they do the radical left they actually have people and it's hard to get them they're all paid people venezuela everyone they're marching in the streets they love it except in new york i mean where they find these people they're the worst looking people i've ever seen that was trump speaking to the house republican retreats at the kennedy center which is now known as the trump kennedy center although i don't we're not going to call it that no um it's good to see he's treating regime change is like a the the sobriety and seriousness with which uh it deserves huh yeah yeah it's uh i mean there's just a lot there you know hot protesters yeah uh the good-looking protesters or maduro by the way bad guy but i don't know where the millions of people come from uh it's a little hyperbole uh but yes he seems like someone who's really feeling the weight of life and death decisions that he's making definitely definitely as always um okay so speaking of life or death so on sunday the venezuelan government said that 80 people were killed in this delta force assault on caracas and the associated airstrikes additionally ben the cuban government uh came out pretty quickly and said that 32 of its citizens were killed in the attack including um basically like all intelligence and military personnel did it surprise you that they they released that number not it didn't surprise me that there was that number uh i mean the cubans have had uh like intelligence personnel but some of the kind of security around maduro some of the you know there's this deep ideological alliance between cuba and venezuela so it didn't surprise me that that number were killed um i yeah i guess them putting it out uh maybe they felt like it was going to get out like trump was going to get ahead of it um so i think they were probably just trying to get ahead of it yeah strange um the the financial times reported also that the the collectivos which are the regime's paramilitary groups they've been arresting journalists and they've been cracking down on basically any civilians who take to the streets who are celebrating maduro's removal so the human rights situation for those keeping score at home in venezuela is getting worse not better for actual human beings then i've also been just stunned at how much highly classified information the trump administration has leaked to the media so quickly so that started with the administration telling like literally every reporter that the cia had an asset close to maduro in caracas who helped them find him then there's also been reports about the u.s flying stealth drones over venezuela uh presumably those were cia drones which means they are um very very sensitive secret you know items or you know programs and then trump has been bragging about how the u.s military was able to disable the power grid in caracas in advance of the strikes which obviously like you look you can't keep it a secret when you take down a power grid but he was sort of hinting at like the way we did it which was likely done with some highly classified like you know some sort of cyber capabilities that the military has so i this is a little bit petty but you know i remember when republicans like lindsey graham for example went would destroy us you and me you know personally at times when anything classified would leak including about like the bin laden operation but they have absolutely nothing to say when trump is just disclosing that the cia had an asset on the ground in venezuela uh who might still be there we have no idea yeah we wouldn't necessarily want to be that asset um you know look the the couple things about this are first of all it's clear they were planning this for months um and and and look we don't do this that much but i mean we've been saying that they're probably delta force guys there we've been saying this regime change operation but to to have the combination of an offensive cyber operation overhead drone capacity delta force guys uh on the ground um pre-positioned naval assets like they've been planning to do this for months like that's my takeaway from the details that have come out and it cost billions of dollars yes with a b with a b and this puts the lie to the idea that well you know we're gonna do the boats and no this was always about this right and and and it took them months to get everything in place to get the intelligence work done to get people into the country and then to do this and then yeah like the kind of half-assed half-hazard way that they like to do these victory laps they're just so thirsty to look like tough guys um when like what risk did donald trump take i mean i remember this when the bin laden operation took place actually you know like we were pretty careful about what we put out we didn't even put out that it was navy seals like that kind of came out of the because I think some of the people in the military were like, "Hey, look, we did this. which is great you know but uh you want to protect those capabilities in the future we've just telegraphed by the way to and i hope we don't have to do stuff like this again and we'll talk about the fact that trump probably wants to do this again um here's like how we do it you know like here's the game plan like here's how we might go about regime change in your country you know so yeah like the all those people that spent years you know uh like beating the shit out of people like us because stuff would occasionally leak out are now just screaming it from the rooftops we're just celebrating it um there's also been some really interesting tiktok stories that have traced the evolution of trump's policy the wall street journal reported that recently it's july trump wanted to cut a deal with maduro but he got fed up with him over the course of the year and felt like the negotiations weren't going anywhere several outlets have reported that uh the last straw for trump was all those videos of maduro dancing at public events because trump felt like he was being mocked i mean you heard him mention it there in that clip uh i think trump seemed to think that maduro was doing his dance as opposed to both of them just being mocked they dance similarly you know it's a strong man problem yeah it's a strong man problem it's an old man problem um uh the best and final offer that trump made to maduro came on december 23rd was basically like look buddy go live in exile i'll get rid of sanctions on you and just shut up forever but that was rejected so trump reportedly moved on to the military options which clearly as you said had been planned for a long time um there's also been a bunch of reports on why trump ended up installing um maduro's vice president delce rodriguez as president instead of maria machado the head of the army and the president of the army and the president of the army and the opposition uh the washington post said it was because trump was butthurt that machado accepted the nobel peace prize uh a quote uh a source close to the white house told the post quote if she had turned it down she'd be the president of venezuela today end quote as we all know trump won the far more coveted fifa peace prize but he also wanted the less prestigious nobel then that sourcing is a little thin for me like yeah close to the white house but it's also quite believable uh in a kind of fun thing so i wanted to include it but i don't know i i have i find it hard to believe that that was the sole reason uh he didn't go with machado we can get to the other reasons in a sec well you know here's here's what i think um you know you can tell from all of that information is first of all um what is this really about because you know the the biggest case against maduro is not drug trafficking right if you were to assess the worst drug traffickers in the western hemisphere nicholas maduro would not make the ncaa tournament bracket you know um and in fact we just you know pardoned one uh from the foreign president honduras um who is a huge drug trafficker um the the case against maduro is human rights violations it's that he stole a democratic election he arrests political opponents there's allegations credible allegations of torture against political opponents suppression of journalists um but this operation clearly had nothing to do about that yeah if it had something to do with it it would have been a huge drug trafficker and it would have been a huge drug the entire focus of the united states government the day after the operation would be about how can we get rio machado or somebody from the opposition or the person who uh was who won the last election into into power and gonzalez who is sort of like a carve out for machado who is yeah it's basically your head who was allowed to run machado's proxy or how can we have an election as soon as possible right we're not even pretending that that's what this was about so again for anybody who's like well you know this is good you know no the same reason is that we're not even pretending that the regime is in power and as you said that the human rights situation has actually gotten worse because they're cracking down on people right now because they're clinging to power uh so it's not about any of those things it's about the optic of removing maduro just showing hey look i can go get this guy with this kind of complex night raid uh because i don't care about laws i don't care about norms i don't care about all the second effects that this could cause um and it's about oil uh and you know these people will be more likely to be in power and they're going to be in power because i just showed that if i if you don't do what i want i can just you know you put you in a helicopter and take you to new york um the next person up delce rodriguez more likely to be like sure you know chevron whatever american oil company you you can kind of do what you want here take a bigger cut of the profits that's all this is about right and and that to me you know yes the personal stuff it probably does factor in it's probably not the the chief factor but it's probably like i don't like how he dances i don't like i didn't get the nobel prize i mean he is that petty it's believable the fact that it's believable is like tells you a lot i mean by the way i mean the venezuelan constitution calls for new elections within 30 days of a presidential vacancy i haven't heard anyone in the trump administration even mention that because they obviously don't give a shit but it's just you know it's worth noting yeah i i mean and i'm trying to i mean it is literally like you know if you removed like mullah omar from the taliban but left the entire taliban in charge of afghanistan after 9 11 i mean that that's and i'm again the apples to oranges i'm not suggesting that this is the taliban but but it's the same thing like that that the same regime is governing they it was a decapitation more than was a total regime change yeah um with this idea that the united states is now going to be able to call the shots and run the country and yeah and i just don't by the way i don't believe that that's going to happen either so so we get to that but i don't think their plan is going to work yeah i'm with you there i mean so the wall street journal had a more sort of substantive take i mean they reported the white house asked the cia to do an assessment of who was best positioned to lead a post maduro venezuela and the cia determined