Where Will Trump Invade Next?

We are heading to the West Coast for the first time ever. So this is for you, jurisprudence heads. This year, the courts aren't just shaping policy. They are throwing the Constitution into a blender and reshaping the entire future of the country. So we are bringing the full... strict scrutiny treatment with us to California. The breakdowns, the historical context, the side eye, the feminist legal rage, the puns that might have some innuendo, all of it.

So get excited. So we will be on March 6th in San Francisco at the Herbst Theater, on March 7th in Los Angeles at the Palace Theater. We are going to get into election law, executive power, reproductive rights, the cases keeping us up at night, and there are a lot. We'll do all of this in a fun way. Come for the legal analysis. Stay for the sugar-fueled roasts of wet...

Kavanaugh and Sam Alito. You can grab your tickets right now at crooked.com forward slash events before they sell out. Just going to say, I think this would make an amazing holiday gift for a strictie in your life. Like be a hero.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, happy January 6th, fifth year anniversary. Feels like just yesterday you and I were rampaging through the Capitol. Yeah. shits behind Pelosi's desk or whatever we were doing. Still haven't found Mike 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 editorial meeting.

to think about like what else we should cover besides 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. And 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 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 cider i did my own research i did a bunch of home cures 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. 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, which did not feel great, to be honest with you. Then she got it. And then we got ice cream. And I let her eat the ice cream before we had lunch. So it was honestly a really good time.

That's a, that's a, you know, my kids are older and that still works. Ice cream still works. Chocolate with sprinkles, baby. All right. We got a great show today. 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 Maria Machado and embraced Delce Rodriguez, who is Maduro's handpicked vice president. Then we're going to go deeper on the so-called Dunro doctrine. 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 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 that appear to pose the most serious threat to the regime since, I don't know, probably 2009, Ben. 2022 were the last protests of this scale, but it feels like 2009 was the most significant in terms of threat to the establishment there. 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, a Democrat, a member of the House from San Antonio, who's also the ranking member, ranking Democrat on this. 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 in Venezuela, Congress's role or lack thereof in terms of how they found out about this.

effort that he's engaged in 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 use of force men as well, but... Greenland, Mexico, the other places. And just kind of where this is all going and what Democrats are saying about it, what Republicans are saying about it, what his constituents are saying about it. So it was a good conversation with Joaquin.

Great. That's great. Very important piece of this. I'm excited to hear that. 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 Ben Shapiro.

Tucker Carlson, NPR, even the juggernaut that is Pardon My Take, my favorite sports podcast. What about Candice? Did we catch up to Candice now? She was probably accusing someone of having a dick, so I don't know if we'd beat her. But it was great. It means a lot to us. If you're watching...

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Thanks for listening. All right, let's get to the show, Ben. So we're going to kind of tick through some of the stuff we've learned about 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 duly elected opposition and back the regime in the form of Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro's handpicked VP. 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 on 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 to soldiers. Cubans, mostly Cubans, but many, many killed. They've been after this guy for years and years and years. And 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 will pay 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 we're not going to call it that. It's good to see he's treating regime change as like the sobriety and seriousness with which it deserves, huh? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's just a lot there. Hot protesters. Yeah, good-looking protesters. Maduro, by the way, bad guy, but I don't know where the millions of people come from. It's a little hyperbole.

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. 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.

associated airstrikes. Additionally, Ben, the Cuban government came out pretty quickly and said that 32 of its citizens were killed in the attack, including basically like all intelligence and military personnel. Did it surprise you that they released that number? It didn't surprise me that there was that number. I mean, the Cubans have had...

like intelligence personnel, but some of the kind of security around Maduro. There's this deep ideological alliance between Cuba and Venezuela. So it didn't surprise me that that number were killed. Yeah, I guess them putting it out.

Maybe they felt like it was going to get out. Trump was going to put it out. So I think they were probably just trying to get ahead of it. Yeah. Strange. The Financial Times reported also that 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. Ben, 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. Presumably those were CIA drones, which means they are very, very sensitive secrets. items or programs. And then Trump has been bragging about how the US military was able to disable the power grid in Caracas in advance of the strikes, which obviously, look, you can't keep it a secret when you take down a power grid.

