Bulwark Takes - Ex-CIA Officer: Scott Bessent Just Gave Putin One Hell of a Talking Point (w/ Marc Polymeropoulos)

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Sam Stein and former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos give their takes on Russia’s attempted attacks in Germany, the growing threat of Russian hybrid warfare across Europe, and why Germany’s muted response could invite even more aggression. They also dig into the extraordinary contradiction at the heart of U.S. policy: American intelligence is helping Ukraine fight Russia while the Trump administration cozies up to Putin and welcomes Russia back onto the world stage.Plus, Sam and Marc take a closer look at the Trump administration’s strange new Venezuela oil deal, the questions it raises about American power and influence, and the increasingly uncomfortable gap between the GOP’s rhetoric about socialism and what the administration is actually doing.For a limited time, Tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box! Go to https://TempoMeals.com/BulwarkTakesThere’s big news from The Bulwark: Marc and investigative journalist Michael Weiss are launching a brand-new podcast, Reporter and the Spy. The show will explore the fascinating intersection of journalism and espionage, drawing on their firsthand experience reporting from and operating in the world’s most dangerous places.Subscribe to The Bulwark so you don’t miss Reporter and the Spy when it launches this fall. If you value independent reporting, sharp analysis, and people who actually know what they’re talking about, become a subscriber today.

Hey, everyone, it's me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock, and I'm joined by Mark Palmeroplas, who is now, it's official. I mean, the cat's out of the bag, Mark. And I fought it. I fought it. I said, I don't want this guy in the Bullock universe of Mark. And Michael Weiss are joining our little family, and they have a new show. It's called The Reporting the Spy.

Awesome new podcast. It's starting in the fall. We announced it today. Why don't you like, let me see the floor for like a minute and you can kind of riff about what you're going to try to do with this show, why people should subscribe and tune in. So, I mean, it's a show about the intersection of espionage and journalism, which actually is really similar because what do you do? You know, you go around the world to report on topics. You have sources. And you get really involved in this subject matter, you know, whether you cover

the war in Syria or in Afghanistan or Iraq, people become passionate about it. And so it's, you know, both a journalist and a CIA case officer are practitioners. You know, we're not sitting. in D.C. We're not armchair quarterbacks. We're actually living the life. And so Michael Weiss, who's a dear friend of mine, you know, we spent, you know, years in our friendship just shooting this shit talking and all of a sudden, we're like, wait a second, like, let's do a podcast on this. And when we approached you all, it was a really kind of neat, you know, meld of these ideas. But, you know, we have fun together. We laugh. We make fun of each other relentlessly. You know, he's a New Yorker. I'm originally from New Jersey, although I'm a Wild Red Sox fan,

as you know. We'll talk about my love of heavy metal music and just make fun on Michael's hair all the time. And so it's going to be awesome. But I think people are going to love it because it's actually, they see us having fun. And we're also pretty smart on these subjects. Well, I wouldn't go that far. But yeah, you're having fun. No, I would like to think that reporters and spies are basically the same thing, but I'm not cool.

I'm definitely not as cool as you. Spycraft is much harder and much more interesting than being a reporter. Just going to be level some folks. All right. All right. So let's talk about what's going on in the world. So the idea here is, and I'm sitting in for Michael, because Michael's actually going to be doing Tim's pod.

So I'll do my best impression of him. But I kind of want to, I don't know shit like he does. And I want you to explain what's happening because basically right now, we have this G20 summit in Asheville, North Carolina. And the big sort of macro story, there's two. One is that Russia has been essentially like let back into the club. and Trump is totally fine with it. And it's very Trumpian that he's fine with this.

And we can spend an hour going through the kind of psychology of why Trump just continuously cozes up to Putin. We're not going to do that. The other one is this other story that's kind of roiling Europe, which is that Russia was behind this hybrid attack in August, in Germany. And can you just sort of unpack a little bit for people who have not been following that second story? What actually happened here? So a massive story because it almost was a mass casualty event.

