Speaker 1: Al Zone Media, Welcome back to it could happen here,
Speaker 1: a podcast about it happening well in various places, and
Speaker 1: given the nature of our digital, interconnected society, it is
Speaker 1: happening here all the time.
Speaker 2: But if you're even casually aware of what's going on
Speaker 2: in the world right now, it is particularly happening in
Speaker 2: Venezuela right now. And joining me to talk about the
Speaker 2: US led and executed kidnapping of a world leader is
Speaker 2: my two favorite kidnappers, Mia Wong and James Stout.
Speaker 3: Glad to be Hererobit, joining you to discuss kidnapping, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite topics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my lawyers have advised me not to respond to
Speaker 4: the statement.
Speaker 2: Now, given all the people you both kidnapped, how are
Speaker 2: you just rating this on a technical level as kidnappings go,
Speaker 2: you know, on a level from let's say the while,
Speaker 2: if I remember the name of that guy with the plane,
Speaker 2: would have been a funnier joke. I forgot his name though, No, no, no,
Speaker 2: he was on a plane, didn't have a plane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a reverse kidnapper. He kidnapped, He did on
Speaker 4: kidnap himself, everyone on the plane.
Speaker 2: I was talking about Lindberg. Charles Lindberg. But the jokes,
Speaker 2: the joke's over. So let's talk about the international crimes
Speaker 2: our government's doing. Ye did, did and doing.
Speaker 3: I'm drinking a white claw, so I've got about the
Speaker 3: same legal jurisdiction as they have because there is no
Speaker 3: lawyeh when you're drinking white wall yeah, which I think
Speaker 3: is the legal argument.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah. So what happened is, while most of
Speaker 2: us were asleep last Saturday night, the United States, using
Speaker 2: a mix of special forces like Tier one operators this
Speaker 2: was like adulta force operation, primarily a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: helicopters that looked like a mix of Blackhawks and Chinooks,
Speaker 2: carried out a series of airstrikes on Caracas and kidnapped
Speaker 2: the president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife, killing
Speaker 2: a significant chunk of their security detail, including thirty two
Speaker 2: Cubans who are acting as essentially like military advisors slash
Speaker 2: security for Maduro. Yeah, he has been taken back to
Speaker 2: the United States. He's been arraigned in New York. They're
Speaker 2: charging him with a variety of drug and gun related crimes,
Speaker 2: including some weird shit like possession of a machine gun
Speaker 2: under US law, which is really weird. I guess they're
Speaker 2: arguing that his control of the Venezuelan military counted as
Speaker 2: a legal possession of an automatic weapon. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And guessing it involves using the machine gun in
Speaker 3: the furtherance of another crime, because there are specific charges
Speaker 3: for like NFA violations related to drug things. Sure, but
Speaker 3: it still seems very weird to tag that on there.
Speaker 3: Like when what you're doing is kidnapping a world leader,
Speaker 3: you can't just also be like, oh, and he's got
Speaker 3: a gun, like when he come on the forces of
Speaker 3: a country. It's very strange, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: This also, I think pins into what's really really weird
Speaker 4: about this. There's two aspects of this that are just
Speaker 4: what the fuck. One of them is that the legal justification,
Speaker 4: this is given to Mike Lee from Secretary of State
Speaker 4: Marco Rubio, was that the reason that there were air
Speaker 4: strikes in the legal justification was protecting US soldiers carrying.
Speaker 2: Out the US law enforcement. The military was needed to
Speaker 2: protect the DEA agents who are actually conducting the arrest, right,
Speaker 2: is the legal justification.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the chances of some kind of due process violation
Speaker 3: are hot. This all hinges on you thinking that the
Speaker 3: law is a fixed thing, right, not an instrument of
Speaker 3: the state and an instrument of power. And I think
Speaker 3: that a more plausible analysis here is that the law
Speaker 3: is not a fixed thing. But like in this instance, right,
Speaker 3: if we go with that line, like the DA people
Speaker 3: were there to ensure you process and to make the
Speaker 3: arrest right and in theory I've read that they literally
Speaker 3: had someone mirandize him, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which, okay, I want to I do want to
Speaker 4: put seth the thing curetaux. And this is something that CNN,
Speaker 4: like when they were reporting on this point. So this
Speaker 4: is insane because this implies that US law applies in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Right, which it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Absolutely does.
Speaker 4: That's literally the point. The point of a state is
Speaker 4: that your law applies inside of your board.
Speaker 2: The argument that they are making because Trump directly and
Speaker 2: and prior to this had called into relevance the Monroe doctrine, right,
Speaker 2: which is basically stating that everything happening in the Americas
Speaker 2: is the purview of the United States. So this was
Speaker 2: initially uh and they're still arguing that it is kind
Speaker 2: of a a what President Monroe was using as an
Speaker 2: excuse for intervening in situations where foreign colonizers were attempting
Speaker 2: to exert power and colonies they own owned in the
Speaker 2: Americas or had owned in the Americas, right, And the
Speaker 2: US is basically saying, fuck you, this is our backyard. Right.
Speaker 2: And I think the the argument that they're making now
Speaker 2: is that that's relevant because Iran and Russia and Cuba
Speaker 2: all have political and business interests in Venezuela, particularly Cuba.
Speaker 2: But in a more broad sense, they're making the argument,
Speaker 2: and Stephen Miller has made this very directly, that the
Speaker 2: Americas are all kind of our property and we're perfectly
Speaker 2: justified in intervening to take resources that we want because
Speaker 2: we shouldn't have to just accept that a foreign country
Speaker 2: has different opinions on how those resources should be used
Speaker 2: in the United States, and that we have no moral
Speaker 2: responsibility to listen to what other people want in our hemisphere.