He was sort of hinting at like the way we did it, which was likely done with some highly classified like, you know, sort of cyber capabilities that the military has. So 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 who might still be there. We have no idea. Yeah, we wouldn't necessarily want to be that asset. You know, look, the couple of things about this are, first of all.

It's clear they were planning this for months. And look, we don't do this that much. But I mean, we've been saying that there are probably Delta Force guys there. We've been saying this is a regime change operation. To have the combination of an offensive cyber operation, overhead drone capacity, Delta Force guys.

on the ground, pre-positioned naval assets. They've been planning to do this for months. That's my takeaway from the details that have come out. And it cost billions of dollars with a B. With a B. And this puts the lie to the idea that, well, you know, we're going to do the boats. And no, this is always about this. Right. 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.

Yeah, like the kind of half-assed way that they like to do these victory laps. They're just so thirsty to look like tough guys. What risk did Donald Trump take? I mean, I remember this when the Bin Laden operation took place. Actually, we were pretty careful about what we put out. We didn't even put out that it was Navy SEALs. That kind of came out because I think some of the people in the military were like,

hey, we did this, which is great. But you want to protect those capabilities in the future. We've just telegraphed, by the way, 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. here's how we do it. Here's the game plan. Here's how we might go about regime change in your country. So yeah, all those people that spent years 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. There's also been some really interesting TikTok stories that have traced the evolution of Trump's policy. The Wall Street Journal reported that, as recently as July, Trump wanted to cut a deal with Maduro. but he got fed up with them over the course of the year and felt like the negotiations weren't going anywhere several outlets have reported that

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. I think Trump seemed to think.

that Maduro was doing his dance as opposed to both of them just being like old dorks who can't dance. They dance similarly. You know, it's a strong man problem. Yeah, it's a strong man problem. It's an old man problem. The best and final offer that Trump made to Maduro came on December 23rd. It 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. There's also been a bunch of reports on why Trump ended up installing Maduro's vice president, Delce Rodriguez.

as president instead of Maria Machado, the head of the opposition. The Washington Post said it was because Trump was butthurt that Machado accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. A source close to the White House told the Post, quote, if she had turned it down, she... 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. Ben, that sourcing is a little thin for me. Yeah.

close to the White House, but it's also quite believable in a kind of fun thing, so I wanted to include it, but I don't know. I find it hard to believe that that was the sole reason he didn't go with Machado. We can get to the other reasons in a sec.

Well, you know, here's what I think, you know, you can tell from all of that information is, first of all, what is this really about? You know, the biggest case against Maduro is not drug trafficking, right? If you were to assess the worst drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere, Nicolas 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 of Honduras, um, who was a huge drug trafficker.

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. But this operation.

clearly had nothing to do about that. If it had something to do about that, the entire focus of the United States government the day after the operation would be about how can we get Maria Machado or somebody from the opposition or the person who was... who won the last election, into power. Edmundo Gonzalez, who was sort of like a carve-out for Machado, who was a figurehead who was allowed to run. Machado's proxy. Or...

how can we have an election as soon as possible? 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 regime is in power. And as you said, the human rights situation has actually gotten worse because they're cracking down on people right now because they're clinging to power. 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 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. And it's about oil. And, you know, these people will be more likely because I just showed that if I if you don't do what I want, I can just, you know, put you in a helicopter and take you to New York. 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 that to me, you know, yes, the personal stuff, it probably does factor in. It's probably not 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 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's, and again, the apples to oranges, I'm not suggesting that this is the Taliban, but it's the same thing. Like 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 I just don't, by the way, I don't believe that that's going to happen either. So we can 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 need 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 task that. The New York Times reported that Machado pissed off Rick Grinnell, who was the sentient Twitter troll. who early on made a big play to be secretary of state. 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. 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 Saturday? I think that assessment is the right one from the CIA. Essentially, the problem is the military that buttresses this regime is not going to want to work with Maria Machado. Essentially, they control things. She's their enemy. She wants to dismantle the security apparatus of the regime. And so therefore, there's kind of an all or nothing question.