The Russian intelligence services, and clearly the Germans have uncovered this now, probably with our help, but they tried to destroy an aircraft with a drone, with an explosive-laden drone. And if only not for the heroic actions of a maintenance worker on the ground in the airport Leipzig, who spotted this, there could have been a tremendous loss of life. And then there were two other subsequent attacks or attempted attacks using explosive, of laden drones. And it was, I think, pretty obvious to all of us that this was going to be, you know, the Russians behind it. I mean, there's a long history of Russian attacks on this. And we could, I could give you a list. Friends of mine from my old world, you know, who are retired now,

have actually been cataloging this because the Russians have been doing, you know, evil shit all over the place in Europe. But this one was pretty brazen. And I think the Germans, again, with our help, have uncovered that it was the Russian security services. And so what was expected and what did occur is that the German government actually said the Russians did it. So that's a good thing. But the problem that I think people have to understand is, you know, there has never been really sanctioned against the Russians for these things that we expected the Germans to do more.

And all they said was, well, we're going to close the Russian consulate in Bonn. And we're going to close this cultural center in Berlin's bullshit. And you know what they didn't do? They didn't say we're going to give these tourist cruise missiles, which are really effective to the Ukrainians. And my contention has been all along that the only way to really deal with the threat of Russia is to help Ukrainians kill more Russians. People might be horrified, but I say it openly. That's what Russia will understand.

And so now they've kind of gotten away once again with what was a terrorist attack, attempted terrorist attack on Europe. Maybe I'm like naive and sort of missing the point. But this strikes me as insane, right? Like this is an attack on a NATO ally. Had it gone through and had there been casualties, let's just pent the hub. had it had gone through, had there been casualties? What would have that meant? It would have meant Russia. And again, when we talk about hybrid warfare, you use that term, and I think, and I have used it as well, I think we should stop using that. It's open warfare now. Hybrid warfare

is when it's kind of a, it's a step underneath kind of open kinetic exchanges, except this was a terrorist attack. This is not hybrid warfare. This is an open warfare. And so if there had been five, 10, 15, 20, hundreds of Germans killed, I think there would have been a little. a lot more political pressure on the government of Chancellor Mertz to respond and other allies. And so, you know, I have a lot of contacts within the German national security. I mean, that's a direct NATO attack, right? It is. That's a direct NATO attack.

As I was talking to my contacts this morning, who are German, and they're a little bit dismayed at the lack of the kind of the strong German response. They said very clearly, it's going to take people dying to have this become a more serious matter. Now, why is that? Well, there's German elections. There's some domestic politics. German elections are coming up. The German right is ascending.

And within the coalition of the German government, there's some problems because the defense ministry is held by an individual who doesn't want to do this, does not want to hold Russian responsible. But Sam, you'll understand when I say this. This is going to sound familiar because there's a fear of what we call it escalation with Russia, that somehow Russia, if we do something back that Russia is going to, what, nuke Ukraine or something ridiculous. This paralyzed the Biden administration, to be honest, has. certainly done the same, to some extent, for the Trump administration, but has absolutely, it's been endemic in Europe and Germany had a chance to get things right. And they missed it.

And by not responding forcefully, it only encourages Russia to do more. And a really important point for the listeners here is a lot of people who travel around Europe who are what, American. There's certainly Americans could get caught up in this Russian kind of terrorist activity. And I think back to my time, a former deputy. I would Russia make this provocation, though? Like, why would Russia go into Germany and do this when they have so much else going? on. I mean, they're obviously bogged down incredibly in Ukraine. It has not gone according to plan. What, what's the point here? So the Russian intelligence services, you know, as much as, you know, I have battled them throughout my career, they're not dumb. And they understand, this is a perfect

