Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.
Free Martini's coming up. Hey, so glad you're with us for the Monday edition of the Three of our TV Lunch. Happy New Year. If you haven't already heard all the year end specials, please go back and take a listen to those. We had a lot of fun doing those. We also had our predictions on Friday this year. We did not choose military action in Venezuela, but man, that would have been some low hanging fruit, an easy one
come true. I think a lot of people saw it coming, given what we amassed there just off the coast of Venezuela. And so we'll be talking about the operation itself and what comes next in Venezuela, as well as the news today that Minnesota Governor Tim Walls not running for a third term. But Jim, certainly an exciting start to the year, to say the least.
January third is a terrible day to be an enemy of the United States. That's the six year anniversary Cassim Solimani turning into a charcoal briquette on a highway in a I would say on January third, if you're an enemy of the United States, you should just stay in bed. But in the case of Nicholas Maduro, that didn't do any good.
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card accounts are subject to credit approval. All right, Jim Will We woke up Saturday morning to some pretty interesting news and that's that late Friday, early Saturday, the United States Military conducted an amazing mission to go into Venezuela arrest capture, however you want to say, Nicholas Maduro, the illegitimate president there and his wife, whisked them out of the country, put them on the USSC Regima, and now they're in the US, going to be facing a truckload
of drug trafficking charges and so forth. Major press conference Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon at mar A Lago here's the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Raisin Kaan, explaining all that went into this.
Over the course of the night, aircraft began launching from twenty different bases on land and sea across the Western Hemisphere. In total, more than one hundred and fifty aircraft, bombers, fighters, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, rotary wing we're in the air last night. Thousands and thousands of hours of experience were airborne. Our youngest crew member was twenty and our oldest crew member was forty nine, and there's simply no match for American military might.
Just awesome. One of our helicopters did take fire, no one was injured, no one killed, obviously, so the huge relief there. And like I said, we'll be talking a little bit later about what comes next to Venezuela, Jim, But in terms of executing this very complicated mission, man, the military is good.
Just phenomenal, just just mind boggling, on par with the bin laden operation back in twenty ten. Look, we'll talk about the complication in this with the future of Venezuela in a few moments. But anytime you see a dictator, anytime you see an autocrat. Anytime you see someone who has a list of human rights abuses that is longer than a CBS receipt. Anytime you see someone like that in handcuffs and facing a grim fate, that is a good day for the world. That is a good and
just development. It is. You know, everyone's a while. You see dictators go off to some cushy retirement, and I suppose that's a slight that's an improvement over them staying in power. But you always feel like, you know that justice has not been done in this world. Well you know in this case it will be done. He's now sitting in a jail cell in Brooklyn. You know, people say that Mondamie was going to drive everybody out of New York City, greg but at least one person's now
moved to Brooklyn, in fact, one billionaire. Really, so you know, good news there. This was I'm gonna say long overdue. But Maduro is the worst of all possible drug trafficking abuses of his people. Allies with Russia. China has Iran involved in the oil smuggling regime out of Iran. Every American foe was kicking the cat on Saturday morning when
they saw the news of this. Let's also point out that apparently a Chinese delegation had his last official meeting, so the Chinese delegation, So the Chinese delegation, presumably still in Caracas, got a front row seat to see what the US military can do, and that probably is going to go into the calculations of the Chinese, as well as Russia, as well as North Korea, as well as Iran.
Listeners probably noticed that Iran having a rough start to the year, with the value of the currency collapsing and protests in the street and all that kind of stuff, So oil smuggling with Venezuela appears to be off the menu of options. I think now we'll talk a bit about the potential cloudiness of the future of Venezuela a little bit, but really phenomenal performance was a gutsy called by the president. Now getting around it, I mean, this
is bombing the rany of nuclear program. Greg Donald Trump might be the best Neocon president we've had since George W. Bush. I say that to tug in cheek, but not entirely so.