that the top members of the maduro regime were better positioned than the opposition leaders which you know i don't think you needed a fucking multi-billion dollar budget or intel agency to tell you that it's glaringly obvious but i mean it does make sense that they would they would task that um the new york times reported that machado pissed off rick grinnell who was the sentient twitter troll uh who early on made a big play to be secretary of state uh then for a while was like trump's primary envoy to maduro and to venezuela but now seemingly has been relegated to like trying to book kiss at the kennedy center or whatever the hell he does but the times reported that grinnell was annoyed machado refused to meet with him when he was in caracas and then refused to provide him with a list of political prisoners that they wanted to see released which is sort of weird they wouldn't do that and grinnell was reportedly annoyed that machado didn't have like a concrete plan for what to do if she were to take power which uh again is sort of like understandable on both ends like i don't know that she had a lot of good options and then to curry favor with trump you know they talked about how machado took a bunch of maximalist positions like she opposed any talks with the maduro government she opposed she supported completely all the sanctions she opposed any foreign investment in venezuela and that's the kind of hard line position you see from people outside or venezuelans outside of venezuela but it just sort of makes life hell for the people in the country um and so it wasn't necessarily popular so ben anything else kind of jump out at you as like new or notable and interesting since um saturday i think that assessment is the right one about from the cia essentially the problem is the military that buttresses this regime is not going to want to uh work with maria machado essentially they control things she's their enemy like her she wants to dismantle the security apparatus of the regime and so therefore there's kind of an all or nothing question if you if you get rid of the regime entirely if you say machado has to be president well then those people are going to fight and then you're going to have to fight and then you're going to have to fight and then you're going to be in some kind of civil conflict very quickly and so yes it would have been difficult if not impossible absent more u.s military force going in to put maria machado or amendo gonzalez her proxy who won the last election according to international monitors in charge right away that makes sense to me however i think what's interesting is there's no discussion of even the third option because what you would normally do is you'd say okay this is a problem we have a legitimacy of the people it's a brutal regime but we know that if we just try to install a new leader they're going to fight that outcome and then that could get us you know deeper into a quagmire in venezuela well what you would normally then do is try to set some roadmap to an election so that you have an event that at least creates the the basis to have a new leader or you would have some negotiated transition and yes machado has been very stubborn about and i understand why it's a not talking to these guys they throw my friends in prison but look the united states has all the leverage right now and if you said we all need to get together and have some kind of pacted transition some kind of negotiation where there's essentially a power sharing between aspects of the existing regime bring in the opposition and then some roadmap to an election that's what you do but my take of what i've seen in the last couple days is they have no competence no patience and no interest in doing that they just don't give a shit about the venezuelan people like nothing that they say then i like you they could have done more victory laps about the human rights possibilities of this they just don't care like trump clearly could just to add to your point ben like there's reportedly like something 800 some odd political prisoners in venezuela if marco rubio is running the country why haven't they been released yet yes they're not they're not even saying like release a few symbolic ones if you prominent journalists you know and so it's that that that kind of just total lack of regard for this country that they just removed the leader from that is so striking to me all they care about is getting oil contracts and doing victory laps on a special forces operation yeah and and just on the machado point i mean i wanted to play this clip mostly just because it kind of made me sad um here is maria machado on fox news i think monday night or maybe it was sunday night talking to sean hannity let's watch as soon as i learned that we had been awarded the nobel peace prize i dedicated to president trump because i believed at that point that He deserved it. Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I had read that somewhere. I wasn't sure if it was true. Well, it hasn't happened yet. But I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him and share it with him. What he has done, as I said, is historic. This poor woman risked her life to run against Maduro, risked being tortured, risked her life again to escape Venezuela via this dangerous sea journey out into the middle of the ocean when they almost didn't pick her up because the people she was supposed to rendezvous hundreds of miles off the coast of Venezuela couldn't find her for a while to then get to Europe to the Nobel Prize ceremony, which she actually missed. And this goes on Fox News and gets pressed about why she didn't give, she didn't give her peace prize to this asshole who just blew up the capital of her country. Like, just fucking bizarro land. Yeah, I mean, there's a comedy and a tragedy to this, right? The comedy is that this is what we're talking about, like that Sean Handy is talking about the Nobel Peace Prize. And look, Maria Machado is a right-wing person, right? I mean, I admire her courage, but deep ties to the Republican Party. The lesson is just because you suck up to Trump and dedicate your award to Trump, it's never enough, right? Like, kissing his ass is never enough. It's not enough that she dedicated it to him. She has to give it to him physically. He needs the medal, you know? Like, that's absurd. I think the darker piece of this is the reaction, Tommy, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. I felt very, not just because I was sick, I felt very weird the last couple of days because my brain is telling me we have a dictatorial leader who is going to be the president of the United States. And I'm going to be the president of the United States. Who has now begun to invade countries and remove their leaders. And he threatened to, you know, invade several other countries since this went down. Okay. Like, we've seen that movie in history. It's like a really scary movie. And yet, the reaction is this combination of on the right, like Fox News, Donald Trump, he's the greatest man, you should give him the Nobel Prize. And even the mainstream media is more like, let's do the TikTok of the military operation. Yeah. And is this good for Trump? Or what are Democrats going to say? And it's like, I don't know. The period of history that it feels like we're living through now, it doesn't, like, is this what it was like in other countries? And I'm not going to draw the analogies. I'll let people listening use their own. But, like, maybe this is what it's like. Like, you know, you conquer country after country. And the state media is like Fox. And everybody else is a little too scared to say that this isn't normal. You know? Yeah. I'm getting a little existential here. But, I mean. No, no, I know. I think I want to dig into the deeper kind of Don Roe doctrine implications in a little bit as we get past that as well. But, like, you had a great piece on this in the New York Times today. Yeah. I tried to unpack it. Got me thinking about it, too. I mean, you know, you and I talked about this a bit on Saturday. And I still feel the same way. I mean, mostly, look, I think the U.S. media and political reaction to, like, the opening days of wars is always, like, pretty fawning and kind of gross. I mean, there's some interesting pushback on Trump. Like, Megyn Kelly was like, I'm reserving judgment about what's going on in Venezuela. And she actually called out Fox News for being state TV. And it was said back in the day when she was at Fox News, she felt obligated to cheerlead every single war and felt burned by that in the long term. Which, you know, like, good for her for saying that. But that kind of voice was rare. But then you have, like, Rudy Giuliani tweeting, like, cut off the entire head of the snake and, like, get rid of Rodriguez, too. So, there is a lot of triumphalism in these early days of war. There's very little consideration of the cost. The people pointing out that Iraq and Libya and all these other interventions ultimately were disasters were often shouted down and told that, like, how dare you compare these places because they're different. It's like, well, of course they are. But, you know, what isn't different is that the United States isn't very good at solving political problems with the military. Whether or not it means, you know, Trump is, like, in the beginning of an authoritarian right-wing, like, fascist military bender, I don't know. But it certainly, it worries me. It definitely worries me. Yeah. Well, and to take it to Venezuela, there's no more clarity on what's actually going to happen there right now. I mean, like, you know, Delce Rodriguez is in charge. What happens tomorrow and the next day? Like, is the opposition going to be brought in at all? How are the oil companies going to get in there? Like, who's going to rebuild the oil infrastructure? Who's going to pay for that? Like, what happens if somebody in Venezuela starts to try to have a coup because they feel like now's the time? Like, there's so many. There's so many questions. Yeah. And what I'm struck by is the lack of answers. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The new year doesn't require a new you, maybe just a less burden to you. 