Ben Rhodes

They're courageous and professional and can, like,

gut out something that is unimaginably painful, but also how close this operation was to a complete disaster.

If that helicopter goes down and those guys all die, this is a very different conversation right now.

The Times also reported that Venezuela's Russian-made air defense systems ultimately didn't pose a threat to the U.S.

troops because they weren't even hooked up to the radar that night.

Did you see this story?

And then the Russian like S300 and book M2 systems that Venezuela bought in 2009 with all this fanfare just like weren't maintained.

Some of the parts were just sitting in storage still, even though they knew this was coming.

So it does seem like an interesting example.

Another example is.

of Russia being a pretty unreliable ally if they were supposed to be like the Venezuelan benefactor.

They sold them all this kit and then they did nothing to help them set it up or maintain it.

But Ben, I'm curious what you make of sort of like what we've read about the Russian role in all of this and then Machado's goal for this meeting with Trump.

And then we should talk about Trump's efforts to juice the oil sector down there.

Yeah, the civilian plane issue was in that – I think it was in September.

It was like the first strike on one of these alleged drug runner boats.

It was not an identifiable military plane with military markings and the munitions were not visible under the wings.

It was painted to look like a civilian plane and the munitions were loaded out of sight.

And some might say like, well, whatever.

It's a war.