No, it's amazing, and Maduro is so bad that even most Democrat statements actually had to have that caveat I explaining about whether Congres should have authorized this beforehand and so forth. The one politician that didn't denounce Maduro and just talked about how the regime change was horrible. Mo'm donnie. So you know, it's a great opportunity for him to denounce that other socialist, but no, he had to go with solidarity.
There. Nice nice start there, game respects game.
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little bit of a controversy in Minnesota. They've had some welfare fraud allegations rising to the tune of about nine billion dollars, and we talked about it a lot. I'm just kidding about that. But while we were out then the whole daycare fraud part of this broke, and it's
just been snowballing and snowballing and snowballing. And now today Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, who just a little over a year ago was a few swing states away from being the Vice President of the United States right now, is announcing he will not seek a third term as governor of Minnesota. A really long statement blaming Republicans and the Minnesota Legislature for not getting to the bottom of the fraud.
But he's got to focus on this, he's got to really be locked into this, and he can't do that and he can't devote himself full time to the campaign, So he has to put the state first and he's not going to seek that third term. It's just such a selfless act by Governor Tim Walls, who has been a completely a sleep at the switch in the best case scenario of this. Jim So, I don't think this
comes as a huge shock. I think it comes as a welcome announcement for those who know that Tim Walls has been a disaster on this and so many other issues.
Yeah, so I'm going to begin. But first of all, let's point out that, like running for a third term isn't completely unprecedented in Minnesota, but I don't think it's been done since like the nineteen fifties or sixties, and they had two year terms back then. So Tim Walls was looking for something that the gut instinct of Minnesota's were not automatically inclined to give governors. There, I'm going to do a little bit of bragging here. I'm gonna do a little bit of patting myself on the back.
I know listeners so it's uncharacteristic with me. But I'm going to point out July twenty ninth, twenty twenty four, before Tim Walls was selected as Kamala harris Is running mate, and I wrote the first time I ever wrote about Tim Walls, I was like, come on, this is ridiculous. There's no way she's going to pick this guy because of how terrible he's at the record is of him as a governor of Minnesota. Quote Walls's record running the
state government. Somehow manages to combine the honesty of former Illinois Governor Rod Blogoyevitch, the competence of former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and these sharp eyed ethical watchdog instincts so soon to be former New Jersey Governor Bob Menendez. And then we emphasize this and red a whole lot of shady and unethical people in Minnesota see the state government as a giant pile of money just waiting to be taken with a sleepy guard in the form of the
governor unquote. And so I go through the feeding our future fraud scandal hero pay that got wasted on dead people, not avoiding procedures to avoid conflicts of interest, just one after another, and I was like, come on, there's no way she's gonna of course, she did pick this guy, but he ended up being really bad as a running mate, really bad in the debates, really and you know, all of these scandals caught up with him. Now we learn more about the Somali aspect of it in the last year.
But all in all, you know, Tim like, and here's why this is a more important story than I think a lot of people would like to acknowledge. Greg I would ask our listeners to think back to the coverage of Tim Walls for those first couple of weeks after he got picked. Right, Ah, he fixes carburetors, and he's a high school football and he's folksy and man, this guy is going to bring men back to the Democratic Party.
Men loved this guy, particularly in the blue Wall states, you know, Michigan, Pennsylvania, all of them are gonna you know, the Wisconsin. This is where this guy is going to really help the Denver. Of course, he did no good whatsoever in her book one hundred and seven Days, and became very clear Kamala Harris was underwhelmed with the performance
of Tim Walls all right. Point after point it became very and so just think about the message you were told by, if not all of the mainstream media ninety percent. I remember, like in September October, CNN did one good story on the front scandals in you know that good for you Ce. Now, I don't think that undoes all of the other hosannas that he was getting from the mainstream media. And then look at the reality of Tim Wolves. All right, he didn't have the good sense to realize,
I've had two terms. I'm leaving unindicted I'm gonna get you know, he could have left, got the book deal, got the teaching gig, maybe a media you know, MSNBC contributor. He could have gone and done up. But he chose to run for a third term. Kind of had to know that was not going to be easy. He had to know he did Republicans to be, you know, looking to go after him, and you know that all of this stuff was going to come out eventually. So that's
where we are. Tim Wallas is an astonishingly poor judgment man, done an astonishingly poor job as governor. The Minnesota Democrat for all good chunck of last year, I was saying, if you're a Minnesota Democrat, are you sure you want this guy to be your nominee? And know they aren't. Now Amy Klobachar is going, like expected to be announcing a gubernatorial bid and she is going to throw staplers at these frauds collegs. She is going to she will use a comb as a spoon if she has to
to fix this stuff. So we'll see what We'll see how that shakes out.