location to do this because they understand it's going to be a very divisive issue inside of Germany. So in some ways, they're testing, they're provoking, they're provoking, but the controversy in Germany right now is exactly what the Russians want. And so, you know, at the end of the day. They're very good. They've done it to us. Remember, like the 2016 election interference. All the things they did. Yeah, but there's a difference, man. There's election interference. Right, right. Yeah. Killing people is like, and I guess I quibble with that idea. Like, if, I don't know German politics. So again, I'm not even if you, but like, if you launch a terrorist attack and you kill a dozen Germans, like, I don't know. Is that going to divide the German populace

or is it going to unite them around saying, hey, fuck you, Putin? Well, you know, they're testing that So far, Germany has been so weak in their response, they probably think they can get away with it. Now, you're right in the sense of they haven't crossed that threshold. One of these times, one of these attacks is going to kill a lot of people. Now, there have been small numbers of people. They've gone after in Europe, munitions factories, lots of things that are dedicated to helping the Ukraine war effort. But Putin knows how to test and poke and prod. And look, you know, there was one instance back in 2018 in the deserts of Syria, a place called Derazur,

Syria is a place I served. I know it very well in which the Wagner group, which is the Russian paramilitary forces, attacked an element of the U.S. Delta force. That's the U.S. Army's premier special operations unit. And General Mattis at the time ordered that Delta basically annihilate, kill all the Russian paramilitaries. And guess what happened in response? Nothing. The Russians back down because the only thing you do with the bully, you've got to punch them in the face. And Europe hasn't learned that. Germany hasn't learned it. Very dismaying. And, of course, the Trump administration is not helping at all. is brought to you by Tempo Meals. Now, during the week, my schedule is pretty nonstop.

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was among the things that he pressed Putin on was to not attack NATO. Again. Again. Well, now we know it's like, okay, you did that. Don't do that again. Yeah. But we assume that that might be it. And yet at the same time, Russia's, Russia representative obviously is in Asheville at the G20.

I mean, like, which is people understand this is like kind of crazy. I'm not clear it's not clear at all what Russia gave up to get this type of incredible PR victory about being welcome back into the world community like this. But here they are. And Trump says we, this is a Trump quote, we like getting along with everybody. One of the reasons that I'm so successful that I get along with everybody. Except our allies. So what is? Except our allies, by the way. Except the Ukrainians occasionally when Zelensky's in the Oval.

So what is like the, again, it's so many layers, but what, how would you even disqual? describe what the U.S.-Russia relation is. Maybe it's on different courses, right? There's different tracks where different people are doing different things. So, Sam, you nailed it. And it's because we don't have a foreign policy process. You know, ordinarily what happens in the U.S. government is you have the National Security Advisor.

He will chair the National Security Council where there are offices that have responsibility over different regions. Those offices then will coordinate an overall U.S. policy objective with all the different agencies with CIA, with DOD, with State Department, Department of Treasury, Commerce. And so there's a unified policy with a certain objective. This administration doesn't do that. You know, I think they sit around the Oval and they write on a napkin what they want to do. And, of course, there's whiplash.

So you do have different parts of the government acting in different ways. I mean, the CIA, and this has been written about, you know, the New York Times that has done some tremendous reporting on this, has been really integral in providing targeting assistance to the Ukrainians to kill Russians. Yet you also have Trump then sending off, you know, the two worst envoys in the history of U.S. diplomacy, Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff, to botch everything having to do with peace talks and, in essence, pressure the Ukrainians to make concessions. And then you have Bessent at the G20. None of this makes sense. So there is a overall kind of policy dysfunction. But this is across the board in other arenas as well. And so what this does is this confuses everybody. It confuses our allies.

