Breaking News from Pod Save America - BREAKING: United States Invades Venezuela, Captures Venezuelan President

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

Tommy and Ben respond to the breaking news that the Trump administration launched strikes on Venezuela and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a special forces raid. They talk about President Trump’s claims that the US will now “run” the country, the illegality of this regime change operation, the plan to let American oil companies cash in, and the many other global implications of this shocking move. For the full conversation and analysis check out the full episode on Pod Save the World here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z26iUCnIdto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Ben, new year, new regime change. Early Saturday morning, the United States launched a regime change operation in Venezuela, where U.S. Special Forces troops, along with FBI agents, blew up key Venezuelan military infrastructure and captured Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife. Trump said the Maduro's are now on a U.S. warship, the USS Iwo Jima, their en route to New York City for prosecution. They are calling this Operation Absolute Resolve. Got to love these names. Trump and Rubiobo suggested that the military operation is, over for now, but that U.S. troops are ready to conduct a second wave of strikes if necessary. Trump said that second wave would be even bigger than the first. But in the interim, Donald Trump

said that we, the United States of America, will be running the country of Venezuela. He literally said that the team of guys behind him would be in charge of a foreign country. That group was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Heggzeth, John Rackcliffe, John Rackcliffe, the CIA director, Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Stephen Miller. So he's a vice-roy now. I guess that collection of great minds is going to dictate terms to Maduro's former vice president, Delci Rodriguez, who has since been sworn in as president, and I guess just run Venezuela as a vassal state through her, though Trump said he's not afraid to put U.S. boots on the ground,

more of that in a bit. So this could be trending towards a military occupation. So we're doing this, the breaking news episode on the fly. We're learning information in real time, but we're going to try to cover what we know about the military operation, how the U.S. is going to be going to be. run Venezuela going forward and what comes next sort of internally there, including what it means for the Venezuelan opposition that desperately wanted this outcome, but now doesn't seem to be part of Venezuela's future, at least according to Trump. We'll talk about Trump's threats to Cuba and

Colombia, what lessons he might learn from this, including very bad ones. We'll talk about the international reactions, such as it is at this moment, the legal questions, Congress's role, and then who Maduro is. And I don't know, we'll try to be a little bit hopeful, like maybe try to sketch out what a good outcome could look like, but I don't think either of us feel like we're trending that direction. But first, Ben, just I have to say, like, this is so much crazier than I ever could have expected. Like, we've been watching this troop build up for a while. We've been covering this. You know, we both, I think, felt like you don't amass 15,000 troops and a couple aircraft carriers in the Caribbean to do nothing. But Trump launching this capture operation against

Majuro and then explicitly saying that his team of AIDS, including, you know, viceroy's Rubio, Hexath, Stephen Miller are now going to run Venezuela until some transition point TBD is just bash it crazy. You know, Trump is now overtly saying also that this was about taking back war that was, or sorry, oil that was stolen from the United States. But yeah, I guess we now have like a petro vassal state in South America, Ben. That's how we're starting 2026. Apparently, Tommy, and happy New Year to you and to the world here.

There's the thing with Trump where you have to take him on his own terms, right? And the reality is he's been basically telling us who he wanted to be in his second term since he got elected. And keep in mind, one of the first things he started talking about after he's elected were Greenland and Panama. And the reason that's important is because, yes, that's not who was on the punch guard today. But we are kind of moved from yesterday into today from one era into a new era here, where the United States is back in the empire of business in this hemisphere. And let's be clear, that's not hyperbole. Like, that's what he said. Now, you know, you go through the roller coaster of the last few hours.

It starts with this operation. It says, you know, I'm saying to myself, okay, we're doing this now. Like we've been saying for months on this podcast, clearly this is about regime change. clearly was a decapitation exercise. And so when the targets started to leak out, you know, the presidential compound, the defense, some, you know, defense ministry associated buildings, it's like, okay, they're trying to decapitate this regime. They did. They got Maduro. They got him a plane. By the way, the U.S. military, its capacity to conduct these kinds of operations, this is what it does best, the kind of going in and getting somebody. It's a night rate. It's what happens after. Exactly. It's a night rate, essentially, on steroids, literally. But, you know, you felt this sense of, okay, well, what's going to happen next? Or, you know, they're probably going to announce some transition plan. Maybe Maria Machado is going to fly back on the opposition leader and say there's going to be an election or that, you know, because of the last election should have gone the other way. We're going to put these people in charge.

