1-5-26 Willie with Brad Wenstrup

spent about twelve years in the Congress. As you know, he's a colonel retired US military, fought in the Rock. And also in February he was appointed to President Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board. And brad Winstrop, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And can you kind of lay out the case as to why we did what we did on Saturday morning Friday night against Maduro? Layout the case?

that it needs to belong to us. I mean, And basically what we did is this mission was a combination of military and law enforcement, no doubt, but it was to an extract and indicted criminal with criminal charges on drug offenses. And it was a tremendous success. And I think it's important to take a second back. And I guess maybe it's my military side that wants to brag about this, but there was no loss of American lives. They've suppressed their air defense, they cut their power, they

got past guards and nikely Cuban defense. We operated from twenty bases using a H fifty aircraft. And you know, the guy wakes up, the basically unelected leader of Venezuela wakes up in the morning and he's in his home and in the afternoon he's in New York in a courtroom. You know, this guy was indicted on drugs, weapons, human trafficking. He defied election results. Gonzalez Edmundo Gonzalez was a clear winner. It's basically a post election coup with communists type of support.

He's a leader of what they call cartelov sons dealing in cocaine and machine guns. But you know, from our standpoint for the United States, this isn't this isn't just drugs alone. I get that, and that's important to note, but that was a big part of it. But you know, as a country after nine to eleven, we lost three thousand people, sadly, and we went to war for twenty years under the Biden years, losing over one hundred thousand Americans to overdoses between ages eighteen to forty five. It's

killing our next generation. And nothing was done or even said about it. Another Biden administration for Madua, they had a twenty five million dollar bounty on him if someone can bring him in, but yet they did nothing. And so we're here, we are, We've got precedents. You've got people now yelling, oh, Trump can't just take us to war. This wasn't an action of war. And some people in

Congress need know the difference. And not only that, this is not much different at all with what was done previously with Noriega and Panama under George H. W. Bush, Noriega was not recognized as a leader of the country. There is Maduro. But we need to stabilize the Western hemisphere from all this influence. And at the time of the Monroe Doctor and it was more the European colonies,

we were concerned about them colonizing more. But now we're talking about communist countries basically coming in and de facto colonizing countries. But you know, you saw Kennedy actoring the Cuban missile crisis. President Obama had a kill list. He actually killed American citizens, right, he did Milwaukee, and he just did that. And where were the voices yelling about that as they are now? When we did something, it was clearly in the interest of the American people and

for our country itself. There's a difference between more war and a military and law enforcement action that protects the US interests in our citizens. You know, was Reagan not supposed to go into Grenada to protect the United States citizens there in nineteen eighty three? Right, of course not.

and he received some obamas. He received some information about some end of I'm sorry this is Joe Biden received some information about the terrorists who were responsible for the terrible events at the airport, and uh Biden and Harris vaporized about twenty people, half of whom were children by mistake by using drones. They got some bad intelligence and killed a whole bunch of innocent people in Afghanistan. And there was no calls by the Democrats against Biden whatsoever.

But getting back to Venezuela, you were on the Intelligence Committee and the Congress, you're on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Now talk about Hesbelah, which I found incredible. Years ago, it was reporting that Hesbelah had locations in Venezuela along with China. They were meeting with the ambassador to Venezuela just a few hours before the arrest, and also Iran. So this this isn't just South America. This is a base.

It is China, and it's Iran. Explain that to the American people.

so that they can have dominance within the world. And well, as the Monroe doctors said, not in this hemisphere, and Donald Trump is sticking with that. Teddy Roosevelt was behind it as well, we're actually doing something about it. But you're right. January second of twenty twenty six, Maduro is meeting with the Special Envoy of the Chinese President. It's

so obvious what is going on. And you know, I've seen some Democrats give very poised responses, but very few, and most suggests it's always about Donald Trump and whatever Donald Trump does, we're against. Well, this is for the American people, and I think that there is more agreement to what has taken place than meets the eye. And I think that Mike Wallaz did a good job today already depending us in the in the UN, and so

what is next. What is next with this is, you know, we have to be steadfast and we have to be resolved in our efforts. And this carries the Cuba to Nicaragua, to other places that are in a similar situation. And we're going to give diplomacy a chance, just like Maduro had he had the opportunity. He had the opportunity. Maybe he thought we were kidding when taking out the drug boats, but we weren't. We offered diplomacy. He said, no, thank you, Well,

we weren't kidding. We have leverage right now, We have leverage by our successes success. They are success in ram that this president says what he means, and we're doing it for the betterment of the American people in the long run and for the betterment of the Venezuelan people in this case as well. And you've seen other statements being made. President Trump is trying to help the betterment of the Iranian people with moving forward. So we say what we mean is to succeed in what we're doing.