It confuses our adversaries. And it's because Trump just does things on a whim. And it's just a government that doesn't function properly. But the fact is CIA, my old, my old organization, organization is helping the Ukrainians kill Russians while we are cozying up at the G20 to the Russian you know, uh, you know, economic team. It just doesn't make any sense. Okay, but if you were like, let's, I'm kind of curious about this because if you were in the field right now and you're working on the Russia file, I mean, surely this complicates things, right? Because one day you go in with some directives and then wait a second, uh, you know, another agency is doing it the exact opposite way. So like, can you get a little granular here? Like, how would this, how would you go about

your business in this climate. And this is why my old job as a case officer, which was one of the greatest jobs I ever have. You know, when I was promoted to be a manager, I hated my life. But when I was a street case officer, that meant I was running agents. I mean, I was right, you know, so that's a, that's a Russian who betrayed, I would argue, but that didn't betray their country, betrayed their government to spy for the United States based on several factors, but often it is ideology, meaning that we're the good guys. America, and you know, I believed in this stuff is the bright, shining city on the hill. That's the old JFK quote. And, it's that we believe in political and economic liberalism, you know, religious freedoms.

And so agents will spy for us because of that. So what do I do for an operational meeting on the streets of Moscow or somewhere with a Russian who's saying, hey, first of all, your president looks a little cozy with Putin. And you're all over the place in your policy. And by the way, like, I don't trust anything. You told me you're going to keep me safe and secure. And so the role of a case officer is really hard because the ideal part of this is that, hey, you're doing this for the right reasons and you're helping influence U.S. policy.

All that, that's the schick I used all the time. And it was true. But now, I don't know how you do that. It's way harder now. And how about even, how about as a case officer too? What if I was there in a different capacity working with a friendly government, with a government in Europe working against the Russians, who all of a sudden is saying, hey, what are you guys doing?

You know, and so this dysfunction makes our, my old jobs, the case officer, just incredibly difficult. I don't know how my friends in the field are doing this. It's going to be a lot of handholding with our agents. Do you think that the Germans' muted response may have been less about their domestic politics and more about us pressuring them to not escalate? So there is that question in that how far should Germany go forward leaning on this if they know the U.S. isn't going to back them? So we talk about invoking kind of the principles of NATO, collective defense treaties, but if the United States is not going to ever come to NATO's defense. Maybe the German thinking is like,

what's the, why bother? Now, I heard something today, and this is kind of a piece of breaking news that I think is going to be really interesting. And this is my German contact said, the German response might have been muted today because there's more coming. And so there's so much more damning evidence that they might put forward in which they will have to rally the populace. And the Germans might be strong on this.

But in some ways, I'm not sure if that's going to be the case. but Russia is going to keep going, so I guess we're going to wait for a mass casualty event. I mean, you really have to wait for people to die. It's horrible. Yeah. I'll just note that the write-up of the G20 yesterday, yesterday being, sorry, two days ago being Monday,

we're recording on Wednesday. German finance minister Lars Klingbiel, I think I'm probably mispronouncing that, told reporters that he made clear that he would not pose for a group photo with the Russian finance minister, noting that such a photo has not taken place in recent years. Now, that's a strong review. Oh, you got them.

Oh, it's tough. Oh, Lars. Let's go. Come on, Lars. I mean, come on. Or we could do this. You could give. Turn it down, Lars.

You could give a tourist missile. That's a cruise missile fired from a German aircraft. No, no, Mark. Mark, not posing for the photo is strong enough, okay? Let's not go too crazy here. I want to play Scott Besson, who was at the, who was interviewed today this morning on Wednesday. I think he is in Asheville, G20. I might be mistaken with that.

But this is what we're dealing with because so people are like, well, they're cozying up to, Trump's, of course, causing up to Putin and their misdirection. But it's not just Trump. It's like Scott Besant this morning is talking about the global energy crisis. And it's very clear what's causing it. The war in Iran is causing this current crisis. But Scott, not according to Scott Besson because Scott Besson has to make sure that Donald Trump is not mad at him. So who does he scapegoat?

He scapegoats, he scapegoats. He scapegoats the Ukrainians. Not even the Russians for starting the war in Ukraine. It's Ukrainians for retaliating by hitting Russian oil depots or whatever. Let's play Scott Besson. And then after that, Mark, I'll get your reaction. We are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refine products.