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 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 Emendo 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, OK, this is a problem. We have a regime that doesn't have a lot of 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 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 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 principal position to say, I'm 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 of 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. They could have done more victory laps about the human rights possibilities of this. They just don't care. Like Trump clearly. 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 even saying, like, release a few symbolic ones, a few prominent journalists, you know? And so it's 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 just on the Machado point, I mean, I wanted to play this clip mostly just because it kind of made me sad. 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 surprise of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him and share it with them. 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 like... dangerous sea journey out into the middle of the ocean when, you know, they almost didn't pick her up because like, you know, the people she was supposed to rendezvous like 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.

actually missed and his goes on fox news and gets pressed about why she didn't give her peace prize to this who just blew up the capital of her country like look just 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 Hannity 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 that you're rewarded 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.

The metal, 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 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. And is this good for Trump? Or what are Democrats going to say? And it's like...

I don't know that the period of history that it feels like we're living through now, it doesn't like, was it, is this what it was like in other countries? And I'm not going to draw the analogies. I'll let your, I'll let people listening use their own, but like. Maybe this is what it's like. 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, I'm getting a little existential here, but I mean. No, I know, I know. I think I want to dig into the deeper kind of Don Rowe. doctrine implications in a little bit as we get past that as well as i i like you had a great piece on this in the new york times today yeah i tried to unpack it and that got me thinking about it too i mean i 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 US 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 costs of the people pointing out that Iraq and Libya and all these other... interventions ultimately were disasters were often shouted down and told that like yeah 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 um whether or not it means you know trump is like

in the beginning of a, an authoritarian right wing, like fascist military bender. I don't know. Um, but it's certainly, um, it worries me. It definitely worries me. Yeah. Well, and I, I, and to take it to Venezuela, um, 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? Is the opposition going to be brought in at all? How are the oil companies going to get in there? Who's going to rebuild the oil infrastructure? Who's going to pay for that? What happens if somebody in Venezuela starts... to try to have a coup because they feel like now's the time. There's so many questions. And what I'm struck by is the lack of answers.

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Well, let's talk about the new president of Venezuela, Delce Rodriguez, and then sort of the other power players who were left. Post Maduro and what it tells us. So Delce Rodriguez and her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, they're like longtime political insiders. They've been advisors to Maduro. They've been advisors to Hugo Chavez. Jorge Rodriguez is like his positions in the assembly and overseeing.

Their dad was a left wing guerrilla who was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of an American businessman in 1970s. For that action, he was picked up by the then Venezuelan government. and tortured to death. And so Delcy has said that she views like Chavismo and the movement that she is a part of as retribution for what happened to 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 palatable to the Trump people. Her brother is also like a very well-known quantity with the US government. He's part of lots of talks in the US. 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 questions 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 strong men around her can pull cords subtly to make her tenure as president end.

Yeah. Or to make sure that their cut and their position is preserved. I mean, essentially you have, in these circumstances, it's always the guys with the guns, as you say, who are- who are going to preserve their position. She's kind of a negotiator. I see her as someone who's, you know, it was 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 U.S. government.

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 a hundred. in 50,000 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 are going to be in Venezuela.

And is the opposition, what are they going to do? Are they going to fight? Are they just going to try to have an election? Are they going to try to get the political prisoners released? Is the military going to listen to things that she says? All these questions about how that place is going to work.

or not answered by just saying, Delcey's in charge, but the U.S. is really running the place. Right. Yep, that's right. And Politico reported, Ben, that the U.S. has like three big asks for Delcey Rodriguez. One... crack down on drug flows uh two

kick Iran and Cuban operatives out of Venezuela. I did notice that I think the Iranian and Cuban ambassadors were some of the first people to greet her at her swearing in ceremonies. 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 la souls could go after her. And, and I like, I don't. Do you think they can afford a rupture with the Chinese if suddenly Venezuela cancels all these Chinese oil contracts that they've had for years and years? So look, I don't know, maybe...

