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Chapter 1: What led to Trump's invasion of Venezuela?
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Back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
I'm Ben Rhodes.
Ben, happy January 6th, fifth year anniversary. Feels like just yesterday you and I were rampaging through the Capitol. Yeah. Taking shits behind Pelosi's desk or whatever we were doing.
Still haven't found Mike Pence.
Yeah. We've been looking for that guy for five years.
Still can't identify him.
We recorded Pod Save America yesterday. We had a whole editorial meeting to think about what else we should cover besides Venezuela. Not one of us, it didn't even occur to us that the episode was going to be coming out on the January 6th anniversary. Maybe that's, is that a good thing? I don't know. No, it's probably terrible.
It's probably not a good thing. It's probably not a good thing. Meanwhile, I got between our last podcast and this one, I got like this... devastating flu. So I was basically like hallucinating through the first 48 hours of the post-Maduro Venezuela regime, but I'm here. I'm on the mend, Tommy.
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Chapter 2: Why did Trump choose Delcy Rodríguez over María Corina Machado?
overhead drone capacity, Delta Force guys on the ground, pre-positioned naval assets. They've been planning to do this for months. That's my takeaway from the details that have come out. And it cost billions of dollars with a B. With a B. And this puts the lie to the idea that, well, we're going to do the boats. No, this was always about this.
And it took them months to get everything in place, to get the intelligence work done, to get people into the country, and then to do this. And then, yeah, like the kind of haphazard way that they like to do these victory laps, they're just so thirsty. to look like tough guys. What risk did Donald Trump take? I mean, I remember this when the bin Laden operation took place.
Actually, we were pretty careful about what we put out. We didn't even put out that it was Navy SEALs. That kind of came out because I think some of the people in the military were like, hey, we did this, which is great. But you want to protect those capabilities in the future. We've just telegraphed, by the way, and I hope we don't have to do stuff like this again.
And we'll talk about the fact that Trump probably wants to do this again. here's like how we do it. You know, like here's the game plan. Like here's how we might go about regime change in your country, you know?
So yeah, like all those people that spent years, you know, like beating the shit out of people like us because stuff would occasionally leak out are now just screaming it from the rooftops.
We're just celebrating it. There's also been some really interesting TikTok stories that have traced the evolution of Trump's policy. The Wall Street Journal reported that recently, it's July, Trump wanted to cut a deal with Maduro But he got fed up with them over the course of the year and felt like the negotiations weren't going anywhere.
Several outlets have reported that the last straw for Trump was all those videos of Maduro dancing at public events because Trump felt like he was being mocked. I mean, you heard him mention it there in that clip.
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Chapter 3: What does the new DOJ indictment of Maduro reveal?
I think Trump seemed to think that Maduro was doing his dance as opposed to both of them just being like old dorks who can't dance.
They dance similarly. It's a strong man problem.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a strongman problem. It's an old man problem. The best and final offer that Trump made to Maduro came on December 23rd. It was basically like, look, buddy, go live in exile. I'll get rid of sanctions on you and just shut up forever. But that was rejected. So Trump reportedly moved on to the military options, which clearly, as you said, had been planned for a long time.
There's also been a bunch of reports on why Trump ended up installing Maduro as vice president, Delce Rodriguez as president instead of Maria Machado, the head of the opposition. The Washington Post said it was because Trump was butthurt that Machado accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
A quote, a source close to the White House told the Post, quote, if she had turned it down, she'd be the president of Venezuela today, end quote. As we all know, Trump won the far more coveted FIFA Peace Prize, but he also won the less prestigious Nobel. Ben, that sourcing is a little thin for me, like close to the White House, but it's also quite believable and a kind of fun thing.
So I wanted to include it, but I don't know. I find it hard to believe that that was the sole reason he didn't go with Machado. We can get to the other reasons in a sec.
Well, here's what I think you can tell from all of that information is, first of all, what is this really about? Because the biggest case against Maduro is not drug trafficking. Right. If you were to assess the worst drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere, Nicolas Maduro would not make the NCAA tournament bracket, you know.
And in fact, we just, you know, pardoned one from the foreign president Honduras, who is a huge drug trafficker. The case against Maduro is human rights violations. It's that he stole a Democratic election. He arrests political opponents. There's allegations, credible allegations of torture against political opponents, suppression of journalists.
