Ben Rhodes

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 Ria Machado or somebody from the opposition or the person who, uh, was, who won the last election into, into power.

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 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.

Yeah.