Speaker 2: It's our hemisphere, and we, meaning the Trump administration, should
Speaker 2: do whatever we want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think there's two kinds of legal effective
Speaker 4: here things that are important.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 4: I think there's that one, which is, yeah, the American
Speaker 4: Empire is just saying we are an empire and we
Speaker 4: could do whatever we want. But then there's also the
Speaker 4: does the president have the power to do this unilaterally
Speaker 4: piece of it, which no, he no, like just does
Speaker 4: not like this. This is objectively an act of war,
Speaker 4: right and previously right, A lot of administrations have done
Speaker 4: things kind of like this, yeah, right, but like everything
Speaker 4: has been under the fig leaf of the AUMF, right,
Speaker 4: the two thousand and one Authorization of Use a Military Force,
Speaker 4: which if you go back and read the document, the
Speaker 4: actual like AUMF, it's very clear that it's anyone who's
Speaker 4: related to nine to eleven. Yeah, yeah, and so this
Speaker 4: has been used to do interventions in like places. There
Speaker 4: are things that have nothing to do with this, right,
Speaker 4: But this is not even that. This is just the
Speaker 4: president claiming that he can do acts of war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess the justification that they gave was
Speaker 3: the example they cited was Nat Diego right in eighty
Speaker 3: nine Panama, Right, But that was that was a war
Speaker 3: that was operation, like American soldiers died, right. No, Diego
Speaker 3: went to the Vatican embassy and eventually, I believe you
Speaker 3: surrounded him. They've like blasted you two him, which is
Speaker 3: obviously a war crime. And he eventually left the embassy
Speaker 3: around negotiated his exit, I guess, but that's a completely
Speaker 3: different thing to just bouncing into the residence of the
Speaker 3: president of another country at night black backg.
Speaker 2: Like that's also debatably legal, But yes, it was a
Speaker 2: different Yeah.
Speaker 3: Very very much. Yeah, it's also wrong, like.
Speaker 2: We're not defending what was done there. I know, this
Speaker 2: is even more blatant, right, It's like, it's not defending
Speaker 2: what George W. Bush did in Iraq to be like,
Speaker 2: at least they bothered to pretend there was a justificate,
Speaker 2: Like they spent some time really cooking up a justification
Speaker 2: and some effort, and there's none of that here. They
Speaker 2: just don't give a shit anymore. Right. That's that you're
Speaker 2: not being like an means it was okay with Bush. It,
Speaker 2: you're just pointing out it's even more mask off now, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and I think it is different in that, like
Speaker 4: the invasion of a rock involved Congress, this is just
Speaker 4: Trump going I can do this, right, And that's really
Speaker 4: fucking alarming. Yeah that he just is like, yeah, fuck it,
Speaker 4: I can just do a war now completely by myself.
Speaker 4: None of you have any fucking power war for me.
Speaker 4: I can just declare war a thing that is explicitly
Speaker 4: in the Constitution, like supposed to be Congress's job. And
Speaker 4: I think that's really that's another very allowering part of this,
Speaker 4: because this is I think, by far the most just Trump,
Speaker 4: pure dictatorshit that we've seen so far, and it's not
Speaker 4: being treated like that. Yeah, because a lot of sort
Speaker 4: of like I don't know that there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who wanted this something like this to happen, and
Speaker 4: so they're kind of just not looking at the fact
Speaker 4: that this is just this is just pure dictatorship shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think a lot of people, because they didn't
Speaker 3: like Maduro, they're waiting to look aside from the means
Speaker 3: as long as they get the ends they want. But
Speaker 3: the means are extremely serious here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we should acknowledge, like stop for
Speaker 2: a second to talk about the Maduro of it all,
Speaker 2: because my stance is that his legitimacy as president, his
Speaker 2: personal legitimacy, whether or not he's committed crimes are all
Speaker 2: completely irrelevant. Right. I have not, in any of my
Speaker 2: public facing statements I've been in the past years ago,
Speaker 2: talked about how I wish the protests had worked to
Speaker 2: remove him from office within sort of like the context
Speaker 2: of Venezuelan's actually having their way, kicking him out and
Speaker 2: replacing him with something better. But I have not brought
Speaker 2: up any of that in the context of what's happened
Speaker 2: recently because it doesn't matter, right, Like, fundamentally, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if Maduro is like completely legitimately elected and the
Speaker 2: people's hero or a complete fraud and an authoritarian. That
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with whether or not the US
Speaker 2: has any illegal or moral justification for coming in arresting
Speaker 2: this guy and then saying we own the country and
Speaker 2: we don't. It's dictator shit, it's fascist, it's deeply wrong,
Speaker 2: it's bad. Like, there's nothing else to say if you
Speaker 2: find anyone getting caught in starting to be like, well,
Speaker 2: but you know, Maduro did this, Maduro did that. That
Speaker 2: is either a person who is acting in bad faith
Speaker 2: or a person who has themselves been tricked, right, because
Speaker 2: you don't need to discuss any of that. None of
Speaker 2: that is relevant to what we're talking about here, which
Speaker 2: is that the US, like this is a violation of
Speaker 2: international law and all of the kinds of norms that
Speaker 2: we attempted to put in place after World War two
Speaker 2: to stop another catastrophe like that from happening, and it
Speaker 2: is only going to embolden the worst instincts of both
Speaker 2: the people running the United States right now. They will
Speaker 2: continue to try to do shit like this, and it's
Speaker 2: going to embolden the worst instincts of other leaders around
Speaker 2: the world. It is comprehensively bad for everyone.
Speaker 4: The comprehensive result of this is again the US has
Speaker 4: annexed I guess Venezuela that Trump is claiming that he
Speaker 4: personally and his Secretary of State and his Council of
Speaker 4: advisors are not like now, control and run a country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is so evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's very unclear who's going to be doing
Speaker 2: Because Trump made those that statement, Rubio walked it back
Speaker 2: a little bit and said that, like, well, we'll be
Speaker 2: working with the administration in place, which is, by the way,
Speaker 2: just the same administration that existed before, merely with the
Speaker 2: vice president taking on the role of president.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should talk about it a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. After that backtracked a little bit too, to try
Speaker 2: and be more in line with the Boss. But it's
Speaker 2: very unclear what they actually intend and what they mean
Speaker 2: by saying we're running it, because from what I've read,
Speaker 2: it doesn't look like Rubio is actually going to be
Speaker 2: mannered like while he's been the guy taking point on
Speaker 2: justifying this, I don't think he's going to actually be
Speaker 2: managed any of this on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2: He's got a lot on his plate already. Stephen Miller
Speaker 2: seems to be the guy who is trying to position
Speaker 2: himself to actually be the Paul Brimmer in this situation.