And there'll be some kind of familiar, at least rhetoric around this. But I think what was really driving the home point home for me was that press conference where Trump is just like, yeah, we're running this country. You know, Mark Rubio, he's already the archivist. and the Secretary of State and, you know, the National Security Advisor now, he's also, you know, the, you know, pro-consul of Venezuela. And that's why this is such, to me, dangerous moment. Look, look, if I had no Venezuelans who are happy today. They hate Maduro. They've wanted to seem gone for a long time. But normalizing the idea that not just any U.S. president, and I don't think any U.S. president should do this, but this U.S. president in particular,

can just with no authorization, no legal basis, depose the leader of a foreign country and that we're now running that country. And you didn't even talk about drugs, really, in his press comments. You just talked about oil. Barely, yeah. The oil companies are going to get it on there. This is like early 1900 stuff that were back in the soup on. And so there's a lot of different angles and how that plays out in Venezuela in this country,

with the role of Congress and with Trump's own kind of authoritarian trends, how it plays out around the world. But, boy, this is a seismic event. And you're right. it's, it's, you know, for him to come out and just say this, now when he does it, you think, well, of course, that's what he was going to do is say that we're just running the country. But when you hear him say it in those blunt terms, you realize, man, we're not even one year into the Trump presidency. And we're already running foreign countries. That is not the best case in order when it comes to

having an autocrat as your president. Yeah, he made some quip about how the Monroe doctrine is now the Don Roe doctrine, which even the like kind of little coterie of fluffers behind him couldn't find a way a fake laugh at. But yeah, it feels like a very big moment. But let's let's quickly talk about what we know. So according to Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, there were 150 planes involved in this operation. They hit a military airstrip in Caracas. They hit the most important military base in Caracas and then seemingly took out a whole bunch of air defenses all around to facilitate these helicopters going in and out. The Delta Force troops did the operation itself with the FBI. Delta Force are sort of like a coterie of some of the most elite U.S. Special Forces operators in the U.S. military. They are, you know, it's so sensitive and secretive that I think the existence of a lot of these operators and teams is actually classified. But they actually do a lot of the night raids and things that have been conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan and other war zones over the past many years.

Trump said Maduro when they got to his compound, he tried to make it to a safe room, but he was too slow and got arrested with his wife. as he was trying to close the door. No service members were killed that we know of. They said a helicopter was damaged in the process of the raid, but it could still fly. This operation was apparently approved earlier, but they waited until last night because of weather, essentially. And the New York Times and Reuters have both reported that the CIA had a source in Maduro's inner circle. And then Reuters reported that members of the Venezuelan military worked with the U.S. to secure Maduro's arrest. and someone told the Reuters reporter that there was an inside job aided by the military.

So it does seem like there was a lot of, you know, conversations happening behind the scenes, trying to facilitate the ouster of Maduro, but not necessarily the regime. And, you know, Ben, that's a lot of detail that's leaking quickly about like CIA assets inside another government. But it does, it does make interesting Trump's sudden fondness for the current vice president and Trump saying that Rubio has been talking with her and that she sees. seems willing to do whatever the new team of Trump aides that will be running Venezuela says. So we'll see if this really wasn't inside job. I'm sure a lot more will leak out.

But again, the craziest part was, to me at least, Trump saying the U.S. is now going to run Venezuela. And here he is answering a reporter's question about how that would actually work and whether the U.S. military will now be in Venezuela occupying the country. Let's play that clip. Does the U.S. running the country mean that U.S. troops will be on the ground? How will that work? Well, you know, they always say boots on the ground, oh, so we're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to. Can you explain the exact mechanism by which you're going to run the country? Are you going to designate a U.S. official to coordinate?