So that is creating upward price pressure on a global basis. And then the conflict in Iran. And the conflict in Iran will end and prices will come down. All right. I should take it back. He did mention Iran. Second. Not first.

But the first time when he's like with a war, when he started saying the war in, I was like Iran, right? No. Ukraine. Okay. So the best part about that. So it's interesting because Brian Kilmead, who is interviewing him, actually is a huge supporter of the Ukrainian effort.

And Kilmead. Kill me did the same thing I did right there. If you looked at it, he went like this. So, because where'd that come from? But of course, Besson. Where did that come from? I mean, you know, but Besson Bessett, the one who yesterday also talked about the malcontents or something. I mean, you know, this is some of the worst PR anytime he speaks.

It's quite extraordinary. I think this is also someone who is sort of respected before he took this job. But ultimately, you know, they're, again, they throw stuff onto the wall, blaming this and blaming that. Blaming the Ukrainians. I mean, it's just utterly ludicrous. And, you know, I think the one thing with this issue of the Russians being at the G20 is you almost want to just get past this summit, you know, and nothing bad happening. I mean, it's always when you have these international forum, it's just, you know, can we actually avoid some kind of catastrophe here?

And so I usually try to think you try to get some sort of concrete, you know, agreement or some, you know, global political advancement out of these summits. but this is the, this just seems like they're meeting for the sake of meeting. I mean, I don't really understand it. And I don't know why we did this. It just doesn't make any sense. And, you know, the problem, though, is that, you know, the outrage that we always feel and, you know, everyone can comment on X like I do and like you do. Like, you do, like, this is ridiculous. It's disgusting.

What are we doing? But, you know, we've said that about 400 different things. And so, you know, what else is, you know, and Trump will say something outrageous, you know, once again. But the idea of just, you know, that he wants to get along with everybody, certainly not getting along with his European allies. and so he seems to cozy up to our adversaries much more. All right. There's one other story I want to talk about and then I'll let you go. It deals with oil.

It deals with allies. It deals with our credibility on the globe. And it's kind of like a bit of a shocker as you read more about it. It's opaque and vague and it feels shady. But what I'm talking about is this deal that we have struck essentially to have a, I guess, a state stake in the. this Venezuelan oil company called North American Blue Energy Partners. So this happened over the weekend.

It was announced, I think, late on Friday. And the contours of the deal, and I'm going to do my best, it's very vague. Again, like I said, it's opaque. I'm going to talk about the bullet points that Axios put together about this. So under this deal, Venezuela will receive about 16% to 40% of production. That depends on the field. And it will also get income taxes and whatever tax revenues come from this. increased oil production in these fields. The U.S. will put in no money, but it will get a 35%

equity stake and up and get 20% of the aftertax oil at production costs. So about $30 a barrel. All right. So basically, we have contracted out through this company, North American Blue Energy Partners, oil production. And we're giving this guy, Alejandro Bentecourt Lopez, who runs that company, you know, the protection of the U.S. military, the guarantee that we will be there for him to help stand up this oil production in exchange for us basically getting 35% equity or $30 a barrel. And Benticourt is kind of a shady character. I mean, again, I'm reading from different outlets, but Al Jazeera says in 2021, the organized

crime and corruption reporting projects said Bentacourt was involved in corruption and money laundering networks linked to the Venezuelan state. Over the past decades, he has faced money laundering investigations in the U.S., Spain, and Switzerland. He has been arrested twice in the UK following extradition requests from Switzerland and Spain overledged money laundering. So this seems like good old-fashioned colonialism to me. Imperialism is what I was going to say.