Speaker 2: Who was the guy that the Bush administration put in
Speaker 2: charge of dealing with of like running a rack after
Speaker 2: it was taken over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the viceroy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's unclear what is Miller going to get
Speaker 2: that job? Will Rubio wind up doing it. It's looking
Speaker 2: more like Miller right now, But also to what extent
Speaker 2: will that job actually be running things? And you know,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that in a little bit, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: But the kind of cliffs notes of the situation is
Speaker 2: that there is evidence that came out right after the
Speaker 2: kidnapping that Baduro's vice president had reached out to the
Speaker 2: United States previously, like before the kidnapping, to talk about
Speaker 2: the possibility of taking over the country after giving madear
Speaker 2: up or him having a managed exile all of that
Speaker 2: was discussed, and at least per the reporting on it,
Speaker 2: she was turned down by the United States because they
Speaker 2: thought they had a better option, and that option seems
Speaker 2: to have fallen through largely because the quote unquote democratically
Speaker 2: elected opposition leader who won a Nobel prize pissed off Trump.
Speaker 2: It's unclear how accurate that is that by you know,
Speaker 2: by winning the prompt by accepting the Nobel prize, did
Speaker 2: she get Eric kick herself out of the job. That's
Speaker 2: what some reporting has suggested. It's unclear to me how
Speaker 2: true that actually is. It seems possible, surely, But at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, there was this offer made
Speaker 2: by Maduro's VP that was turned down by the US.
Speaker 2: And now it seems like, although we don't actually know
Speaker 2: what's happened to the background, it seems like she's who
Speaker 2: were working with. So either they came back and said,
Speaker 2: you know, it will take the deal, or something else
Speaker 2: is going on. But she has both made this statements
Speaker 2: publicly that like, this is illegal, the United States is
Speaker 2: run by a group of criminals and extremists, and also
Speaker 2: but we'll work with them. So it does kind of
Speaker 2: seem to me like she made in fact, be very
Speaker 2: much in bed with the Trump administration and just trying
Speaker 2: to like massage this for her public, you know, because
Speaker 2: there's only so much you can get away with. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to be clear on the timeline, Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the first reporting of that, like Rodriguez option, we want
Speaker 3: to call it that. Yeah, they call it as well,
Speaker 3: was in October. That was out before the strike happened, right,
Speaker 3: and at least in the Miami Herald story they suggested
Speaker 3: that he had been part of that, so this could
Speaker 3: be a different thing, but that he had offered to
Speaker 3: step down over years, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I say it looked like there was a
Speaker 2: period of time where he was talking about like a
Speaker 2: managed exit, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Going to Kato or Turkey or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: now Rodriguez to Nina, But what would you expect Dlsea.
Speaker 2: Rodriguez And yeah, it's unclear. Again, we don't really know.
Speaker 2: Did they just remove Maduro without having a plan and
Speaker 2: hadn't really finished talking with her or worked something out.
Speaker 2: It was the last thing she heard from them, them
Speaker 2: saying nah, we won't take this option, right, and then
Speaker 2: Maduro gets kidnapped. Did they work out a separate deal?
Speaker 2: That just hasn't been reported on. We actually don't know,
Speaker 2: And I could totally see her being a stooge for
Speaker 2: US action here because it keeps her in power and
Speaker 2: it keeps her safe because Trump very recently threatened her,
Speaker 2: like after she made statements calling his team a bunch
Speaker 2: of extremists, she backpedaled and said, actually, if we're where,
Speaker 2: we'll go in to work with the US, because Trump said,
Speaker 2: I'll do something worse to you than I did to him. Like,
Speaker 2: we don't know if they actually ironed out a set
Speaker 2: of responsibilities and obligations in back channels, or if we
Speaker 2: just removed Maduro and are like, all right, well, if
Speaker 2: we have to kill her, we'll kill her too, Like
Speaker 2: it's unclear what actually happened there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So we should also mention so this is
Speaker 4: being recorded on the night of Monday, January fifth. You're right,
Speaker 4: every kind of six or eight hours, new conflicting information
Speaker 4: from the Truck Administration about what their plan is comes
Speaker 4: out right, which which leads me to suspect they don't
Speaker 4: have a plan at all, because it keeps changing every
Speaker 4: couple of hours. So I don't know. But but in case,
Speaker 4: by the time this comes out. There is some kind
Speaker 4: of public deal that's been worked out. That's what's going on.
Speaker 4: This is all changing extremely rapidly.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, and you know what else changes rapidly, the
Speaker 2: economics of podcasting. Yeah, here's some of that.
Speaker 3: These white coats working fowl.
Speaker 2: And we're back. James is drinking a bad white claw,
Speaker 2: which is really I think the information our audience is
Speaker 2: most interested in. You know, invasions of Venezuela come and go.
Speaker 2: The US kidnaps people all the time. But James drinking
Speaker 2: a bad white claw. Let's let's let's actually really check it. James,
Speaker 2: what's the flavor you're you're experiencing right now?
Speaker 3: Let me getting updated to that, bro. But that is
Speaker 3: green apple?
Speaker 2: Green apple?
Speaker 3: M oh boy, Yeah, yeah, it's it's foul. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: recommend it. You're in the.
Speaker 2: Market, Yeah that sounds awful.
Speaker 3: Don't do it to yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really the having Delta force kidnap you from
Speaker 2: your house of beverage.
Speaker 3: Yeah absolutely, Uh, that's how they market Actually sweet, that's
Speaker 3: that's on the can right right. They must have got
Speaker 3: advance warning, like the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what did they know and when did they know it?
Speaker 2: We'll never know, so let's keep talking about Venezuela. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we should talk about who Rodriguezz.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Soguez was vice president and now she is president
Speaker 3: or will be sworny in its president. I believe she
Speaker 3: may have already been sworn him by the time you
Speaker 3: hear this.
