Verdict with Ted Cruz
Oil Means National Security, Rep. Jim Jordan vs Jack Smith & Crime Crashes Coast‑to‑Coast Week In Review
24 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Weekend Review, Ben Ferguson with you, and here are some of the big stories that we talked about this week that you may have missed. First up, oil, is it an issue of national security? Well, President Trump is dealing with that exact issue, and oil executives are also breaking it down.
We had a very interesting conversation with some of those oil executives, and we're going to explain to you exactly what they say about that issue and energy independence. Also, Jim Jordan goes up against Jack Smith. You remember Jack Smith, the special prosecutor that tried to overthrow the will of the people and get rid of Donald Trump.
Well, now he's having to answer for exactly what he did, and it's truly unbelievable. And finally, the media not talking about the most amazing part of all. In the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, The crime stats nationwide have come down drastically, literally saving people's lives. So why is the media not talking about it?
Chapter 2: How do oil prices relate to national security?
We'll give you those stats and explain it all. It's the Weekend Review, and it starts right now. I had dinner the other night with some oil executives, and they were frustrated a little bit because the price of oil has come down. And one of the people at the table was also White House.
And they said, what you don't understand is that our energy independence policy is also a national security policy. Because when you take away the money that is to the leadership in Iran, to Vladimir Putin in Russia, Venezuela is another example of this, right? Then the money that they need to survive and to hold on to power and to pay their forces to keep them in power
and to go after their citizens just completely disappears. That is part of, I think, what Donald Trump, and it was very interesting to hear this kind of back and forth.
It was like, hey, I'm sorry that the price per barrel is not where you want it, but it's helping American families to lower gas prices, and it's a national security thing for us as well, and it's allowing some of these horrible people in the world to start teetering a little bit because they don't have the cash flow they had two, three, four years ago under Democratic leadership.
I think that's right. There's also a balance that President Trump and the Trump administration are trying to strike, which is we've seen the price of oil drop dramatically from $100 a barrel to down just around $60 a barrel, a little bit lower. That has weakened almost every bad guy in the world. That has weakened Russia. That has weakened Iran. That has weakened Venezuela and Maduro because –
It is, I guess, God has a sense of humor in that many of the worst players on planet Earth depend upon oil revenues. They're in many ways petro-tyrants. Now, Maduro's not. Maduro is inmate number 257-whatever. But he used to be. But I'll say this. Look, there is a balance because from a U.S.
national security interest, look, oil and gas and energy are powerful weapons against our enemies and to buttress America. But you don't want to slash the price of oil so dramatically that you devastate U.S. producers. And as you know, I talk to I represent Texas. I talk to a lot of U.S. producers.
And I will say at down around 60, 70 dollars a barrel, you see what we've got now, which is gas prices at about two, three bucks a gallon, depending on what part of the country you're in. Now, if you're in California, there's still four or five bucks a gallon.
But that's that's on you for living in California, voting for those nut jobs.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Venezuela's oil infrastructure face?
You don't want to hurt the small ones. Like you said, the big ones will be okay. But these small refineries that literally power these small towns where they are, you don't want them to get hurt either.
Yeah, and look, in the last several weeks with everything happening in Iran, everything happening in Venezuela, I've been reaching out to energy leaders, primarily in Texas. So I've had conversations with the CEO of Chevron and the CEO of Valero, the biggest refiner in America. And I've had conversations with a number of smaller E&P, exploration and production independents in West Texas.
And and they've expressed optimism, number one, in terms of Venezuela. Venezuela, as we've talked about, has the highest proven reserves of oil in the world. No country has more. But the Venezuelan infrastructure is completely collapsed. Communism is not capable of producing what they should.
And so Venezuela right now is producing about a million barrels a day, which is a fraction of what their capacity is. I will say I asked one of the major CEOs, I said, OK, what would the time frame be to take Venezuela from one million barrels a day to three million barrels a day? And the response was 10 years. That it doesn't happen overnight.
It would take tens of billions of dollars of investment and perhaps north of $100 billion. Now, you would recoup that, but the infrastructure has so degraded. And I said, all right, so 10 years to go from $1 million a day to $3 million a day. How about just from $1 to $2? And the answer was five to seven years. So the first million you add would take longer.
It's an infrastructure. It's just straight up infrastructure.
Right, right. And you could keep going up from there. I also am talking to refiners. So Venezuela produces what is called heavy sour crude, which is a different sort of crude than in West Texas. They produce what's called light sweet crude. you refine them very, very differently. Now, it so happens that the refineries that were built to handle heavy sour crude are along the Gulf Coast.
They're in Texas and Louisiana. And so we've got the capacity. I've been told that the Gulf Coast refineries could almost overnight refine an additional 250,000 barrels of the heavy crude from Venezuela. Now, interestingly enough, when I've asked the refiners, okay, what would the trade-off be? What would the impact be, say, for West Texas producers?
The refiners, at least, were not that concerned about it, and they said, look, the other producers of heavy crude are Canada, and so the tar sands in Alberta, and I said, look, more Venezuelan crude would impact Canada, and actually Mexico. Mexico also produces similar crude to what Venezuela and Canada produce, and so
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