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And so, Delce has said that she views like Chavismo and the movement that she is a part of as retribution for what happened to her. The murder of her dad, the murder of her dad by security forces. She is viewed as a very highly competent administrator. She built ties with the Venezuela's business community and basically transitioned the economy of the country, like such as it is, from socialism to capitalism. She helped oversee an increase in oil production. She's foreign educated. She worked as a foreign minister. She speaks English and French. As in, you know, one expert I was talking to said, you know, she's corrupt as hell, but she's not a drug runner. You know, she's like not corrupted that way, which probably makes her more corrupt. She's more palatable to the Trump people. Her brother is also like a very well-known quantity with the U.S. government. He's part of lots of talks in the U.S. However, like they're a big problem for Rodriguez is what she does not control, which what you were alluding to. Like she's not in charge of the military. That is the defense minister, Pedrino Lopez. She is not in charge of the intelligence agencies that's predominantly handled by Diosdado Cabello. Those who are also they have the most control over these collectivo paramilitary groups that we mentioned earlier. So, Ben, the question. And you just raised are all the ones I have. Like, is she really in charge? I don't know. Can she stay in charge? Because ultimately, like the guys with the guns tend to end up in charge in these situations. And there's just all these ways that these like strong men around her can, you know, pull cords like subtly to make her tenure as president end. Yeah. Or to make sure that, you know, their their cut in their position is preserved. I mean, essentially you have, you know. In these circumstances, it's always the guys with the guns as you say, who are going to preserve their position. She's kind of a negotiator. I see her as someone who's, you know, it's been interesting to watch her. She gave a kind of very left-wing pro-Maduro speech to the Venezuelan people, showing up her bona fides as a chavista. And then she put out a kind of conciliatory statement about, well, we'll dialogue with the United States. I see her as a negotiator. She's negotiating between Venezuelan business interests and the Venezuelan military and the more hardcore chavistas. She's negotiating with the US government. Like that's what she's doing right now. She's not necessarily controlling all the levers of power, but she's navigating between them. There's always a moment after a shocking military operation like this, where everybody's kind of waiting to see where things are going to go. Now, Trump and Stephen Miller, like his tough talking, you know, you know, vice Roy for Venezuela, I guess, are saying like, well, they're going to have to listen to us because we've got these people, you know, in the Caribbean. Well, you know what? We had like 150,000 troops in Iraq and people just stopped listening to us at a certain point because they realize at the end of the day, you're not really going to be here. Like it's Venezuelans who are going to be in Venezuela. And there is the opposition. What are they going to do? They're going to fight? Are they just going to try to have an election? Are they going to try to get the prisoners released? Is the military going to listen to things that she says? Like all these questions about how that place is going to work are not answered by just saying Delcy's in charge, but the U.S. is really running the place. Right. Yep. That's right. And, you know, Politico reported then that the U.S. has like three big asks for Delcy Rodriguez. One, crack down on drug flows. Two, kick Iran and Cuban operatives out of Venezuela. I did notice that, like, I think the Iranian and Cuban ambassadors were some of the first people to greet her. I'm sure those images didn't go over that well in the White House. And then three, stop selling oil to U.S. adversaries like China. The only one of those that seems actually doable to me, Ben, is number two, which is kick out the Iranians and kick out the Cubans. Because if she really goes after the drugs, the corrupt generals who are part of the drug trade or actually, you know, referred to as Cartel de las Souls could go after her. And like, I don't, do you think they can afford a rupture with the Chinese if suddenly, you know, Venezuela cancels out the drug trade? all these Chinese oil contracts that they've had for years and years. So I don't know, maybe she will be able to pull off enough of this, but you could also see Cabello and Lopez setting her up to fail by allowing just enough political instability that it's a headache for Trump or it keeps the oil companies out of Venezuela. Well, look, all of those are difficult, right? Because like you said, maybe she can turn off some symbolic drug trafficking, but she can't kind of, these are criminals, right? Like they don't listen to authority by definition. The Cubans would be hard to get out of there because you talk about like the intelligence ministry, they're deeply, deeply embedded with the Cubans. It's kind of like a blurred together by design. The Iranians may be a little easier. And the Chinese have been buying that oil for years. So this is all difficult stuff. And if you're in Venezuela, if you're one of these factions there, what you're probably thinking is, is Trump going to lose interest in this place? Like he just did. It's his big show. But everything you know about Trump is, you know, a few weeks go by and he's focused on something else. And so they have every incentive to kind of maybe throw some symbolic chum at Trump. Oh, we arrested this one drug dealer. We, you know, you persona non grata this one Iranian, or we let go of some political prisoners. But you basically would keep the regime in place, play for time. And then, you know, let's see how it goes. Yeah, they know what our midterms are. They know that a reinvasion gets harder and harder. By the way, I drew out a lot of this section from, this great reporting in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. There's papers by the crisis group that were really great. And then our friend Juan Gonzalez had a great piece in Foreign Affairs magazine that's worth reading. And Juan also pointed out to me when we were talking that like, you have a lot of very experienced fighters hanging out kind of in and around Venezuela, like, you know, the remnants of the FARC, the group called ELN. ELN, yeah. They are skilled fighters. They are skilled in urban combat. They could stage operations that do just enough to scare away these oil companies. And there is no surge in energy. If, yeah, Trump may have to put U.S. boots on the ground to protect the oil companies if they're really going to get in there. And I'm just wondering how the American people are going to feel about deploying a bunch of troops to secure like Chevron interests in Venezuela that will be funded by American taxpayers paying to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields. Like, it's a great, what is the benefit of this operation? Yeah. Because I don't think- Politics get worse. Nicholas Maduro is not like some key piece of the international drug trade, right? So it's not like you really did anything in the international drug trade. What is actually, there's a lot of risk of greater violence, civil war, state collapse, all these things we talk about. The benefit that Trump articulates is purely oil, but that's going to take years to rebuild that oil infrastructure, billions of dollars that the American people have to spend, and probably the deployment of U.S. troops to secure that oil infrastructure. So I'm not sure what the win is in this. Yeah. One other important thing we've learned in the last couple of days from the new indictment, is that the Justice Department is no longer alleging that he is the leader of an actual cartel called Cartel de los Solos. That claim was first made in their indictment of Maduro back in 2020. And then that language from that indictment was used to designate Cartel de los Solos as a terrorist organization by both the Treasury Department and the State Department. And then you repeatedly heard guys like Marco Rubio say, well, Maduro is a designated leader of a narco-terrorist group. So of course we have to take him out. But actual Venezuela experts, kept pointing out that Cartel de los Solos is not a real organization. It is a slang term invented by the Venezuelan media to refer to corrupt officials who are corrupted by drug money in particular. And so this new Maduro indictment reflects that reality, Ben, and says Cartel de los Solos refers to a patronage system or a culture of corruption that is fueled by drug money. In other words, the Trump administration, they knew the 2020 claim was bullshit. So they had to pull it because they knew they couldn't get it passed in a court of law. And so they dropped the thing. So, you know, that seems to be, you know, again, shout out Charlie Savage at the New York Times for kind of reporting this out and flagging it. But like, it seems like a pretty astounding admission since designating this fake cartel as a terrorist group is the linchpin of this made up legal strategy that the Trump administration has pointed to to justify these airstrikes where they've been murdering people in the Caribbean and in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, but it just shows the disregard. That they have for it, because essentially they know that when they get in a court of law and they actually have to prosecute Maduro, they can't make shit up because then the case will get thrown out. But they can make shit up to send an armada to the Caribbean. You know, think about that. Like they're not worried about lying to the whole world to justify invading this country, lying to the American people, lying to Congress. But they do know they can't lie to a judge because he might toss the case. You know, it tells you a lot about how. They operate. Yeah, that's a really good point. Last thing, there have been a lot of comparisons to this, the Maduro operation, to the operation against Manuel Noriega in the 1980s and early 1990s that we thought we'd just spend a minute talking about that. So for those who don't know, maybe weren't alive then, the operation against Noriega started in December of 89 and ended in January of 1990. Then President George H.W. Bush, he ordered this operation to an invasion of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega, who was the dictator running Panama at the time. The scale of that operation was massive. Like the U.S. deployed 26,000 troops. I think about half of them were already in Panama because at the time, U.S. Southern Command was located in Panama. Now it's in Florida. But this invasion came after, you know, lots of oppression by the of the Panamanian people by Noriega, lots of evidence that he was involved in drug trafficking, the killing of a U.S. Marine by a Panamanian soldier. And then the Panamanian General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that there was a state of war. But a state of war existed between the U.S. and Panama, which I think was twisted to suggest that Panama had declared war on the U.S., which wasn't really what happened, wasn't really intended. But whatever, you know, it's history now. So the U.S. invades, Noriega hides in the Vatican diplomatic mission for a few days before he gives himself up. Twenty three U.S. troops were killed. Hundreds were wounded. Hundreds of Panamanian troops were killed, along with hundreds of civilians. And the U.S. military just leveled Panama City like tens of thousands of people lost their homes and became. You know, IDPs or refugees. But I think what makes the that operation especially crazy, Ben, in the benefit of hindsight, is that like Noriega was a longtime CIA asset throughout the Cold War. The CIA paid Noriega for information about the Cubans or about, you know, or to train the Contras or other, you know, do other dirty deals for them. And they turned a blind eye to the fact that he was a military dictator who killed his political opponents. He was a serial rapist. He was a massive drug trafficker. And just by all means. Like an evil dude. But like, you know, he's our friend. And then the Cold War ends. The war on drugs starts. George H.W. Bush goes from CIA director to president. And he turns on his old ally or asset. And here we are before, you know, at Noriega's, you know, getting prosecuted in a court in the U.S. So, you know, an interesting but very dark bit of history, Ben. And it's like, I think if you really dig into the details of the Noriega operation, it's not necessarily a comparison I would want to make if I were the Trump administration. Yeah. You covered the bad part of the operation. I guess the other piece I'd say is that sometimes it gets cited. it because, you know, the aftermath went pretty well. Like they kind of, you know, had an election, new, you know, new, new government there. But Panama is much smaller than Venezuela, you know, and that's where it doesn't hold. Like Venezuela is a country of 30 million people, massive geography. So replicating a political transition in a bigger, much more complex country with like an ideologically entrenched regime is a much, much larger task. And Trump, one night raid is not going to transform Venezuela, you know, like that's what's so maddening about this. In the same way that in Panama, like, you know, we had more of a capacity to do that because it was just, we're playing on a smaller field. Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but for our international listeners in Australia, I just want to let you know that Pod Save America is coming to Australia and New Zealand. We're going to be there in Auckland, uh, on February 11th and do three cities in Australia. After that, uh, Melbourne on February 13th, Brisbane on the 14th and Sydney on the 16th. If you live in Australia, if you live in New Zealand, come see Pod Save America. It'll be fun. Tickets are on sale. Now go to crooked.com slash events. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Sundays for Dogs. New year, new you should always include eating better, right? Well, if you're upgrading and optimizing what goes on in your body, then why are our dogs still stuck with the same old kibble routine? Give them real food, give them good food, give them Sundays for Dogs. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays, air dried, real food made in a human grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and for your family. 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And if someone opens the door, BirdieBox blasts a loud siren and flashing alarm to alert you and everyone nearby. Because the best part of travel isn't worrying. It's sleeping soundly. BirdieBox from She's Birdie. Locking in peace of mind wherever you stay. For safer, more confident travel, visit She's Birdie.com. That's S-H-E-S-B-I-R-D-I-E.com. Okay, so let's do a big picture and talk about the Donrow Doctrine. I think that's the thing that like you and me and everyone else in the world basically is trying to figure out is what this Venezuela operation tells us about how Trump is going to conduct foreign policy going forward. So, you know, we've talked about the Donrow Doctrine, which is Trump's belief that he's the emperor of the Western Hemisphere. We covered a lot of this when they released their national security strategy last year because it was spelled out in pretty plain English. But Trump and his team have made a bunch of alarming and illustrative comments ever since. So we're going to play a couple of those for you. So the first is a super cut of Trump talking with reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, where he threatens to invade a bunch of countries. So let's roll that one first. Okay, and here is newly minted Viceroy of Venezuela, Stephen Miller, talking with CNN's Jake Tapper on CNN. The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons from our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of the United States. Sovereign countries should be able to do what they want to do. The Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine is all about securing the national interests of America. This whole period that happened after World War II, where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging and engaging these mass reparations schemes, you're approaching this from the wrong frame, this neoliberal frame that the United States' job is to go around the world and demanding immediate elections be held everywhere immediately, all the time, right away. No, that's not what I think, but you invaded the country. We went into the country and we seized the leader of Venezuela. And I'm saying, so is the U.S. going to have new elections? The point, Jake, is that we're not going to let Tim Pot, communist dictators, send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country. Okay. Barry Weiss wants to make sure you interview that guy for all 16 minutes. I do love how he's ranting about how we're not going to let Venezuela only sell oil to the fucking, you know, Chinese or whatever. It's like, you guys sanctioned them in 2019 and banned us from being able to buy their oil. From being able to buy their oil, yeah. Whatever. So, Ben, we've talked about, like, the big picture, right, which is that Trump thinks he's the emperor of the Western Hemisphere. He thinks he gets to dictate events in Central and South America. But what kind of specific steps are you worried about or watching for him to take next? Like, specifically, he keeps mentioning Cuba. Do you think there's going to be some sort of, like, overt or covert move on the Cuban government? Do you think he might really do something to Petro in Colombia? Like, how are you watching to see how this plays out? Yeah, no, I'll keep it. I mean, there's so much there, Ben. I know, I know. And I do want to say, just for the YouTube viewers, Lindsey Graham's face. Each time Trump threatens to depose another government, it looks like he just took a bump of cocaine. Yep. And actually, when he says Cuba, he's like, ah! Like, he literally looks like a jolt went through him or something. His first biography erection since 2003. So, there's a lot there. Congratulations. Not that much, I'm sorry. Yeah, congratulations, MAGA voters and, you know, isolation. You know, the isolationist all-in potters who thought Trump was this new guy that was going to end the imperial foreign policy. What Stephen Miller is describing is an empire in all the Western Hemisphere. I mean, which he keeps describing as our hemisphere. And when he says our, he doesn't just mean, like, communally, we all live here. It means these are possessions of ours, essentially, which is an insane thing to say. I mean, these are sovereign countries. It's a big fucking hemisphere. Sao Paulo is 5,000 miles from New York, you know. But in terms of what I expect, which is always hard with Trump, he seems most focused on two kinds of places, right? One, are there natural resources there that I can extract and my buddies can get rich off of? And then I'll probably take some massive back-end cut, you know? So, like, whatever oil is being drilled in Venezuela 10 years from now, you know, Trump's kids are like. The Trump library, yeah. It's got a little spigot. Some kind of boogeyman, you know, that I can gin up my right-wing base about, right? So, for that reason, here are the countries I'm most worried about on his list of places to bomb, right? On Cuba, I do think that they will try for the regime change. They've got, you know, Marco Rubio. They've got parts of their political base in Miami. They would like to see the Cuban regime gone. They, you know, there's a lot of economic interests that could be, you know, developed in Cuba and the tourism industry that, like, Trump. I know for a fact, by the way, Tommy, when I. Because I did the Cuban negotiations, the Trump organization was down scouting, like, golf and hotel properties in Cuba in 2016. So, Cuba's both an ideological thing for them, but it's also, like, a money grab. And I would not expect that to necessarily be a new Bay of Pigs invasion. They'll probably see if they can do it with some kind of, you know, covert sabotage type stuff, squeeze the regime. But who knows? Like, at the end of the day, they may just do another one of these kinds of things and see how it goes. I don't think it'll go well, but we can get to that later. later. Mexico, I do think all the chest thumping about drug trafficking and fentanyl, there is this kind of momentum towards strikes in Mexico, not for regime change, but to kind of show that we're going to take shots in Mexico that deals with his political base on drugs. Greenland, I would be very, very surprised if they don't try to seize Greenland. I put it at above 50% because that's the resource rich place. There's all this stuff up there, right? There's critical minerals and there's oil and gas. And so those three, Greenland, Cuba, and potentially strikes in Mexico. Petro, Colombia seems crazy to me, especially because Colombia is going to have an election. Petro's term is up in August. He can't run again. I think the first round is in a couple of months. So it would be crazy. If I were Petro, I'd shut the fuck up for six months. And I don't know. He's like, I kind of like- It's helping his politics. It's helping him politically. It's helping his party. Yeah. It's probably going to help his party a little bit. So I think this is not the end. I do not think Venezuela is the end. And I think they mean what they say, that they want to run this place like an empire. They keep telling us this. And I don't know why we wouldn't listen to them. We got to believe them. We got to listen. Yeah. So let's play another clip of Stephen Miller specifically talking about Greenland. And then let's dig in on that piece. Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country. That's a process we're going to have as a community of nations. So you can't take it off the table that the U.S. would use military force to seize Greenland. I understand, Jake. I understand you're trying very hard to, which, again, is your job. I respect it. It's great to get exactly the headline, right, that catchy headline that says Miller refuses to rule out. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. It's just, it's not the key point, but his voice is so fucking annoying. So, the world is taking this very, like the world, I think, agrees with you, Ben. So the Danish prime minister, Meta Fredrickson, said she is taking Trump's Greenland threat very seriously and that him claiming Greenland would mean, quote, the international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world's strongest defensive alliance, all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another. Those are the stakes. It's not just about like a block of ice who controls 30,000 people's fate, right? It's that in her mind. And then, earlier today, there was a joint statement from, about Greenland, from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK, and Denmark. It says in part, security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively in conjunction with NATO allies, including the United States, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the inviolability of borders. These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them. Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland and them only to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland. So it is just clear from these statements that this would lead to a rupture of like the entire post-World War II order, full stop. Yeah. If people are watching this and thinking like, well, you know, what's the big deal? Why can't the United States, you know, there are only 30,000, 50,000 people there, or even Maduro, like we did this, what's the big deal? Well, there's two problems, meta problems, right? One is that the Trump administration just doesn't give a shit about people. So if the people getting blown up in the boats are fishermen, they don't care. If Venezuela descends into violent chaos, they don't care. Like they don't, there's a valueless, if you're not an American and probably specifically a white American, they don't give a shit about you. And that's an alarming worldview. And that tends to lead to bad things that happen, you know, where we break. Countries and they're a mess for years. The second piece is one you just said though, like we are breaking every single rule that has held the world together since World War II. People got together after World War II because they had seen where autocrats, nationalism, and military aggression led. It led to two world wars. Those two world wars were so devastating that everybody got together and were like, we need laws, to govern how and when countries can go to war. We need laws to make sure that sovereignty is inviolable principle. So big countries just don't invade small ones because they didn't want not just another world war. They didn't want a nuclear world war. They didn't want World War III, right? That's why you get a whole UN system, all these things. And Trump is tearing at all of that with this. And look, Greenland is actually the best example of it more than Venezuela. Why Denmark? Stephen Miller is like, why shouldn't it be ours instead of Denmark's? Look, I'm not a Greenlander. I can't speak to how the Danish have been there. They've probably done some shitty things over the years. But for 300 years, this has kind of been a part of Denmark. And so if you go in and say, we're going to take this massive geography with all these natural resources and just claim it because we're stronger, you're going to shatter NATO. You're going to shatter the US alliance with Europe. You're going to encourage the Russians and China to go to war. You're going to encourage the Chinese to grab more of their own because then they're going to see we're in a resource competition. We're in a great power competition. We need to grab more territory, right? And so suddenly it's not just a Taiwan question. What else is China going to try to grab? What else is Russia going to grab? And ultimately, as happened in World War I and World War II, when you have expansionist empires, they bump into each other and they end up fighting a war with each other. And it may not start like the day after we take Greenland, but that is the course that he is setting us on by doing this. And by having this fucking two-bit Jeff Sessions staffer cosplay fascist who thinks he's a NATO geopolitics expert talking about our right to Greenland, we shouldn't be- Well, a lot of this came from his wife's dumb trolling tweet of Greenland with an American flag on it. Yeah. I mean, the big question I have is, does the Don Roe doctrine mean the Western hemisphere is ours? Clearly, he doesn't care if Putin carves up Ukraine or Europe. He's like, whatever, go deal with it. I wonder what it means for Taiwan. I think he'll probably trade away Taiwan. But I think the big question, Ben, is what happens if the Chinese go after an island that is claimed by the Japanese, right? And suddenly there's a hot conflict there. We should point out that on Monday, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting about us, about the United States. The Secretary General of the UN said the US violated the UN charter. We were criticized by Brazil and China and Cuba and Mexico. We even got denounced by the French, who said that the United States and the United States should have an international order. But just quickly back to Lindsey Graham, right? This fucking guy has been, first of all, he's a neocon. He's in favor of every war. But one area where we agreed with him on policy generally was his support for Ukraine, because he viewed Ukraine as the first domino that would fall, and then the Russians would move across Europe, and they would hit a NATO country, and NATO would get drawn into the fight. Yet he's sitting there yucking it up as Trump is talking about taking Greenland, which all of our allies say would unravel NATO as we know it. And he's like, oh, oh, oh, and he's like, thanks. It's fun, and it's a good fucking time, because I don't know, he's got a war boner again. And it's just like, I hate these people. I hate them. They have no principles. They have no values. They mean nothing. No, and everything, like, this is a really important point. And like, because, you know, we have some listeners I know who've been following this kind of stuff for years. And it's like, these people, like Lindsey Graham, have showed up as defenders of democracy in the world for, like, decades, right? Like, back to the John McCain days. But that was all bullshit. They sold out Maria Machado the day that Trump decided that he'd rather deal with the Maduro regime people. They sold out Europe the day that, like, the Republican Party became, like, a far-right ethno-nationalist party that was, like, don't trust these people. Like, you know, like, they're the wrong people. And their ideas are dangerous. And the reality is this Greenland thing, it's going to come to a head. Like, we're not one year into Trump. You think in the next three years, he's not going to try to make a play on Greenland? And how do you have a NATO when the whole basis of the alliance is collective defense, and you've got one member just seizing the territory of another? Like, it doesn't work. And then, to throw Lindsey Graham's arguments back at him, without NATO, well, then you really do have the likelihood that Putin will go into the Baltics, that Putin will go into Europe proper. Because NATO is the thing that stops him from doing that. Yep. It's really bad. Okay. We are going long today, but, you know, that's fine, because there's a lot of important stuff at the top. But our last topic is Iran and these protests. So the protests began on December 28th. It was when some electronics vendors went on strike in Tehran. There soon, there was a bunch of other merchants and shopkeepers in the capital who joined in. Then the protests spread to universities. And this so often happens with these protest movements. As the number of people protesting grows, the reasons and the demands from the protesters grow as well. So initially, it was all about Iran's economy. The regime had raised increased gas prices. Inflation was It's been like 40% for a long time. Iran's currency has collapsed. Tehran could literally run out of water soon. I mean, that's sort of a very scary scenario for them. But now you've got protesters calling for the end of the regime, period. And there's reports, Ben, that about 35 people have been killed. About 1,200 have been arrested. Iranians are now protesting. There's been reports or confirmed reports of a protest in about 200 locations in 26 of Iran's 31 provinces, according to this U.S.-based human rights activist news agency. So these are not just like, you know, urban liberals. It's like everywhere now. This is the biggest protest movement in Iran since 2022, which we covered at the time. It was a young woman named Masa Amini was murdered by Iran's so-called morality police. Back then, the security forces cracked down hard. They killed about 500 people. Now the regime seems a bit paranoid. Paralyzed as to what they should do or how to respond. On Saturday, the Supreme Leader called the original protesters' grievances legitimate. But he also said, quote, rioters must be put in their place, which is ominous. However, President Pezeshkin said he wants his interior minister to meet with protesters. He wants them to hear them out. And on Monday, the government announced that they would give most citizens a monthly payment equivalent to like seven bucks. So I don't know how far that'll go, but it doesn't seem like much. Trump has commented on the situation several times. Last Thursday, he posted. He posted on social media that if Iran, quote, violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue, end quote. He repeated that threat on Sunday in that same gaggle we played you a clip from earlier, which, you know, after the Maduro operation certainly gave it some added weight. Of course, our favorite boy, Lindsey Graham, weighed in on this as well. Here he is on Fox News, again, being a very serious person. I think this was with Trey Gowdy over the weekend. Unlike Obama. President Trump has not turned his back on the people of Iran. So I pray and hope that 2026 will be. The year that we make Iran great again. It's a very cool hat, Dork. Lindsey Graham just put on a make Iran great again hat there. Those black and I hate him. So, Ben, let's start with the protests themselves and then get to the U.S. response. So what are you watching for in terms of tipping? Points or something that might lead to a signal that there might be an actual regime change? And what do you make of this kind of seemingly incoherent response from the regime so far, at least kind of all over the place? I think what's clear is that the regime is very weak, weaker than they've been in a very, very long time for a lot of different reasons. Right. Some of it is they took some shots from Israel, obviously, and I don't just mean the nuclear program. I mean, like their air defenses got taken out, some of their proxy network got depleted. But more of it is just it's an old, sclerotic, shitty regime. You know, like that's the main problem they have, is it's a corrupt, sclerotic, ideological regime that has not delivered for its own people for a very long time. And we've seen protests, you know, for for decades in Iran. And each time it feels like they come back bigger, you know, and they don't have answers to the people, the things that people are protesting over. I also think it's important to note that. The 2022 protests, the Women's Life Freedom protests, succeeded in some respects. Oh, yeah. Women are starting to go uncovered in Tehran, which was in Iran, which is a sign that the regime couldn't reimpose its will. Right. That's a sign of weakness, too. And so I think you have a lot of internal cracks in that regime. The problem going forward is there's no clear path to like what is would come next. Right. Right. Because the reality is it's like the Venezuela thing. Let's say the supreme leader. Got the protests built and built and built. And the supreme leader, like, you know, fled the coup and went to Moscow, like to hang out with Assad. The IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, are probably the people that would run the country. They're the people with the guns, you know, and and Trump, you know, bombing them isn't going to change that. Lindsey Graham putting on a hat isn't going to change that either. And so I think, you know, I don't expect there to be some regime collapse followed by some new government return to the. Shah or like an election next week. I just think we're in a period of instability. And the question is whether or not, you know, Israel tries to take advantage of that by bombing Iran again and seeing if that it's like, you know, hitting a boxer who they think is about to go down. I