Speaker 2: She was sworn in I think like a couple hours ago.
Speaker 2: For the last article I.
Speaker 3: Read, So her father was a Marxist gorilla. Her father
Speaker 3: kidnapped an American businessman, was arrested and then murdered, like
Speaker 3: torture to death. Yeah, as part of the quote unquie
Speaker 3: investigation into that. Right, her and her brother are kind
Speaker 3: of like a power block in Venezuelan politic. She has
Speaker 3: really become more relevant, I guess nationally since MyD Like,
Speaker 3: she did do some stuff with Chaves early on, but
Speaker 3: like clashed with him personally and I guess allegedly, I
Speaker 3: mean I wasn't there, but Chaves didn't like that she
Speaker 3: wasn't deferential to him, and at one point send her
Speaker 3: home from I think they were in Russia and he
Speaker 3: sent her home from a a sort of mission that
Speaker 3: they were doing their diplomatic mission. Since then, she is
Speaker 3: assuming a number of roles in Venezuelan government from since
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen right when Mondora came to power, to include
Speaker 3: overseeing intelligence at some time, and she has now become
Speaker 3: obviously president. Right, she has previously worked with like the
Speaker 3: Venezuelan I guess the analogy would be like Chamber of Commerce,
Speaker 3: which had previously been seen by like Chubby small as
Speaker 3: like a bourgeois enter di I either enemy. Right, she
Speaker 3: has shown willingness to work with business, So I do
Speaker 3: wonder if that factors into the US analysis that, like,
Speaker 3: if she's willing to work with what it looks like
Speaker 3: the oil companies that they want her to work with,
Speaker 3: then then they can overlook a whole lot of other stuff, right,
Speaker 3: which has historically been how the US has approached places
Speaker 3: with oil. But Yeah, in terms of this, I think
Speaker 3: that's probably the sort of TLDR on her career. And
Speaker 3: I think it is possible that she's willing to do
Speaker 3: some kind of chuvis more like you know whatever we're
Speaker 3: going to call this and have us extractive capitalism exists
Speaker 3: so long as the regime continues to exist. But the
Speaker 3: way that would work is still something that like I
Speaker 3: can't really get my head around for a regime which
Speaker 3: has made so much of its rhetorical legitimacy for so
Speaker 3: long attacking the United States.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, And that's kind of I mean, that
Speaker 2: seems to be the quandary Delsea finds herself in is
Speaker 2: she both has to refer to what's happened accurately as
Speaker 2: kidnapping and the actions of an illegitimate and deeply corrupt regime.
Speaker 2: And also she can't act that way if what we
Speaker 2: all think is accurate and she's basically acting as a
Speaker 2: negotiated buppet of the United States. She can only go
Speaker 2: so far. And I feel like she's trapped in kind
Speaker 2: of a doomed situation, which may be part of what
Speaker 2: our administration intends is for her to be fundamentally doomed
Speaker 2: and fail and get coued herself, or you know, we
Speaker 2: can replace her when there's protests against legitimacy. Like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what exactly the game is here, but I
Speaker 2: think that maybe something that was baked into the equation
Speaker 2: that like, this is not a functional situation for her,
Speaker 2: and when she gets forced out, that's something we can
Speaker 2: take advantage of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the reason of analysis, I think. I mean,
Speaker 3: we yeah, we should talk about the oil, right because
Speaker 3: Trump has been talking about the oil, right yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, I know you said you wanted to
Speaker 3: mention stuff about like it's not what it might seem
Speaker 3: on the face of it, right, There aren't giant lakes
Speaker 3: of oil in Venezuela you can just slurp up and sell.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So okay, it's sort of difficult to explain this all
Speaker 4: without really getting into the weeds of like how oil
Speaker 4: production works. But there's different like qualities of crude oil.
Speaker 4: And most of the Venezuelan stuff is extremely sour. It's
Speaker 4: really really shit. It's extremely low quality. And when you
Speaker 4: have oil that's this shit, you can't like refine it
Speaker 4: into being good, right like that that's just like not
Speaker 4: how the process works. It just sucks and so it
Speaker 4: burns badly. But there is a lot of it. And
Speaker 4: this also gets back to Okay, so the way that
Speaker 4: Trump thinks this is going to work is that a
Speaker 4: bunch of oil companies are going to come in, They're
Speaker 4: going to do a bunch of like infrastructure development or whatever.
Speaker 4: They're going to sell the oil and they're going to
Speaker 4: make one hundred billion dollars that's not really how this works,
Speaker 4: as it is something that James has pointed out too.
Speaker 4: But like, the actual value here is less from actually
Speaker 4: extracting the oil and more from a having all of
Speaker 4: these oil deposits on your balance sheet and B there's
Speaker 4: a lot of value in just having.
Speaker 3: Power over it.