Imperialism, yeah. Oh, imperialism. I think that's a better term. imperialism. How does this work? And is this safe? I don't feel like it's safe. I mean, look, we can all kind of try to pretend to be oil analysts now. I mean, I did the same thing. I'm trying to unscrew what this whole thing is. But it does smell. Something's not right here because essentially you have the same players from the Maduro regime who are involved. Delci Rodriguez, who's now the head of the country. And this guy Betancourt, you know, who was completely

corrupt before, part of got this, that kind of oligarch class in Venezuela, but seems to have somehow convinced Marco Rubio and others that this is the way forward. And, you know, I look at this actually in two ways. One is you kind of wonder what Marker Rubio is doing here because he was, you know, I would, you know, testify in front of him when he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was the vice chair. He's very smart on foreign policy, and he believed in human rights. He believed in economic and political freedoms, and especially in the Western hemisphere. And now he's cutting these deals. Apparently he didn't believe. Apparently he didn't believe in that. Well, now it look, this is classic imperialism. It's weird. I mean, the idea the Republicans

are screaming about socialism and the mom dani's the world, yet we are actually kind of running a command economy of our own is bizarre. But when it comes down to is Venezuela fine. But I think all eyes, and I mean this seriously, you know, have to be looking at the real big issue, which is Cuba here and my friends, and I have these really eclectic bunch of friends from my old life in South Florida. This is the Cuban exile expac community. And they're looking at Venezuela and they're like, don't pull this shit on Cuba because you have to have human rights. You have to have political and economic freedom. And whatever the hell is going on there is not. And one of the really interesting things, and I think you all have covered it too, is you saw some of the Cuban American

representatives down in South Florida who originally looked at the Cuba, literally looked at this Venezuela deal and said, hey, what's, you know, what's going to? You know, what's going to be? You know, going on here. They got some memo from the White House and now they're kind of praising it. But there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of those who care about the Western Hemisphere. Like, what are we doing in Venezuela? This really smells. And let me go back to the notion I said before, America, the bright shining city on the hill. I can sit here and it's spent half an hour and tell you how our efforts in the Western Hemisphere, if done right, we'll bring political freedoms to Venezuela and Cuba, but we're not doing them right. And so now this just looks like regular old,

you know, imperialism. And so, come on, what are we doing here? So I need to make a correction. There are other outlets that say the expected U.S. holdings will be 55% of the 17% offals, not 35% equity stakes. So it's even more than that. But I want to explore this idea, which is, you know, the risks involved. So I don't really understand from this deal exactly how much resources we're going to have to put on the ground in Venezuela. And maybe there are none.

Or maybe we just contracted out. But, you know, it's a fragile government, right? Like, this is not, you know, this is not, you know, a steady bedrock government. It was a socialist government on Maduro. It remains so now. I suppose they haven't had elections that we would qualify as free. So, but like, you know, what kind of security risks are we looking at here if you do enhance the U.S. footprint in order to get to these oil fields in order to give this guy

Bentacourt the implied military protection that he needs in order to do these operations? Well, again, and kind of looking at this from kind of the macro level, that what needs to happen is there has to be some type of security for U.S. companies to invest. No one's going to pour money billions in there with kind of this with a chaotic situation. And so, so in the one hand, perhaps this is all kind of a lot of nothing. This never happens because what companies are going to rush in there. But here's the other point. If as, well, let's say if there's a possibility, perhaps a strong one, that a Democrat wins

the White House in two years, all this shit's going away. There's no way they're going for this stuff. because what we care about, we should care about, the Republicans used to care about, is human rights and political and economic freedoms in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, that's something that really was the bedrock of the Republican Party for a long time.

So this idea of, you know, the U.S. being some kind of guarantor. You know, this is cooked up from a strange office in the Pentagon. It's really weird. Nobody really understands it. But what is dismaying on this is that the, you know, the notion that we are going to try to change the situation on the ground for the betterment of the Venezuelan people. I actually still care about that stuff.