And we need to see that ministers resign, not just go into hiding. The ministers and the Venezuelan government need to resign from their posts, and that might include their defense minister, they're interior minister, or maybe they say we're willing to come around. We should have a good military to military relationship established and we'll see what the new vice president while now President Rodriguez, what takes place with this new president and willing to change to say, I

am not Hugo shap or Maduro. I'm willing to make some changes here. Let's have some conversation. Dismantle the whole affiliation with the Cartel of Sons, which Maduro was a big part of. He had protection from them, he had protections from the Cubans, he's got Chinese affiliates. All of these things need to be abandoned or they'll probably continue to see some type of action and they need to

understand that it can and will take place. But I think they should be willing to give Diplumbacy a chance by what they've just seen last couple of days.

You take a plane. You can go to Istanbul. You can live in opulence, much like the leader of Syria Assad is now living in Russia. You can get the hell out of Dodge. Stop the drug trafficking, quit killing Americans, quit dealing with Hesbelah, ignore what the Chinese are doing with the illegal orders, et cetera, and you can get out of town and go to Turkey. So the president went so far Trump to say, we have arranged for you to leave, and if you don't go, there's going

to be consequences. And that's when Maduro said to Trump, come get me. Speak operationally. Maduro and his wife lived on a huge military base in the middle and a giant structure, and there were hundreds of soldiers all around him. When I woke up Saturday morning and I saw that, I said, this is impossible. This is like that movie Air Force one and when somebody was extracted from a from a from the Kremlin and taken and tried, and

I'm thinking, you got to be kidding me. Can you speak, as a former colonel as far as operationally, what did Delta Force have to do to get to the point of putting him in handcuffs flying him and his wife out of the country. Operationally what happened?

do things like get past the enemy lines. And in this case, you also likely very well know the layout of where you're about to go. Just like when we went in and got Bin Lauden. We do prepare, and as has been reported, this preparation has been going on for some time. So it wasn't like, hey, look we tried, now let's try and make a military plan. These types of things are already in place for a long time.

Our intelligence is obviously very good to know exactly what we needed to do and to pull it off flawlessly. And this is something that all of Americas should be celebrating as a nation. You know, if you think about when we tried to get the hostages out of Iran that were there for four hundred and forty four days and that mission failed in the desert, and here this is pulled off tremendously, as was the bin laden rain.

But we did this without any loss of life, at least on our end, and without a loss of life. We actually extracted who we wanted so that it could stand trial. This is amazing. This is this is not what Obama did. Obama didn't extract people to stand trial. And these were US citizens killed them. Yeah, so you know, we really do need to look back and say thank you to our brave Americans on all fronts. Again, this was law enforcement as well as military combined. They made

an arrest, is what they did. You know, a lot of times countries will arrest somebody for the United States or for another country so that they can be brought back to that country for trial. That wasn't going to happen because he took over the country basically threw a coup after the election, and so this was the only way it was going to happen. And he wasn't willing to face charges or even accept a deal where he could live in luxury somewhere else.

So they had everything planned out. Before he could shut the door with mister and missus Madora, Delta Force handcuffed him, handcuffed her. And this morning I see he appeared in federal court in New York City. A quarter pointed attorney has been taken over. And if I'm the leader of Columbia or Cuba, I'm thinking, oh my god, what's next? And so I don't know what's next, and for the media to say, well, what happens the day after? Many times the day after is a disaster, much like in

Afghanistan or in Iraq where you served. Can you give us a minute or two on the day after. So here we are a couple of days after and three four days from now. What's going to be happening in Venezuela. Whatever happens is going to be better than otherwise if Madora was still in charge. But how do you answer the question, since you're on the President's Intelligence Advisory board, what is next? What is that going to happen? In a week, a month, and a year, what's going to happen?

to repress the Venezuelan people even further. With with some actions that may may be taken. So I think if we make it very clear that we're willing to have diplomacy, then maybe there'll be some peace, uh for for a little bit. And amongst the confusion, I mean, it has to be terribly confusing within that country who's in charge. You're seeing some protests by some pro Maduro people, but the people that aren't our staying in their in their homes still and they yeah smartly doing some of that.

But I think that through diplomacy maybe we can make some strong suggestions that some people either change their tune or resign, as I was talking about. So let's hope that those things happen. The cooler heads prevail and others take warning and don't try and blow fire at the United States of America.