Speaker 4: Yeah so okay, So oil prices are kind of they're
Speaker 4: set by a few things, like the price of oil
Speaker 4: is set by the bottom of the market.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Part of your profit comes from how how much more
Speaker 4: cheaply can you refine and extract your oil relative to
Speaker 4: whoever's doing it the most expensively, like whoever's doing the
Speaker 4: shittiest job of it. But that a lot of it
Speaker 4: also is just power. That's what OPEC is, right, And
Speaker 4: OPEC's ability to raise oil prices has to do with
Speaker 4: its ability to have all of their member states controlling
Speaker 4: their oil and controlling the sort of flow and distribution
Speaker 4: of it. Redistributing who is in power into OPEC is
Speaker 4: actually a massive deal. Even if the actual oil here
Speaker 4: isn't very good, the power over the oil is extremely important.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this doesn't work in the way that Trump wants
Speaker 4: it to work, which is like you know, you take
Speaker 4: the oil wells and you pump the oil out of
Speaker 4: the ground and suddenly you have money. But it is
Speaker 4: good for the oil companies that would take over the oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He consistently confuses stock price for like the economy slash
Speaker 3: it business success slash I'm saying, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess one way to think about it is
Speaker 4: that like taking control of this oil, you're not really
Speaker 4: make the money off of this oil. You're making the
Speaker 4: money off of the impact controlling this oil has on
Speaker 4: the rest of the oil you produce.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe if you're someone who sees international relations in
Speaker 3: terms of great power competition, you're trying to put things
Speaker 3: in the Russia China bucket or the America bucket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And someone who sees trade, is this like zero
Speaker 2: sum game where one person wins and another person loses. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, like as Trump does.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: And also it is worth mentioning that like a lot
Speaker 4: of this oil goes to Cuba, yeah, which is really
Speaker 4: really important for the Cuban economy, which sort of can't
Speaker 4: function without the stock of Venezuelan oil. Like getting access
Speaker 4: to Venezuelan oil is one of the things that originally
Speaker 4: pulled Cuba out of the just hideous economic crisis they
Speaker 4: were in in the nineties after so eation collapsed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's why thirty two, it seems like a
Speaker 2: majority or at least half of the security forces who
Speaker 2: died fighting the US and this kidnapping attempt were Cuban
Speaker 2: because ac to Venezuela oil is an existential issue for
Speaker 2: the Cuban government. And it's also why Trump stated, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: probably accurately, that they're not looking at regime change in
Speaker 2: Cuba because they think that the regime is going to
Speaker 2: collapse on its own, which it might like, this is
Speaker 2: an existential problem for the Cuban regime.
Speaker 3: But people who aren't aware. I spent a good amount
Speaker 3: of time in Caracas when I was much younger in
Speaker 3: Jerrem my undergraduate years at university, and I remember the
Speaker 3: only medical professionals I ever saw being because people have
Speaker 3: left right after Chinese mol the only medical professionals I
Speaker 3: ever saw were Cuban and clear, Cuban doctors are all
Speaker 3: over the world. One a Cuba's biggest sex words is doctors.
Speaker 3: But like it was very clear at that time that
Speaker 3: like the two states were intermessed. You know that the
Speaker 3: Venezuela needs things that Cuba has, like those special military
Speaker 3: advisors and those doctors, and Cuba needs things to Menezuela have,
Speaker 3: like that oil.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and breaking that the way people do norbally see
Speaker 4: oil as oil is just like liquid cash, and that's
Speaker 4: not true. It matters the actual materiality of the oil
Speaker 4: and how it works in the extraction process, and what
Speaker 4: kind of oil is matters a lot. And this is
Speaker 4: a scenario where where the oil is going and who
Speaker 4: has control over it matters more than who's able to
Speaker 4: sell it, which is very weird, but is how this works.
Speaker 4: And Trump doesn't understand any of this. Maybe some of
Speaker 4: the people around him understand this, but Trump really just
Speaker 4: is in pure empire brain. They stole our stuff, which
Speaker 4: I assume someone who wanted this told him, Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: they stole a bunch of American oil and land. And
Speaker 4: now he's in just full empire mode.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that seemings someone has told him at
Speaker 3: some point they stold us toff.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and this is after the revolution. A bunch
Speaker 2: of what was like the property of US and foreign
Speaker 2: oil companies was nationalized, right, Yeah, because these companies had
Speaker 2: made deals with the corrupt previous regime and it was
Speaker 2: not really benefiting Venezuelan's Obviously that oil money has gone
Speaker 2: on to fit the current corrupt regime and still not
Speaker 2: benefited Venezuelan's much. But there was a period of time
Speaker 2: under Schabz in which, like there were actual social benefits
Speaker 2: and a powerful state I was providing people with things,
Speaker 2: which is not to say it didn't have its flaws,
Speaker 2: but like there was a period of time in which
Speaker 2: there was a benefit to the average Venezuelan from the
Speaker 2: fact that their country was so oil rich. And nothing
Speaker 2: about the current situation is going to change positively for
Speaker 2: the average Venezuelan. The profits are going to go from
Speaker 2: being siphoned from one group to another, but neither of
Speaker 2: those groups are regular Venezuelans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think sometimes I will hear this. I have
Speaker 3: conservatively interviewed hundreds in not thousands of Venezuelan people in
Speaker 3: the last three or four years, right at the border
Speaker 3: in the Darien Gap in the US remotely by telephony,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And like, sometimes you'll hear that like Chabas
Speaker 3: was trying to do something good and it went bad,
Speaker 3: or that like it was okay forbid under chavas and
Speaker 3: then the corruption got out of control. Or even if
Speaker 3: it was okay until my daughter took parent out, it
Speaker 3: was bad. That it doesn't matter, right, it's bad now.
Speaker 3: But like the things that the poverty I hear about
Speaker 3: from Venezuelan people is grinding and it is so upsetting.
Speaker 3: Like I have a great one noess for Venezuelan people.
Speaker 3: I've made a whole podcast thing about this. But the
Speaker 3: difficulty they encounter in every aspect of their lives because
Speaker 3: of sanctions, because of corruption, because of hyperinflation, because of
Speaker 3: the glow oil price, like a lot of things. Right,
Speaker 3: their lives are miserable and this isn't going to change that.
Speaker 3: They're scared. Right when I speak to people in Venezuela
Speaker 3: and people with family in Venezuela this week, since this happened,
Speaker 3: what are they doing. They are not contrary to what
Speaker 3: an AI video might have made you believe out in
Speaker 3: the streets celebrating. Now, they're trying to get enough food
Speaker 3: to make it through the next couple of weeks in
Speaker 3: case they have to hunker down in their home right,
Speaker 3: and it is hard to get any food at the
Speaker 3: best of times for these people.