Um, but this operation clearly had nothing to do about that. 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.
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Chapter 4: How does the 'Donroe Doctrine' influence U.S. foreign policy?
Essentially, they control things. She's their enemy. She wants to dismantle the security apparatus of the regime. And so therefore, there's kind of an all or nothing question. If you get rid of the regime entirely, if you say Machado has to be president, well, then those people are going to fight. And then you're going to be in some kind of civil conflict very quickly.
And so, yes, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, absent more U.S. military force going in to put Maria Machado or Emendo Gonzalez, her proxy who won the last election, according to international monitors, in charge right away. That makes sense to me. However, I think what's interesting is there's no discussion of even the third option, because what you would normally do...
is you'd say, OK, this is a problem. We have a regime that doesn't have a lot of legitimacy to the people. It's a brutal regime. But we know that if we just try to install a new leader, they're going to fight that outcome. And then that could get us deeper into a quagmire in Venezuela.
Well, what you would normally then do is try to set some roadmap to an election so that you have an event that at least creates the basis to have a new leader. Or you would have some negotiated transition. And yes, And Machado has been very stubborn about, and I understand why. It's a principled position to say, I'm not talking to these guys. They throw my friends in prison.
But look, the United States has all the leverage right now. And if you said, we all need to get together and have some kind of pacted transition, some kind of negotiation where there's essentially a power sharing. between aspects of the existing regime, bring in the opposition, and then some roadmap to an election. That's what you do.
But my take of what I've seen in the last couple of days is they have no competence, no patience, and no interest in doing that. They just don't give a shit about the Venezuelan people. Like nothing that they say. They could have done more victory laps about the human rights possibilities of this. They just don't care. Like Trump clearly could care less.
Just to add to your point, Ben, there's reportedly something 800 some odd political prisoners in Venezuela. If Marco Rubio is running the country, why haven't they been released yet?
Yes. They're not even saying release a few symbolic ones, a few prominent journalists. And so it's that kind of just total lack of regard for this country that they just removed the leader from that is so striking to me. All they care about is getting oil contracts and doing victory laps on a special forces operation.
Yeah. And just on the Machado point, I mean, I wanted to play this clip mostly just because it kind of made me sad. Here is Maria Machado on Fox News, I think Monday night or maybe it was Sunday night talking to Sean Hannity. Let's watch.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of regime change for neighboring countries?
I mean, I admire her courage, but deep ties to the Republican Party. The lesson is just because you suck up to Trump and dedicate your reward to Trump, it's never enough, right? Like, kissing his ass is never enough. It's not enough that you dedicate it to him. She has to give it to him physically. He needs the medal, you know? Like, that's absurd.
I think the darker piece of this is the reaction, Tommy, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. I felt very, not just because I was sick, I felt very weird the last couple of days because... My brain is telling me we have a dictatorial leader who has now begun to invade countries and remove their leaders, and he threatened to invade several other countries since this went down. Okay.
We've seen that movie in history. It's a really scary movie. And yet... The reaction is this combination of on the right, like Fox News, Donald Trump, he's the greatest man, you should give him the Nobel Prize. And even the mainstream media is more like, let's do the TikTok of the military operation. And is this good for Trump? Or what are Democrats going to say? And it's like...
I don't know, the period of history that it feels like we're living through now, is this what it was like in other countries? And I'm not going to draw the analogies. I'll let people listening use their own, but maybe this is what it's like. You conquer country after country and the state media is like Fox and everybody else is a little too scared to say that this isn't normal.
I'm getting a little existential here, but I
No, no, I know. I think I want to dig into the deeper kind of Don Roe doctrine implications in a little bit as we get past that as well. So I like you had a great piece on this in The New York Times today. Yeah, I tried to unpack it and got me thinking about it, too. I mean, you know, you and I talked about this a bit on Saturday. I still feel the same way. I mean, mostly, look, I think the U.S.
media and political reaction to like the opening days of wars is always like pretty fawning and kind of. Gross. I mean, there's some interesting pushback on Trump. Like, Megyn Kelly was like, I'm reserving judgment about what's going on in Venezuela. And she actually called out Fox News for being state TV.
And it was said back in the day when she was at Fox News, she felt obligated to cheerlead every single war and felt burned by that in the long term, which, you know, like, good for her for saying that.
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Chapter 6: What are the current protests in Iran about?
