Jessica Tarlov

And Marco Rubio said it straight out on the Sunday shows, right?

He said, like, our biggest adversaries are operating in our backyard about 1,200 miles from us.

You have China control of Venezuelan mining sites.

Iran has drone manufacturing facilities.

They use the Russian radar array systems.

And...

I don't know if you've noticed this, but there are a lot of smart people who are not pointing to that.

Like, we've been fed a ton of lies, right?

We heard that it was about drugs, and that's why they're taking out little drug trafficking boats that are actually taking cocaine to Suriname, not even coming here.

That was the one with the lethal double tap strike.

Then we hear that it's about oil, but the state of the oil industry there is in complete disrepair, right?

It's going to take, you give $100 billion, I've heard, between $60 and $100 billion to rejuvenate it up to a decade to get that to be profitable in any way.

And Donald Trump said, I talked to the oil companies, but Reuters disputed that.

They, I guess, spoke to the oil companies themselves and said that they weren't given the heads up.

So basically, this was like a go-it-alone situation.

mission to a large degree on behalf of the administration, no Congress or even business influence.

So what do you make of the fact that people seem to not be emphasizing the impact of

Does that in some way, I'm not saying making it justifiable, but I can certainly understand why it is not a good thing for those actors to be operating in our hemisphere and this close to us, you know, as a rationale for doing something.

Well, we're definitely seeing that at play.

And the idea of choosing to be a regional superpower when you could be a global superpower seems silly to me.