Speaker 2: In case they're bombed in place, the roads are bombed
Speaker 2: in case, they're occupied, like they're they're making preparations for
Speaker 2: being in a situation like Gazans have been in for
Speaker 2: much of the last several years. Right, yeah, and that's
Speaker 2: not an unreasonable like who knows what will happen. I
Speaker 2: hope it's not that, but it's not an unreasonable thing
Speaker 2: to prepare for.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. Our friends when Memo and Robert and
Speaker 3: I have been a few people in Memo, that's what
Speaker 3: they said they did after the coup as well, because
Speaker 3: they didn't know what was going to happen, and they
Speaker 3: figured they need to be able to sit somewhere safe
Speaker 3: and stay there. And so yeah, this is not a
Speaker 3: liberation like I sor Jared Polis of all people being like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, liberation. Also using the word liberation generally, Simon Bolivard,
Speaker 3: who is like the sort of bounding hero of Venezuela,
Speaker 3: is referred to as the liberator. So using that phrase
Speaker 3: about the extra judicial kidnapping the head of state, Right,
Speaker 3: you don't understand the revenant of that word in Spanish,
Speaker 3: that's fine, you don't speak Spanish, don't use it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but if you're going to use it, especially in this context,
Speaker 3: like it is crap in the extreme right to see
Speaker 3: that's the American politician.
Speaker 4: So the other I think aspect of this is that, like,
Speaker 4: you know, if you look at this in a historical tale,
Speaker 4: the reason Boulevard succeeded was that, like the Haitian Republic
Speaker 4: gave a whole bunch of people a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: weapons the go liberate Latin America from the Spanish Empire.
Speaker 4: And then you know, if you look at what, like
Speaker 4: what is the US's relation to the closest thing I've
Speaker 4: been able to So I've been like racking my brain
Speaker 4: trying to find anything in history that looks like this
Speaker 4: that the US has done. And we've done a lot
Speaker 4: of bad things, but the closest thing I can find
Speaker 4: to just we sent the army into kidnap a guy
Speaker 4: and deposed him was what we did to Aristide, who
Speaker 4: was the former leftist president now former leftist president of Haiti,
Speaker 4: who we did in fact send in special forces with
Speaker 4: Canada to just like sort of force onto a plane
Speaker 4: at gunpoints and remove from power. So that situation was
Speaker 4: a little different in that at that point most of
Speaker 4: the country of Haiti was under the control of a
Speaker 4: bunch of like dust squad rubble groups. Yeah, which was
Speaker 4: the US justification. And this is just we just ran
Speaker 4: into a country and cook them. But I don't know
Speaker 4: the historical resonances of that are bleak. Yeah, and Jesus Christ,
Speaker 4: don't call it the liberation, good Lord of liberations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's liberate our audience from having money that they
Speaker 2: can spend on these products. All right, we're back. I
Speaker 2: guess there's a couple of things I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2: One of them is I'm seeing a lot of people
Speaker 2: respond to this by pointing out folks like Matt Walsh
Speaker 2: or other guys on the right who made statements about
Speaker 2: Trump being a candidate for peace and all these military interventions.
Speaker 2: We're getting into being bad and are now celebrating what
Speaker 2: we're doing and openly celebrating like colonialism as a good thing.
Speaker 2: And I'm seeing a lot of folks trying to dunk
Speaker 2: on these people for being inconsistent. And I can't imagine
Speaker 2: a bigger waste of your time, none of these people.
Speaker 2: You have to get it out from the habit of
Speaker 2: thinking that truth matters. All that matters to these people
Speaker 2: is power, and they have it, and they have the guns.
Speaker 2: And you pointing out that they lied to get there,
Speaker 2: and that they're not honest, they don't care. They're rich
Speaker 2: and they're getting richer, and they're powerful and they're getting
Speaker 2: more power. None of this is about principles. It's about winning,
Speaker 2: and you just have to understand that if you want
Speaker 2: to have any hope of beating them, because pretending that
Speaker 2: they're playing any other game than the one that they're
Speaker 2: playing is really dangerous. I don't think there's any profit
Speaker 2: in debating these people directly or confronting them directly about
Speaker 2: the inconsistencies of their belief system. I do think it's
Speaker 2: deeply profitable to talk about the fact that they lied
Speaker 2: in our liars and are dragging us into another war
Speaker 2: two regular Americans. And the evidence suggests that this is
Speaker 2: incredibly unpopular in a way that the Iraq War was it.
Speaker 2: People talk a lot about how massive the anti war
Speaker 2: protests were and how much anti war sentiment there was,
Speaker 2: but a majority of Americans were broadly supportive of what
Speaker 2: the Bush administration did in Afghanistan and Iraq at the
Speaker 2: time that they started doing it. Right, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that the protests weren't real. It doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 2: not significant that those massive protests happened. But most Americans
Speaker 2: were broadly supportive of what the government was doing. That's
Speaker 2: not the case with what we're seeing in regards to
Speaker 2: public opinion over what's happening in Venezuela. There was a
Speaker 2: two day Reuters IPSO survey that concluded Monday, basically immediately
Speaker 2: after was announced what you know we did in Venezuela,
Speaker 2: and seventy two percent of Americans who responded said they
Speaker 2: are concerned that the US might get too involved in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Only twenty five percent said that they don't share that concern.
Speaker 2: Ninety percent of Democrats shared that concern as well, seventy
Speaker 2: four percent of Independence even fifty four percent of Republicans.
Speaker 2: Only forty five percent of Republicans said that they were
Speaker 2: not worried about the US getting overly involved in only
Speaker 2: nineteen percent of other voters. So this is really unpopular,
Speaker 2: historically unpopular for a military intervention. And the entire bet
Speaker 2: that the Trump administration is making is that because they're
Speaker 2: not doing what Bush did in Iraq, they're not knocking
Speaker 2: out the whole government in debathifying it. They're just kicking
Speaker 2: out one guy and basically keeping his regime intact. They're
Speaker 2: just making that regime swear feeldy to the United States.
Speaker 2: And their bet is that this will work, right, that
Speaker 2: the Venezuelan regime will continue to keep the country functioning
Speaker 2: as well as it was functioning before, which is not
Speaker 2: great but was not total collapse, and they can start
Speaker 2: extracting value. And honestly, I feel like that is that's
Speaker 2: a major motivation for a lot of people supporting Trump,
Speaker 2: for a lot of people in his administration who have
Speaker 2: financial interests. For obviously the oil and gas companies he's
Speaker 2: trying to get on board. But I don't think money
Speaker 2: is even Trump's pry, And this is maybe an unpopular opinion.