Maybe she will be able to pull off enough of this, but you could also see like Cabello and Lopez like setting her up to fail by allowing like just enough political instability that it's a headache for Trump or it keeps the oil companies out of Venezuela. Well, look, look. So 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 –

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 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. or we, you know, 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 uh 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 uh the group called 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.

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 interest in Venezuela. will be funded by American taxpayers paying to rebuild Venezuelan oil fields. What is the benefit of this operation? Because I don't think- The politics get worse. Nicolas 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 ought to spend, and probably the deployment of U.S. troops to secure that oil infrastructure.

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 of Maduro is that the Justice Department is no longer alleging that he is the leader of an actual cartel.

called Cartel de los Soles. 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 Soles as a terrorist organization by both the Treasury Department and the State Department. 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 a nap.

You know, actual Venezuela experts kept pointing out that Cartel de la Sol 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 cartels de las souls 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 that seemed to be, you know, again, shout out Charlie Savage at The New York Times for kind of reporting this out and flagging it. 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 had 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. uh the major operation to the operation against manuel noriega in the 1980s and early 1990s that we thought we'd just spend a minute just talking about that so for those who don't know maybe weren't alive then um 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. 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 uh now it's in florida um but the this invasion came after you know lots of repression 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, that a state of war existed between the US and Panama, which I think was twisted.

to suggest that panama had declared war on the us 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. 23 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 Noriega was a longtime CIA asset. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA paid Noriega for information about the Cubans or to train the Contras or 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. Uh, 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 turned on his old ally or asset.

And here we are. Before you know it, Noriega is, you know, getting prosecuted in a court in the US. 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 because, you know, the aftermath went pretty well. Like they kind of, you know, had an election, new government there. But Panama is much smaller than Venezuela. Way smaller. And that's where it doesn't hold. Venezuela is a country of 30 million people, massive geography. Replicating a political transition in a bigger, much more complex country with an ideologically entrenched regime is a much, much larger task. And Trump...

one night raid is not going to transform Venezuela. That's what's so maddening about this. In the same way that in Panama, we had more of a capacity to do that because 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 on February 11th and do three cities in Australia after that.

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OK, so let's do a big picture and talk about the Don Rowe 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 Donnera 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. Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.

And he's not going to be doing it very long. Cuba is ready to fall. Yes. By the way, you have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get their act together. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need greed. The Don Rowe Doctrine. OK, 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 shouldn't 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 in these mass preparation schemes. I don't even know honestly what you're talking about right now. 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. Damn straight we did. And I'm saying, so is the U.S. going to have new elections? We're not going to let.

Tim pot communist dictators send rapists into our country send drugs into our country said weapons into our country, okay? Barry Weiss wants to make sure you interview that guy. 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.

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 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? How are you watching to see how this plays out? Yeah, no, I'll keep it. I mean, there's so much there. 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. And actually, when he says Cuba, he's like, ah! He literally looks like a jolt went through him or something. His first biography erection since 2003. Okay, there's a lot there. Congratulations. Not that much. Yeah, congratulations MAGA voters and...

isolationist, all-in potters, who thought Trump was this guy that was going to end the imperial foreign policy. What Stephen Miller is describing is an empire in all of the Western hemisphere. I mean, which... He keeps describing his R hemisphere. And when he says R, he doesn't just mean it's 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. And two, is it some kind of boogeyman 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. I'm on Cuba. I do think that they will try for the regime change. They've got 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. developed in Cuba in the tourism industry that like Trump, I know for a fact, by the way, Tommy, when I, cause 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 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. 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? 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's 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 months, so it would be crazy. If I were Petro, I'd shut the fuck up.

six months but and you know 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 gonna help his party a little bit but the so I 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? 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. You can't take it off the table. 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. 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, Mehta Fredriksen, 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 inviability 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, I there if people are watching this and thinking like, well, you know, what's the big deal? Why can't the United States, you know, they're only 30 or 50,000 people there or even Maduro like we did this. What's the big deal? 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 or 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. 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.

two world wars were so devastating that everybody got together and were like, we need laws of war to govern how and when countries can go to war. We need laws to make sure that sovereignty is a viable 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's 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...