My general will of thumb, as you know, is that every time a bad Democrat leaves we get a worse one, but Cloba Shar would probably be a slight up greade, assuming shit, there's the field. But who fills Cloba Shar's seat could be very interesting. It would appear that right now most Minnesotan's probably aren't in the mood for an ill hand Omar or a Keith Ellison. But don't assume
that that's not going to happen. And we got, of course, have far the insane lieutenant governor who's currently running for Tina Smith's Senate seat. She's a piece of work too, that'll be if she wins that nomination and that Senate seat, that'll definitely be even a downgrade from Tina Smith. So
we'll see how it all plays out. But Tim Walls fading away, Kamala Harris probably not running, Joe Biden pretty much out of public life, meant everybody who was on the national democratic scene in twenty twenty four pretty much heading exit stage left.
And in a couple of years, Greg they're going to tread it like the fifth die Hard movie.
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of Venezuela was a woman named Delsi Rodriguez. I'm guessing that wasn't too high on the name recognition chart here in the US. But nonetheless, she's in charge there now that Maduro is gone. It seemed from the press conference that Trump thinks he can kind of force his will for new elections, getting a more legitimate government there, because just because Maduro's gone doesn't mean that the last election isn't still invalid and what's left behind him isn't invalid.
And so we're trying to create a country there where you know, the Chinese and the Iranians and the Russians aren't allies right there in our own neighborhood. But trying to figure it out with this person is not going to be easy. You wrote about it today in the Jolt. How likely is it that we can actually get what we want to get done there?
Well in question, and we're taking at least two different messages from del Rodriguez. First, let's keep in mind that this is a woman who is morally indistinguishable from Nicolas Berduro. She is an absolute loyalist. She is a committed hardline
socialist close ties to the Cuban intelligence agency. One thing that jumped out to me was that from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two she headed seven, which is the Venezuelan Intelligence Service, which is basically where they do all the torture and execution of political prisoners and critics of the regime, including sexual violence. So you know this is this is a person who has a sole blacker than Night and is not a good or better person in
any significant way. The question is, does what just happened to Maduro prompt Rodriguez to behave in a manner more amenable to us interests, and if so, which ones are those? I think it's safe that the Venezuelan people deserve to pick their own leaders. They did not pick Rodriguez. I don't think. If I think if a year from now, two years, and now three years from now, Rodriguez is still in charge of this, there're gonna be some fair
questions about what the point of this operation was. If you meet the new boss, literally the vice president of the old boss running things largely the same way. Now. Is Rodriguez not going to be as friendly with Iran and Hezbola and Russia and China. Maybe that would be a step in the right direction. Are they going to allow US companies to go in and develop the oil resources. I'm sure the US oil companies would be fine with that. That could be somewhat better for the economy of Venezuela.