Speaker 2: I think the primarys in Trump is doing this is
Speaker 2: that he wants number one, to show everybody, look, I
Speaker 2: did what Bush did, but it worked. I did it better.
Speaker 2: And number two, he wants to show everybody, look, I
Speaker 2: did what Obama did and took out a big bad guy. Right.
Speaker 2: That's where they're trying to craft Madeiro is this major
Speaker 2: enemy of the United States, this architect of the opiate crisis,
Speaker 2: this guy who's worse than beIN Laden in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, because Trump is still jealous of the fact
Speaker 2: that Obama got to take out bin Laden right as
Speaker 2: he sees it, and he wants his own version of that.
Speaker 2: Trump is doing this, I think primarily for vanity purposes, right.
Speaker 2: I know that seems shallow and silly, but I really
Speaker 2: think that's most of what's going on for him. And
Speaker 2: I think if the end result of this is that
Speaker 2: things in Venezuela more or less continue the way they
Speaker 2: were before, he will call it a win and a
Speaker 2: lot of people might believe him. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't even necessarily matter if any money actually comes
Speaker 2: into the United States over this. They'll just lie about it.
Speaker 2: You know, some individual Americans will make money, and I
Speaker 2: think that'll probably be enough for Trump to feel like
Speaker 2: he got a win and for his pr apparatus to
Speaker 2: notch this up as a win. And I think that's
Speaker 2: all he really cares about. And so I do think
Speaker 2: it's worth really hitting how criminal this is and how
Speaker 2: harmful this is. But ultimately, what's going to determine whether
Speaker 2: or not Americans see this as a calamity or not
Speaker 2: is how well this all works out in the long run.
Speaker 2: And that's a really tough thing to even think about
Speaker 2: because you don't want it to work well because it
Speaker 2: will embolden Trump to keep doing this and the global
Speaker 2: harm will be greater. On the other hand, I don't
Speaker 2: want civil life in Venezuela to collapse, right, So it's
Speaker 2: it's tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, yeah, I don't people to suffer any I
Speaker 3: mean just around the world too, when like I heard
Speaker 3: Min online called a meeting in Mihandma when he heard
Speaker 3: about this because he was worried, right, Like, the paranoia
Speaker 3: of dictators is about to go through the ceiling, and
Speaker 3: that's going to result in people being tortured and killed.
Speaker 2: It's going to result in people torture, and it's going
Speaker 2: to result in more countries seeking to get nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: because they will accurately recognize that that is the only
Speaker 2: security anyone has. It is understated how much more dangerous
Speaker 2: what Bush did in Iraq made the world because of
Speaker 2: how it's made different leaders around the world think about
Speaker 2: the possession of nuclear weapons. Right, Iran is fundamentally right
Speaker 2: in its calculus that getting a nuke will make the
Speaker 2: regime safer because it might be the only thing that
Speaker 2: can protect them now. Things in Iran are not looking
Speaker 2: very stable right now either. Again, this is another situation
Speaker 2: where just decades of protest and the weakness of the
Speaker 2: regime might wind up working in Trump's favor because things
Speaker 2: are looking pretty gnarly for the Iranian regime right now,
Speaker 2: and maybe Trump Trump has made some statements since kidnapping
Speaker 2: Maduro about going into Iran. They very well may do that,
Speaker 2: but they also may not need to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some most sense suggesting that they at least
Speaker 3: have preparations in place for doing something in Iran, right,
Speaker 3: which may or they need to do right to obviously
Speaker 3: move things to point towards Iran, right, But that is
Speaker 3: an action in itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that really. I mean, there's a lot that worries
Speaker 2: me there. But I think they're going to keep fucking
Speaker 2: around like this as long as they feel like it
Speaker 2: will benefit them, And right now this feels like a
Speaker 2: win to them. Yeah, So this is going to function
Speaker 2: like a drug. They're going to start looking for another
Speaker 2: hit as soon as the high from this fase.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as soon as they need a domestic distraction.
Speaker 2: Right right. A lot of this stuff and the evidence
Speaker 2: we have so far suggests that people fucking hate this,
Speaker 2: and we'll probably keep hating this. But it depends on
Speaker 2: whether or not this all fades out, and if the
Speaker 2: news is covered is actually maybe it worked right, which
Speaker 2: will probably be based on really dogshit journalism.
Speaker 3: The Washington Post did a preferential offed already.
Speaker 2: I think, oh good, Yeah, I'm glad they're helping out
Speaker 2: our democracy die in darkness. They're going to keep chasing
Speaker 2: this high and it will wind up collapsing on them eventually.
Speaker 2: The question is how many countries will have to pay
Speaker 2: the price beforehand and how much worse will things get?
Speaker 2: In the United States?
Speaker 3: Obviously, yeah, will the price be right when they lose
Speaker 3: a higher SF team.
Speaker 2: Or cash right when Delta Force gets wiped out? When
Speaker 2: we have a bunch of helicopters down a bunch of Americans?
Speaker 2: Caption what does Trump do? Then? Do we get a panic?
Speaker 2: This is kind of where I see like the potential,
Speaker 2: the scary potential for something like a nuclear January sixth,
Speaker 2: where like, do we get a panic response that leads
Speaker 2: to a horrific loss of life? Because Trump sees himself
Speaker 2: as being embarrassed? Oh my God, they killed a whole team,
Speaker 2: Like I have no option but to kill a shitload
Speaker 2: of people to distract from the fact that I failed here, right,
Speaker 2: that that does really concern me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that happens, you know, there was even if
Speaker 3: it's not nuclear, right, even it's just conventional weapons on cities.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, And yeah, new guy, I shouldn't even
Speaker 2: bring up the nuclear thing, but like it does concern me.
Speaker 3: Nuclear football, right, He's the one who gets right choice right.
Speaker 2: This is going to just get more. This is going
Speaker 2: to become integral to his sense of like self worth
Speaker 2: that like, no, I did this and it worked in there,
Speaker 2: and if all his guys get wiped out failing at
Speaker 2: one of these things, that's not going to go well
Speaker 2: for anybody.