Like this has kind of been a part of Denmark. Like, and so, you know, 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 are going to shatter the U.S. alliance with Europe. You are going to encourage the Russians and 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. 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, you know, two bit like Jeff Sessions staffer.

Cosplay fascist. He's like a NATO geopolitics expert. And you're talking about like our right to Greenland is we shouldn't be. A lot of this came from his wife's dumb trolling tweet of like Greenland with an American flag on it. Yeah. I mean, like the big question I have is like.

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 like, what happens if the Chinese go after an island?

end 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 like criticized by Brazil and China and Cuba and Mexico. We even got denounced by the French.

who said that the Maduro operation, quote, chips away at the very foundation of the international order. But just quickly back to Lindsey Graham, right? Like this fucking guy. has been, first of all, he's a neocon, he's in favor of every war. But like 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 closest NATO allies say would unravel NATO as we know it. And he's like, oh, and he's like, thinks it's fun and it's a good fucking time.

Cause 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, they, and everything, like this is a really important point. And like, cause 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 the Republican Party became a far-right ethno-nationalist party. 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. OK, 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. There 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 they protest 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 been...

like 40% for a long time. The Iran's currency is collapsed. Tehran could literally run out of water soon. I mean, that's sort of a very scary scenario for them. But now you got protesters calling for the end of the regime. Period. And there's reports been that about 35 people have been killed. About 1,200 have been arrested. Iranians are now protesting or they've there's been reports or confirmed reports of a protest in about 200 locations.

in 26 of iran's 31 provinces according to this us-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 cars.

they killed about 500 people now the regime seems a bit 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, writers must be put in their place, which is ominous. However, President Pazeshkian 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 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 uh lindy graham uh just put on a make a ron great again hat there that was black and i don't know 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 news. 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.

Yeah, the Supreme Leader is 86. 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 decades in Iran. And each time it feels like they come back bigger, you know, and they don't have answers to 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. 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? Because the reality is it's like the Venezuela thing. Let's say the supreme leader got the protest 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...

Israel tries to take advantage of that by bombing Iran again and seeing if that's like hitting a boxer who they think is about to go down. I don't think that would... be good because actually I think the more chaotic the collapse is of this regime, the more likely there's a civil war and the RGC are the people that are running place.

Yeah. Also, like, look, to your point, the Supreme Leader is 86. So regime change is coming. It's coming. It's coming. Actuarily. And 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. Pizeshkian's offer to meet with protesters sounds like a concession, but imagine doing that in practice. 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. You could end up in prison. It seems like a bad idea. It is hard to overstate, I think, the degree to which the value of the real has dropped in the last year. I think it dropped 75%.

1.4 million real to the dollar so like the economy um in iran is in in crisis and that is in large part because of um u.s sanctions but let's talk about this u.s response man because i didn't 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 know maybe we interpret it as like some widespread use of force by the iranian military or something but Again, the question is, one, Ben, do you believe him? Two, 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 US 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 know 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 because Trump has been all over the map on Iran, right? One day he wants a deal, one day he's bombing them, one day he's threatening to bomb them if they cracked it on protesters. But also, like, 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. He's not a human rights motivated person. 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 the 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—so if people aren't asking 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 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. just going to go out there on a limb. Can there just be some Iranian process to negotiate a pathway in a different direction? It will take time, but that's better.

Then 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 Don Roe 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 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 um you know we were in the white house in 2009 when the grieve movement rose up um uh 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 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 uh when we interviewed him here's what he had to say and 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 you know we had been more full-throated in 2009 in support of the green movement

I, yeah, I think that was wrong. Um, and look, I think you and I were arguing on the other side of that white estimate at the time, but, but look, I, I, that was interesting. And, and, but I, I take a couple of 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 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 protest. And guess what? I don't think it was because of our statements, 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 who are 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 is not necessarily going to help them deal with this situation. Or the U.S. arming some 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. There's plenty of lessons from the last 25 years and 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.