But I think when we first saw about this military operation and the fact that Maduro was in US custody, we kind of have this feeling like, oh, this is going to be a regime change. And I understand that a whole bunch of Americans, who after the experiences of an Iraqi Afghanistan, have a wariness about that, have a
concern about casualties. No casualties on this so far. But this appears to be like a decapitation strike that literally just took out the top person, and everybody else in the Madua regime is just going to move up one position, and if they keep running the country the way they were, I don't it will be fair questions about whether this is really an improvement. I guess we'll say, you know, Rubio's heart is in the right place. You know, he
knows the region very well. Apparently he had spoken to her. Trump said she was very gracious. I have a heart. That's not the first adjective if that comes to mind when I think about this woman. But fine. And then she initially put out some publicly defiant statements, and then on telegram late last night she put out a statement that was more about wanting peace and wanting cooperation, blah
blah blah. And so there's a question of like, Okay, maybe she does not want to wake up in the middle of the night and find a bunch of US special operators at the foot of her bed giving her a wake up call, so conceive it. But maybe she is going to behave to. Maybe this's gonna be one of the things where there's gonna be behind the scenes cooperation while a shows of defiance for the Venezuelan people
and the loyalists. We'll see how that shakes out. By the way, point out that the people who were killed in this operation were about thirty Cubans, meaning that Maduro did not trust the Venezuelans to protect him. By the way, a lot of specs so clearly the CIA had a whole kinds of information about Maduro's regime. They managed to build a mock up of the facility Maduro was sleeping.
There were a whole bunch of Venezuelans who hate Madurero and we're perfectly happy to cooperate with Americans to help take him out. Then one of the last fight is kind of a just frustrating aspect of this. You mentioned that every Democrat, or almost every Democrat had at least one sentence of Nicholas Madurea was a real bastard who abused his people and deserved to go. Like at least
everybody had some recognition of this. There are a whole bunch of protesters who are out there saying free Maduro. I want to point out none of these people ever marched for any of his political prisoners. None of these people ever marched in protests that the crimes against humanity that the United Nations found Maduro was guilty of. The one thing in Venezuela that they care about is keeping this bastard in power. And oh, by the way, what
would they call Donald Trump a dictator? And their attitude is because of he's a dictator Donald Trump must be removed from power immediately, but Nicholas Muduro, who is indisputably a dictator, could stay in power as long as humanly possible. All these protesters in the streets yesterday are functionally pro torture, pro rape, pro oppression. They are pro stealing elections. There's nothing good about these people, and it was fact. I even saw some idiots in Portland insisting that Madua was
legitimately elected. The entire election was stolen. Every international organization said this thing was stolen. Please pick up a newspaper once in a while, please, please, please. Reading is fundamental. I feel like I'm gonna be an NBC, you know, public service announcement. The more you know Venezuela did not have a fair election in twenty twenty four, and Maduro was not the legitimate ruler of this you can have questions about whether Congress should have been at least consulted,
if not approved. I would have preferred to see an authorization for the use of military force. I think it's a good idea when you're president to get Congress to buy into military action that haven't been said. We also, I see the protests have to say us out of Venezuela. We're gone. We left where there's nobody left there. We didn't leave three of our Delta Force guys back there. Nobody's left us out of Venice. We're done. Okay, you
got what you wanted to go home? Yeah, look, so I get I'd like to see a stronger step in the direction of free and fair elections for Venezuela, respect for human rights in Venezuela, independent judiciary and independent They just like decided to ignore the legislature when the legislature wasn't cooperating with Maduro. So it's a little bit of a mixed bag. We will see where things go from here.
Hopefully better days coming up for Venezuela, but still confusion, like the Trump administration's you know, way of handling this after the military operation has been confusing. The reaction to progressive Democrats is utterly infuriating. Oh, it's insane.
They could get a protest on the streets by Trump just saying hey, it's Monday. They're like, no, it's not. They'll disagree with anything Trump does and the other thing. It's kind of discouraging, but it's smart also not telling leaders of Congress for doing this because they can't trust them not to leak it ahead of time, some of them, so I had to keep operational security. So anyway, Jim, quite a start to the new year. We'll see what's on tap for tomorrow. See you tomorrow, Greg, Jim Garretty,
National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today. Please subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch if you don't already, tell your friends about us as well. Thanks also for your five star and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices. All you have to say is play Three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us both on x He's at Jim Garritty, I'm at Greg Corumbas. Have a great Monday. Join us Tuesday for the next Three Martini Lunch