Natalie Kitroff

And it sounds like that goal has become even more explicit in the weeks since.

But what is Trump saying about the official justification for what the administration is doing here?

Can we just pause there and explain for a moment these pre-existing sanctions that you're saying have existed on Venezuela?

Take me through those.

And you said that the Trump administration is now going out and actually enforcing these sanctions in a way that it wasn't willing to do before and in a way that the Biden administration hasn't done before.

Why?

What is he actually talking about there?

Explain that.

Okay, so we're not exactly sure what Trump was referring to, but it seems to be a reference to this period of nationalization where American oil companies were kicked out of Venezuela and the government took control.

But there is an exception to all this, right?

Anatoly, Chevron, which is an American oil company, is still operating in Venezuela.

It is interesting, that piece of this, that on the one hand, U.S.

policy has been to put maximum pressure on the Maduro regime.

And yet on the other, they are kind of propping up the regime by allowing Chevron to give its oil back to the government.

Anatoly, before the break, you left us with a sense that it is really hard to know how all of this is going to play out.

But it seems clear from what you've said that the point of this campaign is to create pain inside of Venezuela.

So I want to turn to that.

I want to talk about the impact this is having inside the country.

How are Venezuelans feeling about it?

And how is the Maduro regime responding?