It's all being done right now. We're designating people. We're talking to people. We're designating various people, and we're going to let you know who those people are. That would run Venezuela. Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me. We're going to be running it. seems to be like these guys are going to figure it out. I mean, it's like making the post-Iraq war planning look crystal clear to me at the moment. Yeah, it wasn't subtle, but also wasn't detailed. And I think that kind of sums this up. On the operation, look, they were clearly planning this for months. You know, they were pre-positioning all these military assets. They're probably sneaking in CIA assets, probably Delta Force guys into the country so that they could have this kind of multifaceted

operation. They were probably putting the squeeze on people in Maduro's inner circle and in the military at the same time that they were doing that. And look, that raises questions, which we'll get to later, tell me, because that means that they were lying to Congress the whole time, because there are people that were going up there and testifying that this wasn't about regime change. We're not planning regime change. We'll come back to Congress and ask you if we do regime change. So that that's a, you know, Trump's chief of staff very recently told Vanity Fair that air strikes within Venezuela would require congressional approval. But then when asked today about whether Congress had even been notified in advance, Rubio said no, because this was

like a hair trigger operation and it could have leaked. And then Trump like jumped in and was like, well, in a lot of ways, they knew we were coming and have for a long time because there were a lot of boats out in the Caribbean. But yeah, I know, we still couldn't have told Congress, which, you know, again, he's completely undercutting his rationale. But sorry, continue. No, that's right. And also lying, I think there were even officials that testified, similar to what Susie Well said. But then on the, on the, what happens now, it's clear what the path that they're going to try to execute here, which is that you have Maduro, an ideological guy, clinging to power, running the place as an autocrat, but you have like powerful actors inside

Venezuela, like the military that controls, you know, not only a lot of the guns, but also kind of some of the black economy that's emerged. And essentially what Trump's trying to do is go and keep this kind of rotted state in place underneath essentially the United States running the place, say to them, starting with the vice president, you know, if you don't basically allow us to run your country, we might just arrest you like Maduro. And he kind of made threats like this. Explicit threats, yeah. Yeah. And so what's interesting is he's not saying what you'd expect, which is we're going to come in.

Maybe we're going to install the person we think ran the last election or we're going to say that there's going to be an election in 60 days. And who knows, maybe we'll get some of that later. But actually, they're just going to try to kind of keep this, you know, they don't want to antagonize the military. because that's how you might get a civil war. And so maybe if we just give everybody a cut here, we'll bring the American roll companies in, and he was very clear about that, and start pumping oil and spread the money around enough

that people in Venezuela will let us do that. Now, that's a pretty big roll of the dice. Let me just raise a few questions, Tommy. The boots on the ground, I think, would be for the oil facilities, because he's talking about, you know, the U.S. oil companies going in there and rebuilding infrastructure. by the way, it sounded like American taxpayers might have to put some of the bill on that. So you need to guard the oil facilities.

You'd probably have to guard the oil refineries, which, by the way, are not next to the oil facilities in Venezuela. The oil facilities are in the middle of country. The refineries are up in the north? So then are we going to be guarding the pipelines, too? We could be looking in a scenario where are U.S. troops going to be literally guarding U.S. oil companies in Latin America? That's a question I have.

Then the question is, like, under what possible legal basis is the United States running this country, how does that work? Like, there are ministries, who's going to be providing services in Venezuela? If there is violence, and there are a lot of people that have a lot of reason to be pissed off in Venezuela, who's going to deal with the violence in the country? You know, what is the role of the opposition? He basically was dismissive of her. He was asked about her, and he said, she's a nice lady, but she doesn't have a lot of support in the country. So so much for this being about democracy, you know, it's not. It's about oil. Spoiler alert. So, you know, U.S. regime change operations always look the best on the first day. When the military

does something extraordinary, then there's pictures of a guy like Maduro who's a bad guy on a U.S. aircraft being brought to justice, et cetera. But all we know about what's coming next is that the U.S. oil companies are going down there. That's like literally the only thing we know. All the things underneath that about how this country will be run, what the role of our military will be. Tommy, I got a how. What's your over under him when Eric Prince puts in a bid to basically become the Venezuelan security services? So there's a lot of grift and probably a fair amount of violence to come here. There's a lot we still need to see play out.

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