don't think that would be good because I actually think the more chaotic the collapse is of this regime, the more likely there's a civil war in the IRGC or the people that are running the place. Yeah. Let me also like look to your point. I mean, the Supreme Leader is 86. So regime change is coming. It's coming. You know, it's going. Actually, he's he's the longest serving dictator in the world. Yeah. And like, so I think that does also seem to have made some of the other kind of politicians and competing power centers more willing to criticize him and criticize the regime. Pizdeshkin's offer to meet with protesters like sounds like a concession. But imagine doing that in practice, like imagine putting yourself forward, being like, yes, I would like to tell you my name and have a conversation with you and go to a locked room with you like you could end up in prison. It seems. Like a bad idea. It is hard to overstate, I think, the degree to which like the value of the real is dropped in the last year. I think it dropped 75 percent. It's like 1.4 million real to the dollar. So like the economy in Iran is in crisis and that is in large part because of U.S. sanctions. But let's talk about this U.S. response, Ben, because I do think that there's kind of a threshold question, which is, is Trump serious? Would Trump really intervene if there was a crackdown on protesters? And if so, what would he do? Trump didn't use the words red line like Obama did with Syria, but clearly he drew a red line by saying if the regime kills protesters, the U.S. will, quote, come to their rescue. However, it does seem clear like the regime has already killed protesters. So Trump has not done anything yet. So the red line has been crossed. But maybe I don't maybe we interpret it as like some widespread use of force by the Iranian military or something. But again, the question is, one, Ben, like, do you believe him to do you think the Iranian protesters believe him? Because the U.S. has this long history of promising or at least suggesting to protesters that if they rise up, we will get their backs and then we let them get massacred. For example, in 1991, George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraqis to take to the streets to take down Saddam Hussein. So a bunch of them did. And then Saddam massacred tens of thousands of Kurds and Shia and the U.S. did nothing. So the words matter a lot. The stakes are very high here. And it's sort of a question of, you know, we don't. Trump is not like, you know, measured with his words. But in the wake of the Maduro operation, maybe they take on some added weight. Yeah, if I were the protesters, I wouldn't be buying it. And because Trump Trump has been all over the map on Iran, right? One day he wants a deal, one day bombing them, you know, one day threatening to bomb them if they cracked on protesters. But also, like, does nobody believes that that's out of any sincere interest in protecting protesters? Like, you know, there's there's not other countries in the world where Trump cares about violent crackdowns. You know, he's not a human rights motivated person, you know. So the only way they might believe it is if it looks like the regime is about to fall. But again, what does it mean for that regime to fall? Like what what is in place after like whatever the like? The thing that drives me the most crazy, Tommy, is when I see the kind of people that you have more patience to fight with online than me being like, you know, you don't care about. The Iranian people or no, I don't. If you're just seeing them as a tool on your geopolitical chess game, to me, that's a definition of not caring about the Iranian people. Because if this place collapses into civil war, that could be fucking awful. You know, I mean, part of what I think the protesters are people and ask me what should happen. I think part of what these protesters are doing is they know change is coming, like the Supreme Leader is going to die soon. Or you may have to, like, you know, just leave power because he's old and he's losing control. And can there be something? Can there be some kind of pathway to just a different system in Iran that might not be exactly what, you know, the U.S. and Israel would impose on Iran, which is probably like the Shah again, you know, who's making a lot of noise about coming back, did a Wall Street Journal Q&A. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't think that that's what the Iranian people want. You know, I'm just going to go out there on a limb. Can there just be some Iranian process to, like, negotiate like a pathway in a different direction that will take time? But that's better than the regime collapsing and there being a civil war. Or it's better than the Supreme Leader being ousted, but then the IRGC is in charge. Right. And again, I don't know, like Trump bombing. I mean, this is when things start to if we're doing if we're bombing Iran within like weeks of removing the leader of Venezuela after we bombed Nigeria on Christmas. It really does feel like the. The Donro doctrine is taking us into like this kind of global roving U.S. military conflict, which people may say we've already been in that with the war on terror. But now we're getting at like territorial expansion. We're getting at like significant geopolitical players. It's it is a different level of anything we've done since we went into Iraq. Yeah. For what it's worth. So, you know, in the interest of like wanting to learn from mistakes from the Obama administration, you know, we were in the White House in 2009. When the grieve movement rose up, President Obama, you know, sort of did not full throatedly support that movement at the time. Because there was concern that it could kind of steal their thunder as like a glib way to do it. But, you know, distract from what was a clear internal Iranian-led movement and suddenly make it about the U.S., which was sort of the, it's always Iran's propaganda, right? Which is this is like a U.S. Zionist, you know, puppet movement. It's not real. It's astroturf. I asked Obama about this in 2022 when we interviewed him. Here's what he had to say. You know, when I think back to 2009, 2010, you guys will recall there was a big debate inside the White House about whether I should publicly affirm what was going on with the Green Movement because a lot of the activists were being accused of being tools of the West. And there was some thought that we were somehow going to be undermining their street cred in Iran if I supported what they were doing. And in retrospect, I think that was a mistake. Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out. We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it. I thought that was really interesting, Ben, that he kind of wanted to make that point. He kind of like pivoted to pointing out. That, you know, he felt like that was a mistake and he wished we had been more full-throated in 2009 in support of the Green Movement. Yeah, I think that was wrong. And look, I think you and I argued on the other side of that White House debate at the time. But look, that was interesting. But I take a couple lessons from that, right? It was wrong not to speak out forcefully on behalf of those protesters at that time, to be a source of solidarity to those protesters. That said, I don't think Obama. I don't think Obama going out earlier and being forceful in his statements about the protests would have made the regime fall. And that's part of what drives me nuts about these debates online is it's kind of like if Obama had issued a statement, the regime would have fallen. And actually, people might then swing it all the way in the other direction. Obama told me privately, you know, when the Arab Spring happened, he didn't want to make the mistake again of not being supporting protests. So we spoke out about the protests. And guess what? I don't think it was because of our statement. But a lot of those regimes did fall. And, like, it was a bit chaotic, right? I mean, so you have to learn these lessons, right? What people deserve when protesting is solidarity. They need to know that the world supports them. They need to know that the world's attention is on this. They need to know that the regime can't sweep it under the rug. Sometimes you can do certain things like help provide Internet access into a country. But ultimately, it's up to the people of the country itself to change the place. And that's what most protesters will tell you they want to do themselves. Israel bombing them. It's not necessarily going to help them deal with this situation, you know? Or the U.S. arming some, you know, opposition that some, you know, exile tells us we should be giving weapons to. I mean, look at Syria, right? Like, all these efforts to foment regime change in Syria for 15 years failed until a former ISIS guy, a former al-Qaeda guy, decided to drive his truck to fucking Damascus and took the place over. And here we are. Yeah. Now, there's plenty of lessons from the last 25 years in Trump. Trump is probably not trying to learn any of them. That is, I think, a definite. OK, so that's it for us for the news section. Thank you guys for listening. But stick around, because after the break, you're going to hear from Congressman Joaquin Castro about the congressional debate over Venezuela and what Congress could do to prevent Trump from, I don't know, invading Greenland or a whole bunch of other countries. So stick around for that. This podcast is sponsored. by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. 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For safer, more confident travel, visit she'sbirdie.com. That's S-H-E-S-B-I-R-D-I-E dot com. Well, I'm very pleased to be joined by Congressman Joaquin Castro, who represents the 20th District of Texas down there in San Antonio. Wonderful place. He's the ranking member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So he's a member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So he's the most senior House Democrat on these issues. He's also a member of the House Intelligence Committee. So he's looking at this from multiple directions. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, good to be with you. I do just want to start, actually, by saying after the tremendous New York Knicks victory in the NBA Cup, your San Antonio Spurs ripped my heart out on Christmas Day and sent the Knicks spiraling. So we're even now. You guys got us back. As you remember, in 1999, that was the first. That was the first Spurs victory. That was the first championship against the New York Knicks. That's right. That's right. Thank you for taking joy in defeating us. No, no. I remember that was the David Robinson-Tenduncan championship. That's right. Yeah. Well, anyway, those were better days. We're here to talk about grimmer news. But, look, you've been one of the most outspoken Democrats about what Trump's been doing in the Caribbean and lead up to the attack on Venezuela. You obviously were not notified in advance of that attack. And we'll get to that in a moment. I just wanted to start by asking you, as someone who's followed this closely, when you heard the news, first of all, how did you hear the news? Normally, you would have heard it in a briefing before it happened. But how did you hear the news and what was your first reaction? Yeah, I mean, I think I started. I turned the television on or I started seeing it on social media. And, you know, it was like at 2 or 3 in the morning. I was at home in San Antonio. So I was up late because it's Christmas break for my kids. And so they were staying up late, super late. And my daughter, my 12-year-old, was still awake. So I was still awake. And I started seeing this stuff come up on X and other social media. And then I turned on, you know, the news channels and then saw some of the footage coming through. But, no, I mean, you know, I'm on the Intel Committee. I'm the ranking member for Western Hemisphere on the Foreign Affairs Committee. And we got zero notice, like nothing. I mean, you know, no heads up. And the thing has been… I had asked Marco Rubio when they did that briefing. They had a big briefing, you know, like on December 16th or 17th. And I asked him specifically, I said, if you guys are going to do a land strike or some kind of land invasion, are you going to come to Congress to get authorization to do it, right, what we call an AUMF? And he said, you know, we'll come to Congress for anything that requires an AUMF. But he also said, we haven't made any plans for anything like that. I mean… That obviously just wasn't true. Well, actually, I want to stick with that for a second because you, like me, I'm sure, watched Dan Cain at that, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the press conference with Trump after the operation. Yeah. And he basically was describing what sounded like months of planning, you know, pre-positioning all these resources. Obviously, you have to plan a complex special forces raid like that. It seemed like, and I'm sure you can't talk about this, but it seemed like there was a combination of probably offensive… Offensive cyber operations and special operations. This took months. Is it not the case that they were telling you that they, like, that they weren't planning anything while they were planning something? I mean, that seems like a big deal. No, I mean, look, this has been, and I don't say this lightly, right? And it's not just partisan criticism, like, okay, I'm a Democrat and these guys are Republicans. I mean, this has been the most secretive, least transparent administration, certainly, that I've dealt with. I mean, I've been here 13 years. But in my… my conversations with people that have served a lot longer including some Republicans. No, it's the most secretive, least transparent administration. I mean, it's gotten so bad that on foreign affairs, for example, Maria Salazar from Florida, I'm the ranking member. She's the chairwoman. They didn't even want to send her a witness, have the State Department present a witness at a subcommittee hearing on Honduras when we were doing this hearing on Honduras ahead of the elections. I mean, you never see that. You never see the situation where the president from one party doesn't want to send a witness, for example, to the hearing when his own party is in the majority. I mean, that's just that's unheard of, really. But that's that's where we are. It speaks to where we are right now. Because Trump also did say on Air Force One that he spoke to American oil companies before the operation. So it feels like maybe Chevron got a heads up before. I guess we're just not the right people. You know, I mean, he talked to some Texans, but not me. Maybe that's what I should say. You know, he was talking to the Houstonians instead of the San Antonians. I mean, that was crazy. The idea that you'd go talk to these these big oil company folks and like zero members of Congress, because even the Republicans, I think he talked to them. I think Rubio said they talked to them after the strikes were done. And then it sounds like he talked to the people he's comfortable with, right, because he served in the Senate. So Tom Cotton and a few others that he's friends with. Well, it seems like everything is about, you know, personal relationships now and not institutions. But well, to get into what's going on, what is your reaction? You know, there's been a lot to digest. Trump is now saying we're going to run Venezuela, but he's also basically keeping the Maduro regime in place absent Maduro. He says that this is, you know, we're no longer talking about drugs as much as we're talking about oil. What are your concerns right now going forward about what happens now that the. The United States has removed Nicolas Maduro from power in Venezuela. I mean, like a bunch of things, a bunch of things for us as Americans and then a bunch of things for Venezuela and what it means for the sovereignty of nations for us as Americans. I mean, right now, literally right now, you have millions of Americans who are having to pay more money for their health care insurance because Donald Trump and the Republicans wouldn't extend these health care subsidies. And so even my insurance went up twenty four hundred dollars this year. You know, and I got diagnosed with cancer three years ago. And, you know, and so now I'm paying two hundred dollars more a month. That's a common story right now all over the country. So, you know, you're either going to spend billions of dollars here in the United States for Americans or you're going to spend billions of dollars over there in Venezuela. And right now, Donald Trump is choosing to spend billions of dollars over in Venezuela. And so that's a big concern for me as he's talking about us running and fixing the Venezuelan oil industry and all that. I mean, that's not a you know, like that's not a five hundred dollar thing. Right. That's billions and billions of dollars. And for Venezuela, you know, often you've seen throughout history in Latin America and other parts of the world, you know, when you when you take out the leader, it can often be a very destabilizing thing. In fact, we just saw that there were like skirmishes, gunfire and so forth yesterday. And, you know, we don't know exactly what happened, if it was an attempted coup or that are starting to fight. So my concern for them is the destabilization. It's a country where you've already had millions of people leave to go to Colombia, to go to Chile, to come to the United States, or try to come to the United States. So the destabilization. And then finally, people are wondering, OK, well, what's Trump's foreign policy? What's he doing? I don't think that he was necessarily acting in the best interest of the United States or even of Venezuela, although there are a lot of Venezuelans that are happy that Maduro is gone because in many ways he did abuse his people. But I don't think that's what Trump was doing. I mean, I think that his foreign policy is basically whatever makes Trump rich at this point. I think there's like a small group of political cronies and family members that he is trying to enrich. And if we look five or 10 years down the road, these are some of the people that are going to have a big stake in the different Venezuelan industries. And I think that's what he's doing. Whether it's oil, natural resources like gold and ore and iron and so forth, or other things, you know, running their electrical grid and stuff. Yeah, I think that's what it's boiled down to. And I hate to say that as an American, but I think that our president, that's basically where he's at. Yeah, you said a lot that I want to break down here. I mean, because there are different things that concern me here. So let's take one that gets at your effort to introduce a bipartisan war. Power's resolution that, you know, you've been working on for some time now. For people who don't know, this is essentially trying to insist that, you know, the United States return to a circumstance where the president cannot use military force without coming to Congress. That's in the Constitution. Right. But part of what concerns me, right, and I think other people, is that he seems to be catching this regime change bug. You know, even after the operation in Venezuela, he threatened the president of Colombia. He threatened to go into Cuba. He's talking again about Greenland. It feels like this might not be the last one. And that raises the question of what can be done to stop or slow this down. Talk a little bit about what your effort might do to at least try to insert Congress into this mix so it's harder for Trump to kind of keep running this play again and again in other countries. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, a little bit of recent background, along with Jim McGovern and Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, the three of us led a resolution, a war powers resolution, to try to force President Trump to come to Congress, get permission if he's going to do, if he was going to do any of this, any kind of land strikes, land invasion, so forth. And so it was a bipartisan resolution. And we even picked up a few Republicans, but we lost the vote, I think it was a close vote. But after that, then obviously around the new year, Donald Trump goes ahead and launches that invasion. And you're right. I mean, since then, he's just become more problematic because he's talking about, OK, we may go do Colombia, we may do Mexico. Stephen Miller's out there ranting about Greenland again. You know, and they put out this national security strategy memo that talks about the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine was basically a declaration that, you know, the world's power is going to protect certain spheres of their territorial backyard. And so for the United States, that included the Western Hemisphere and Latin America. But, you know, it was that policy for years, particularly during the Cold War, that saw the United States do essentially this. They treated every right wing leader as a friend and every left wing leader as a foe, fearing that communism through these left wing presidents was going to lead to, you know, the Red Scare across the Western Hemisphere. So we back some really bad people. I mean, we back Pinochet. We back folks in Central America and South America that abused their people, committed all kinds of human rights abuses. You know, so when you talk about like he's talking about the Monroe Doctrine and going back to that, you're talking about going back to a policy that's decades old that led to many people getting killed, mass migrations. civil war, all of these things. But to answer your question, beyond the Venezuela War Powers Resolution, which we're going to refile soon, I think that you'll also see other resolutions with respect to Greenland, similar resolutions with respect to Greenland, Mexico, Colombia, and so forth. Yeah. Well, there's another piece of this that I was wondering about too, which is the War Powers would try to constrain his capacity to do this, at least without Congress. You mentioned the billions of dollars it would cost to do what he's talking about doing in Venezuela. That oil infrastructure is dilapidated. It's fallen into disrepair. It's a multi-billion dollar. Yeah. Where's that money going to come from? Usually, I mean, I remember being in the White House, you'd have to go to. I'm not voting for that. I don't know. Well, that's the question though. Do you have any. Because even this operation and all these deployments must cost money. I mean, is there some capacity for Congress to try to figure out using its power of the purse? Although I know the Republicans have kind of