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Well, I'm very pleased to be joined by Congressman Joaquin Castro, who represents the 20th District of Texas down there in San Antonio, a wonderful place. He's the ranking 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. You guys got us back. As you remember in 1999, 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 and defeating us. No, no.

I remember that was the David Robinson, Tim Duncan. That's right. Well, anyway, those are 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 two or three 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 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. Actually, I want to stick with that for a second, because... You, like me, I'm sure, watched Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the press conference with Trump after the operation. And he basically was describing what sounded like months of planning. 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 cyber operations and special operations. This took months. Is it not the case that they were telling you 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, OK, 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 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 Salasad 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, right? I mean, you never see that, right? 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 not heard 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 you. 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 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 that 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 personal relationships now and not institutions. But to get into what's going on, what is your reaction? 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 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 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 $2,400 this year. And I got diagnosed with cancer three years ago.

And so now I'm paying $200 more a month. That's a common story right now all over the country. So 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 $500 thing. That's billions and billions of dollars. And for Venezuela, Often, you've seen throughout history in Latin America and other parts of the world, when you take out the leader, it can often be a very destabilizing thing. In fact, we just saw that there were skirmishes.

gunfire and so forth yesterday. And we don't know exactly what happened, if it was an attempted coup, if there's different sides 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,

You know, people are wondering, OK, well, what's Trump's foreign policy? Like, 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 was 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, you know, 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, 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 wanted 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 powers resolution that 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. 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 of 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.

raises the question, well, 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, 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 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, 213 to 211. And so we lost by two votes. 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. And they put out this national security strategy memo that talks about the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine was basically a declaration that the world's power is going to protect certain spheres of their...

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

the Red Skier 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 abuse 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 migration, civil war, all of these things. But to answer your question, beyond the Venezuelan 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 in disrepair. It's a multi-billion dollar...

Where is that money going to come from? Usually, I mean, I remember being in the White House. 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 have cost money. Is there some capacity for Congress to try to figure out using its power, the purse? Although I know the Republicans have kind of.

relinquish that. But what about his ability to pay for, say, the reconstruction of Venezuela? Yeah, I mean, like you asked a great question, 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, 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 mean, I think it's just kind of fly-by-night stuff at this point. And just a lot of talk, but obviously a lot of swagger, but a lot of 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 generally I think Democrats have been quite strong on this. And opposing what is clearly an illegal, reckless, dangerous. action that has nothing to do with, as you said, 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, 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 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. 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 when you see the US 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, 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 for Republicans, you know, you have. Worked with Thomas Massey, a Republican of 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 kind of the 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. talking to Republicans, maybe who still 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. But is there an opportunity for Democrats to reach different voters or even maybe different colleagues of yours 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, 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.

Not globalism, not intervention, you know, the U.S. minding its own business, not being the policeman of the world and so forth. But, you know, I don't like 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...

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 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 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? 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? 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. And so I sent a mass email to thousands of people saying, hey, this is what's happening. This is what I'm trying to prevent. which is getting into this thing further or then going to Mexico and Colombia and so forth. But no, 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, because it's closure to home...

All these countries he's threatening, there are 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...

Maduro regime is staying in place. That's a whole other question. But Mexico, right? He's talking about bombing Mexico. There are 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 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. They're worried about the danger that it may present to their family members. And let's just take Mexico, for example. So he's talked about cartel strikes. Well, how about we'll take on the cartels?

But it's not just that. If you do that, it's likely that the cartels are also going to take action 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. So it'll create a kind of, you know. Basically, huge danger and disruption there. And I think that's also what people are worried about is, are my relatives, is my family going to be safe? Yeah.

Well, that's a scary but important note to end on because it feels like we're kind of in the early stages of something, unfortunately. Joaquin Castro, we wish you the best with your work, particularly on this War Powers resolution. People should... People want to get involved and do something, call your member of Congress, encourage them to support the War Powers Resolution, support the return of constitutional powers to Congress. We'll be watching your work and hoping that...

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. Ben, thank you for playing through your flu game. I hope you feel better. And, you know, talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkowski.

Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles, and Ryan Young. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics.

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