Kevin Walling

I mean, to quote Yogi Berra again, it's deja vu all over again, potentially with our American adventurism with regards to oil, where the president has made that kind of the centerpiece of his argument in recent hours and days about and less so about the narco drug element, but really talking about the elements of oil and the 300 billion barrels that sit under Venezuela.

Listen, I think, you know, part of this is his bluster.

And we're seeing this play out with Greenland, Cuba, you know, Colombia as well.

I think, you know, he uses those kind of literary techniques when it comes to boots on the ground, things like that, to force change, to bully, to manipulate, to push.

And we've seen that play out with the vice president now taking over as president.

And Rodriguez changing her tune from the first hours after the incursion to take out Maduro to now where she is pledging some level of cooperation with President Trump in this administration.

So I think I doubt that there's any appetite in Republican circles, certainly not in Democratic circles for serious boots on the ground.

Again, that is also determinative.

uh with the conversations at bergham and um uh and the energy secretary having with uh the oil companies right so there might need to involve some american element on the ground to uh to make it safer and uh you know more uh willing for these oil companies to go in and extract that oil but again i think this is more of a literary flourish of the president less so an actual commitment of troops

Yeah, it's a really good question.

You know, I've actually had a few conversations with Democrats running for Congress in terms of having to kind of thread this needle very carefully.

And my advice to them is to say this is a good thing.

Obviously, you've had Democrats in the past, Leader Schumer, others calling for the removal, the decapitation of Maduro and his regime in Venezuela going back years.

And when the president does this, we can't just default to this autopilot opposition that you see a lot of Democrats playing out.

If Trump does it, then it must be bad.

So you can couch it in.

This is a good thing for the people of Venezuela, the 28 million Venezuelans.

It's a good thing for the 8 million Venezuelans that have been displaced since Hugo Chavez.

took over the regime back 20 plus years ago, but also still have legitimate concerns about where this goes and what the future is and getting some concrete answers in terms of what the actual plan is.

Donald Trump is the president saying one thing, we're in charge here.