relinquished that. But what about his ability to pay for, say, the reconstruction of Venezuela's oil infrastructure? Yeah. I mean, you ask a great question. I mean, where would it come from? Well, in theory, it's going to come from the taxpayers. American taxpayers are going to have to pay these hundreds of billions of dollars. And remember, he's talking about. I've seen the figure about $115 billion just for the oil, industry in Venezuela. But you're talking about Colombia. You're talking about Greenland, maybe Mexico. He threatened Panama over the canal issues. So, I mean, that $115 billion is for one industry in one country. If you go do all these countries, you're definitely talking about trillions of dollars. And yeah, I don't see the Congress. I don't see the Congress supporting that. So, I don't know. I don't think they have a real plan. I don't even think they have a real plan for Venezuela. I don't think they have a real plan for Venezuela. I mean, I think it's just kind of fly-by-night stuff at this point. And just a lot but obviously a lot of swagger, but a lot of, you know, dangerous action as well. Yeah, it feels that way. And I want to ask about both parties and their response to this. So we'll start with the Democrats, which, you know, generally, I think Democrats have been quite strong on this in opposing what is clearly an illegal, reckless, dangerous action that has nothing to do with, as you said, you know, dealing with affordability and the kinds of things that Americans care about. But you always sense in these moments, particularly when the military is involved and there's an operation like this, there's always a little bit of tentativeness. And you had an Axios report the other day where they quoted some anonymous centrist colleagues of yours who were saying, you know, that I think it looks weak, one person said to criticize Trump. If you don't acknowledge this as a win for our country, then you lose credibility. How unified is the party on this? And would you like to see more kind of more voices raised against this? Are you concerned about that kind of post 9-11 mindset that, oh, we're afraid of looking weak if we criticize this? I mean, what is your sense of where Democrats are on this? I think that we're still pretty united. Obviously, I think we're going to find out a bit more in the next few weeks. But my sense is that Democrats are still united against it. I do think, you know, when you see the U.S. military and how swiftly and effectively they were able to carry out this operation, look, I think that there is a lot of American pride in having a strong and successful military that can carry out an operation. But I also think that's separate from the wisdom of taking on the operation and the commander in chief, the president, who made the decision to go do it. And, you know, and so I think ultimately people will support those war power resolutions, Democrats especially. And hopefully we'll pick up some Republicans, as well, because, you know, like I said, Venezuela may not be the last. It looks like it may be the first, right? For years, they've been laying the groundwork. I've been saying for years that they've been laying the groundwork to take military action in Mexico. In fact, there was an AUMF that was proposed by one of the Republicans in Congress even a few years ago, reclassifying fentanyl, for example, like all of these different steps, designating some of the cartels as terrorists that would then justify the president, Donald Trump, basically declaring some kind of war or taking military action. And so, yeah, I mean, I think I'm hoping we're going to stay united, but we're going to see in the next few weeks. Well, and I also want to ask about Republicans. You know, you have worked with Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky. He's been willing to break with Trump on a number of things on your war powers resolution. It strikes me that this is opposite of what Trump promised his MAGA base, right? Ending forever wars was a key part of his attraction to a lot of people who were exhausted by spending money or deployments overseas. In talking to Republicans, maybe who still, you know, feel like they have to say nice things about Trump in public, do you have any sense that that MAGA base is cracking a little bit? Because you see it among the kind of MAGA commentariat. Yeah. But is there an opportunity for Democrats to reach different voters or even maybe different viewers who don't like this kind of imperial foreign policy? Absolutely, yes. Because I think for a lot of them in their minds, they're having to do a 180. Because remember, they got behind Trump as the peace president. I mean, he went after Jeb Bush hard, remember, in 2016, basically held all of the George W. Bush actions with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan against Jeb Bush successfully, by the way, and even took on Hillary Clinton with the same argument, right? I mean, there were newspaper articles and columns even speculating about whether Donald Trump was more of a dove than Hillary Clinton back in 2016. He criticized Biden along the same lines in their contest in 2020. So a lot of his base is having to do this 180. A lot of them are doing that 180. They're coming along with him, right? But there's some that I can see and even a few folks that I've talked to, who are like, you know, I'm not going to vote for him. I'm going to vote for him. So it's kind of like their eyebrows are raised, right? Like they're confused. Well, wait a minute, I thought we stood for the other thing, like not globalism, not intervention, you know, the US minding its own business, not being the policeman of the world and so forth. But you know, I think Donald Trump, for him at least, I don't think he cares anymore. I don't think he cares what happens to the Republican Party either, really. I do think, you know, in his perfect world, Democrats wouldn't take back the House or the Senate because he doesn't want any oversight, doesn't want any investigations, doesn't want subpoenas, all that. But otherwise, man, I just think he's like, you know, he's doing his own thing. I think when the Supreme Court made that decision about a president not being liable criminally for official acts, to him, that was just like taking the guardrails off. You know, as long as it's an official act, he can do whatever he wants. And then you've got people like Stephen Miller out there, who I think is unstable himself, who are making like key decisions on this. Yeah, it's just a bad mix for the country. Well, yeah. And one more thing I want to ask you, which is I know it's early days after this and people are digesting it, but you were at home when this happened. Have you gotten any sense of how this is going down with your constituents and, you know, how this might factor into the case that you'll be making next year about whether Trump is doing what he's elected to do? Yeah, I mean, I think most people at the beginning, they were like, why? Like, why are we doing this? Why is the country doing this? But then I think San Antonio is known as, the place I represent, is known as Military City USA. So we still have a huge military installation there in Joint Base San Antonio, and we have a huge number of veterans there. So, you know, you have people in those neighborhoods, just like across America, that sent their kids off to war and never saw them come home. So every time there is something like this, where there may be a war, troops may get deployed, I get calls and we get emails and everything from people that are basically really nervous, usually family members, spouses, parents that are really nervous, like, hey, what are you guys doing? What's going on? And it was the same thing this time, a lot of outreach, you know, and so I sent a, you know, massive email. Mass email to thousands of people saying, hey, this is, this is what's happening. This is what I'm trying to prevent, which is, you know, getting into this thing further or then going to Mexico and Colombia and so forth. But now people are, people are confused and increasingly getting angry about this whole thing. Yeah. Well, it's interesting too, because part of the Western Hemisphere piece of this is also that you have first and foremost, that concern of troop deployments again, and the risk that could pose to our troops. You have that concern about why are we doing this again? We're spending money over there instead of fixing the affordability crisis here. But also these are, you know, because it's closer to home, all these countries he's threatening, they're huge diaspora populations in this country. Now the Venezuelans had mixed, you know, some of them were happy to see Maduro gone, although I think they're surprised to learn that the Maduro regime is staying in place. That's a whole other question, but, but, you know, Mexico, right? He's talking about bombing Mexico. There are a lot of people with family in Mexico. He's talking about a lot of people with family in Mexico. He's talking about bombing Colombia. There are a lot of people with family in Colombia. Do you have any sense of how the, the, the kind of diaspora populations are digesting the fact that, you know, Latin America could become this kind of roaming war zone for the United States? Yeah, I've seen this or I've heard this in conversations with Venezuelans who are in the United States that have family members that are still in Caracas, for example. And then certainly like in the conversations about what he may do in Mexico, they're worried for their family members, right? They're, they're worried about the danger that it may present to their family members. And, you know, let's just take Mexico, for example, right? So he's talked about cartel strikes. Well, how about we'll, we'll take on the cartels, but, but it's not just that, right? If you do that, it's likely that the cartels are also going to take action, uh, either against Americans, but I think more likely against Mexican politicians, against other Mexican citizens, that they're going to make life hell for others in Mexico, right? That they're going to make life hell for others in Mexico, right? So it'll create a kind of, um, you know, basically huge danger and disruption there. And I think that's, that's also what people worried about is, uh, are my relatives, is my family going to be safe? Yeah. Well, that's a, you know, a scary, but important note to end on because we, we feels like we're kind of in the early stages of something, unfortunately. Um, well, uh, Joaquin Castro, we wish you the best with your, uh, work, particularly on this war powers resolution. People should, uh, people want to get involved and do something, um, call your member of Congress, uh, encourage them to support, um, the war powers resolution, uh, the sport, the return of constitutional powers to Congress. Um, uh, we'll be, uh, watching your work and, uh, hoping that, uh, the Spurs get back to the finals where they can lose to the Knicks. Spurs Knicks again. Spurs Knicks. We'll hope for a replay of the NBA cup. Thanks so much for joining us. Take care. Thanks again to Congressman Castro for joining the show. Uh, Ben, thank you for playing through your flu game. I hope you feel better and, uh, you know, talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. 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