Uh, but that kind of voice was rare, but then you have like Rudy Giuliani tweeting, like cut off the entire head of the snake and like get rid of Rodriguez too. So there is a lot of triumphalism in these early days of war.
There's very little consideration of the costs of the people pointing out that Iraq and Libya and all these other interventions ultimately were disasters were often shouted down and told that like, how dare you compare these places? Cause they're different. It's like, well, of course they are, but you know, what isn't different is that the United States isn't very good at
solving political problems with the military, whether or not it means, you know, Trump is like in the beginning of an authoritarian right wing, like fascist military bender. I don't know. Yeah, but it's certainly it worries me. It definitely worries me.
Yeah. Well, and to take it to Venezuela, there's no more clarity on what's actually going to happen there right now. I mean, like, you know, Delce Rodriguez is in charge. What happens tomorrow and the next day? Like, is the opposition going to be brought in at all? How are the oil companies going to get in there? Like, who's going to rebuild the oil infrastructure? Who's going to pay for that?
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.
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Chapter 7: How does Congressman Joaquin Castro view Trump's actions?
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. And is the opposition, what are they going to do? They're going to fight? Are they just going to try to have an election?
Are they going to try to get the political prisoners released? Is the military going to listen to things that she says? Like all these questions about how that place is going to work or not answered by just saying, Delcy's in charge, but the U.S. is really running the place.
Right. Yep, that's right. And Politico reported, Ben, that the U.S. has like three big asks for Delcy Rodriguez. One, crack down on drug flows. Two, kick Iran and Cuban operatives out of Venezuela. I did notice that I think the Iranian and Cuban ambassadors were some of the first people to greet her at her swearing-in ceremony. So I'm sure those images didn't go over that well in the White House.
And then three, stop selling oil to U.S. adversaries like China. The only one of those that seems actually doable to me, Ben, is number two, which is kick out the Iranians and kick out the Cubans. Because if she really goes after the drugs – The corrupt generals who are part of the drug trade or actually, you know, referred to as Cartel de la Souls could go after her. And I like I don't.
Do you think they can afford a rupture with the Chinese if suddenly Venezuela cancels all these Chinese oil contracts that they've had for years and years? So, look, I don't know. Maybe maybe. Maybe she will be able to pull off enough of this.
But you could also see like Cabello and Lopez like setting her up to fail by allowing like just enough political instability that it's a headache for Trump or it keeps the oil companies out of Venezuela.
Well, look, all of those are difficult, right? Because like you said, maybe she can turn off some symbolic drug trafficking, but she can't kind of, these are criminals, right? Like they don't listen to authority by definition. The Cubans would be hard to get out of there because you talk about like the intelligence ministry, they're deeply, deeply embedded with the Cubans.
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Chapter 8: What concerns do Americans have about military actions abroad?
The CIA paid Noriega for information about the Cubans or about, you know, or to train the Contras or other, you know, do other dirty deals for them. And they turned a blind eye to the fact that he was a military dictator who killed his political opponents. He was a serial rapist. He was a massive drug trafficker and just by all means an evil dude. But he's our friend. And then the Cold War ends.
The war on drugs starts. George H.W. Bush goes from CIA director to president. And he turns on his old ally or asset. And here we are. Before you know it, Noriega is getting prosecuted in a court in the US. So You know, an interesting but very dark bit of history, Ben.
And it's like, I think if you really dig into the details of the Noriega operation, it's not necessarily a comparison I would want to make if I were the Trump administration.
Yeah. You covered the bad part of the operation. I guess the other piece I'd say is that sometimes it gets cited because the aftermath went pretty well. They kind of had an election, new government there. But Panama is much smaller than Venezuela. Way smaller. And that's where it doesn't hold. Venezuela is a country of 30 million people, massive geography. So
And replicating a political transition in a bigger, much more complex country with like an ideologically entrenched regime is a much, much larger task. And Trump, one night raid is not going to transform Venezuela. You know, like that's what's so maddening about this in the same way that in Panama, like, you know, we had more of a capacity to do that because we're playing on a smaller field.
Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but for our international listeners in Australia, I just want to let you know that Pod Save America is coming to Australia and New Zealand. We're going to be there in Auckland on February 11th and do three cities in Australia after that. Melbourne on February 13th, Brisbane on the 14th and Sydney on the 16th.
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