Ben Rhodes

Like, what happens if somebody in Venezuela starts to try to have a coup because they feel like now's the time?

Like, there's so many questions.

Yeah.

Or to make sure that, you know, their cut and their position is preserved.

I mean, essentially you have, you know, in these circumstances, it's always the guys with the guns, as you say, who are going to preserve their position.

Um, 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, shoring up her bona fides as a chavista, uh,

And then she put out a kind of conciliatory statement about, well, we'll dialogue with the United States.

I see her as 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 like 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 150,000 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 who are going to be in Venezuela.