The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | October 20th, 2025: Maduro’s Navy Suffers EMBARASSING Disaster & Houthis Target UN Employees
20 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's Monday, the 20th of October. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, an embarrassing moment for Venezuela's Navy. A Venezuelan warship has partially sunk during training drills off the country's northern coast, just as Nicolas Maduro orders civilians to prepare for war. Hmm.
We'll explain how a botched exercise exposed the regime's somewhat shaky military readiness. Later in the show, the Houthis are back. Remember them? And this time they're targeting the U.N. The Iranian-backed group detained two dozen U.N. employees, part of a growing campaign of intimidation inside areas that they control. But first, today's afternoon spotlight.
An effort to project power went sideways for the Maduro regime. An amphibious transport ship from the Venezuelan Navy partially sank during a coastal training exercise off the country's northern coast. The vessel, known as the Capana, began taking on water near the town of Cumarebo in Falcón State, listing sharply forward as its bow slipped beneath the surface.
Photos shared on social media, where else, show the decades-old warship nearly half-submerged. According to reports gathered by the outlet InfoBay, the ship ran aground during a coastal maneuver, flooding its forward compartment and losing buoyancy, which, as you know, is a key part of any boat. It's good for a boat to be buoyant.
Observers said the hull may have suffered structural damage significant enough to render the vessel inoperable. Now, the Kapana isn't just any ship. Built in South Korea in the early 1980s, it's one of only four Kapana-class landing craft capable of ferrying tanks and vehicles and troops. It had just completed a three-year refit in 2023 to modernize its propulsion and weapons systems.
Losing it now, obviously during heightened tensions, is more than just embarrassing. It's a blow to a Navy already struggling to maintain readiness after years of economic decay and corruption. The mishap came just days after Kapano took part in war games simulating defense against a U.S. naval invasion. Those exercises were part of Plan Independencia 200.
That's President Maduro's sweeping military mobilization aimed at showcasing Venezuela's preparedness against what he calls, quote, external aggression. And as this incident played out, Maduro's regime was already ratcheting up its rhetoric and its readiness. Last week, Venezuela's defense minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, issued a stark warning to citizens, quote, prepare for the worst.
State television showed troops crawling through mud, crossing rivers and firing weapons under soldier supervision, but also civilians in evacuation drills, learning to move supplies and documents out of military bases. Maduro claims the nation is under imminent threat. His government says the new wave of training is a defensive response to what it calls U.S.
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Chapter 2: What embarrassing incident occurred with Venezuela's Navy?
State media now claims that millions of Venezuelans stand ready to defend the country. Much of Maduro's civilian militia consists of recruits drawn from government-aligned groups, local socialist committees, and food distribution networks loyal to the regime.
Experts say the program serves as both a propaganda tool and a loyalty test, a way to rally citizens under the banner of national defense while reinforcing party control at the grassroots level. Beyond the patriotic imagery, Venezuela's military remains plagued by poor maintenance, limited fuel supplies, and outdated equipment.
The partial sinking of the Copana only reinforces that reality, the regime loudly proclaiming its strength while quietly struggling to keep its navy afloat. Still, the optics matter. Maduro and his generals are sending a message to both domestic audiences and to Washington that Venezuela will not fold easily.
As one analyst put it, they're trying to project power, but they're doing it with a fleet that's literally sinking beneath them. Meanwhile, this morning, Secretary of War, or Secretary of Defense, I can't quite decide which I like better, Pete Hegseth announced that a seventh narco-trafficking vessel was targeted and destroyed by the U.S. Navy.
Hegseth said Friday's strike targeted a boat linked to a Colombian guerrilla group that the U.S. has considered a terrorist organization since the 1990s. In a post to X, Hegseth said the vessel was, quote, traveling along a known narcotrafficking route and was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics, end quote. Now, Hegseth added, the U.S.
military will treat these organizations like the terrorists that they are. They will be hunted and killed just like Al-Qaeda, end quote. All right. Coming up next, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen detained two dozen U.N. employees after raiding a U.N. facility in Sana'a. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here, PDB host and, of course, fashion icon.
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Chapter 3: How does the sinking of the Capana reflect military readiness in Venezuela?
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The relations between Yemen's Houthi rebels and the UN has taken a turn for the worse. On Sunday, the Iran-backed terrorists stormed a UN compound in the capital of Sana'a, detaining two dozen staff in their second raid in as many days. According to a spokesman for the UN, resident coordinator in Yemen,
The detentions occurred inside the organization's facility in the city's southwestern Hada district. Among those held were five Yemeni nationals and 15 foreign employees. Another 11 staff were released after the terrorists' questioning.
The spokesman said, quote, The UN is in contact with the Houthis and other parties to resolve the serious situation as swiftly as possible, end the detention of all personnel, and restore full control over its facilities in Sana'a. But a second U.N.
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, painted a more troubling picture, saying the rebels also seized all communications equipment, including phones and computers and servers, before taking control of the compound outright, leaving the hostages, electronically at least, in the dark.
The detained staff reportedly belonged to several UN agencies, including the World Food Program, UNICEF, and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As we've been tracking here on the PDB, the raids are part of a broader crackdown by the Houthis on international organizations operating in rebel-held territory across Sana'a, Hodeidah, and the northern Sa'ada region.
The Iranian-backed group has accused aid workers of espionage. They've done that without providing any evidence, detaining more than 50 UN employees and several humanitarian staff so far in their process. The UN has rejected those allegations from Houthis outright.
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