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: We'll have a fun couple hours on Twitter, but it's
Speaker 2: going to be really bad, really fast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I told very briefly about a couple of implications domestically.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: The main one is that the DOJ has already fared
Speaker 3: fro an extension in the case which Judge Bosberg is
Speaker 3: overseeing regarding the Alien Enemies Act. Right, Yeah, what this
Speaker 3: will mean for Venezuelan nationals in the United States. It
Speaker 3: is unlikely that this will mean something good.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It is unlikely that they will have a country that
Speaker 3: they would want to return to, and it's possible that
Speaker 3: it's going to be used to force them to return
Speaker 3: to it anyway, to a country which is extremely paranoid
Speaker 3: about US buys. Because someone in Maduro's very close entourage
Speaker 3: leaked the entire plan that Trump. Many presidents would not
Speaker 3: have set this to the press, but Trump did right
Speaker 3: that they had the entire plans for his house and
Speaker 3: that they built a replica of it to include They
Speaker 3: knew he had a safe room, they knew it was steel,
Speaker 3: and they knew they could cut into it with cutting torches.
Speaker 3: Someone leaked that information. That means that people coming back
Speaker 3: from the United States are going to be under scrutiny, right,
Speaker 3: and that is not good for them. I don't see
Speaker 3: this regime stopping sending people back because they're not an
Speaker 3: alien element anymore. I don't see that, and I can
Speaker 3: I can see the regime if it does manage when
Speaker 3: saw Rodriguez at something of a puppet leaning on Rodriguez
Speaker 3: to accept people removed from the United States, Right, that
Speaker 3: is extremely concerning and it's not being reported on right
Speaker 3: because migrants are not front and center where a lot
Speaker 3: of American newspapers think about things. But I think for
Speaker 3: those people, this is petrifying, right the country that you
Speaker 3: came to to be safe is they're bombing the country
Speaker 3: that you came from. It's also trying to kick you out,
Speaker 3: like you are stuck in the middle of this game,
Speaker 3: and all you wanted was a place to raise your
Speaker 3: kids where you know they might have a fair crack
Speaker 3: at a decent life. It's it's heartbreaking for those people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's probably all we've got to
Speaker 2: say for now. I mean, I guess I'll address briefly
Speaker 2: because people have asked, do you see this as like
Speaker 2: an annexa an Angelus, you know, the annexation of or
Speaker 2: of Czechoslovakia of that kind of moment, or is this
Speaker 2: more like the invasion of Poland? And I guess my
Speaker 2: answer is is its own thing. It doesn't directly graph
Speaker 2: on any of those other than that where it does
Speaker 2: very directly graph. And what is relevant in comparing it
Speaker 2: to is what happened to the Nazis and to Hitler
Speaker 2: personally as they started seeing success taking things militarily, they
Speaker 2: made some big gambles that were not known. One thing
Speaker 2: that gets underdiscussed when talking about what Germany was doing
Speaker 2: in that period of time is how many military leaders
Speaker 2: within Germany thought that the annexation of particularly Czechoslovakia was
Speaker 2: a horrible idea because in a head to head fight,
Speaker 2: it was not clear whatsoever that the Wehrmacht could defeat
Speaker 2: the Czech military and their defenses. That was very much
Speaker 2: in debate, and a lot of Hitler's advisors thought it
Speaker 2: was a terrible idea because they didn't think they could win,
Speaker 2: and it wound up not really being a factor because
Speaker 2: everyone caved and nobody wanted to fight. Which is the
Speaker 2: problem that we're having right now, right is that nobody
Speaker 2: actually wants to confront these people. The Democrats are himming
Speaker 2: and ahio whether or not the try for impeachment again
Speaker 2: or you know, there's this this fear of actually directly
Speaker 2: confronting these people. That is part of what's emboldening them
Speaker 2: to keep trying shit like this. And what's very relevant
Speaker 2: to the Nazis is that if this works, and we're
Speaker 2: talking if this works not in the long run, because
Speaker 2: they're not going to wait twenty years to see if
Speaker 2: this was a good idea. They're going to wait a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks, you know, maybe a few months, and
Speaker 2: if it seems like, hey, it worked, the Venezuela's not
Speaker 2: falling apart, you know, we've got we actually got what
Speaker 2: we think is a good pr out of it. They'll
Speaker 2: try again, and they'll try again. And the Nazis tried
Speaker 2: again and again until they started making checks that their
Speaker 2: asses couldn't cash, right, And that is the thing that's relevant,
Speaker 2: because that is something all fascists have in common, is
Speaker 2: this confidence that gets them very far in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, because if they're willing to gamble and the
Speaker 2: other people aren't willing to confront them or fight or
Speaker 2: gamble themselves, then they'll win by default. But when that
Speaker 2: stops and people start confronting them, the shortcomings of the
Speaker 2: state that they've built and of the militaries that they
Speaker 2: built become increasingly evident. And I do think that's the
Speaker 2: road that we're on. I don't know where it'll end.
Speaker 2: I don't know, if you know, Trump could die of
Speaker 2: a heart attack tomorrow, and maybe whoever takes over will
Speaker 2: be more cautious. I don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 2: but I know that we've started down that road.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 3: I guess we should just say because people will be
Speaker 3: incredibly annoying on the internet. Like saying that it is
Speaker 3: illegal and wrong to kidnap Madua does not mean that
Speaker 3: we think Maduro is great, just in the same way
Speaker 3: as saying the Iraq war is wrong doesn't mean we
Speaker 3: love Sadam Passayin like no, two things can be bad.
Speaker 3: People tell you abough, I should grow up.
Speaker 2: Like I said at the start, I don't think you
Speaker 2: have to. I don't think anyone owes you. And if
Speaker 2: someone is saying, like, hey, you have to answer for
Speaker 2: these bad things Maduro did when critiquing the US for this,
Speaker 2: I think that's bullshit and I think you should tell
Speaker 2: them to fuck off.
Speaker 3: Right, it's not the issue AT's take care.
Speaker 2: Maduro's personal qualities are irrelevant, as is always the case
Speaker 2: with this. What we're doing is illegal and bad.
Speaker 3: It could happen.
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