Like, I, you know, I would love to see regime change in Cuba for the betterment of the Cuban people, for example. But we can't just do this imperialistic kind of land grab taught. I mean, Delci Rodriguez is a Cuban, there's a lot of people who think there's a Cuban agent. You know, the new head of Venezuela is actually a communist. Like, what are we doing? The Venezuelans are not any better. So, you know, a little, to your point, no, no, to your point, it's democracy is not the first order of business.

here. There's a political story up right now about basically like what the hell is going on. We were supposed to get like the, there was a little bit of a fig leaf that when they went in and grabbed Maduro, well, we're going to transition towards a democratic rule. That clearly has not happened. Now the opposition party in Venezuela is like, wait a second, what, what's actually happening here is Rodriguez just being put in this position. It's essentially like a more pliant and by the way, Sam, Trump doesn't give a shit about this. Like I, you know, I thought Ruby a might And that's the thing that's really weird and dismaying. And there's this art.

Some Republican foreign policy types argue with me and say, no, this is a transition to eventual bullshit. This is just, you know, nothing has really changed in Venezuela. And so you better, and I'm telling you, you better not pull that shit in Cuba because the South Florida, you know, Cuban community ain't going to go for it. You know, it's funny because there's been other articles about how they're actually deporting some Cuban immigrants here to Africa. I don't really know if they're playing the long game strategically in the politics. To your point about democracy and not being at the forefront. front of any discussions. It's clearly not. And you referenced this, but the congresswoman who tweeted is Maria Elvira Salazar, who put up a tweet initially says, any oil deal with Venezuela's

interim regime has an expiration date. The day President Trump leaves the White House. Venezuela's acting dictators just buying time. The regime has stolen American investments before and will go, we'll do it again the moment it can. A lasting deal can only be made with a democratically elected government that respects the rule of law, protects private property, and is backed by strong democratic institutions, no democracy, no lasting deal, period. Seems totally sensible to me. She then erased that and put up this treat. The U.S. Venezuela oil deal is a great deal. That's amazing. The Venezuel people for years, China took advantage of Venezuela's weakness to buy its oil at deep discounts.

Now America is stepping in the American investment influence offer Venezuela's a path toward prosperity stability and security delsey is the wrong person to make this deal with we want so she snuggled in there we want this deal to last 100 years only administration backed by strong democratic institutions in the rule she got a memo someone susy wiles called her something saying uh uh you're a gear out of marco i marco called her marco i think marco's marco's keeping times i you know the the gig was up when um poor maria carina machado the nobel prize winner uh who had been struggling for the venerco as well in opposition, went into the White House and gave Trump her Nobel Prize. Like literally, he was like, here you go.

Thank you for being such a champion. And then they're, you know, after Maduro raid and they were like, are you thinking about backing Machado to like, you know, maybe take over? They're like, nah. No, I don't know. Sorry, this big things in my ear, it's than her Nobel Prize. I can't hear you. It's like.

No, it's embarrassing. I mean, so, you know, again, this is not, this is a really bad look for the United States who had a history of kind of imperialist behavior in the Western Hemisphere, we seem to be doing it again. What are we doing here when you have kind of two countries, Venezuela and Cuba, who, you know, you would seem ripe for just incredible political and economic change and we're not doing it. It's just, and there's, it's, there's something that really bothers me about this. Oh, yeah, I should.

All right, man. Well, that was just a taste of what people are going to get when they watch pod. I'm like a poor substitute for Michael Weiss, so it's going to get much better than this. You have much better hair than Mark. Your hair is better than Michael Weiss. He's got fine hair. It's just you don't like how his hair looks. He's doing the gel thing now.

It's a little weird. He's slicking it back and it's all gross. Come on. I'm not here to comment on Michael's appearances. He looks great to me. All right, Mark, Palmyropolis. Thank you, man. I appreciate.

I'm so excited to have you with the family. I think this is going to be great. People should just check our YouTube page. It's going to appear in due time. But in anticipation of it, hit subscribe to the YouTube page. You're going to get your videos there. We're also going to have it in all the feeds. Apple, Spotify, et cetera, et cetera.

Just be on the lookout for it. And if you like this stuff, you could also get us on substack. Subscribe to our substack where all these things are posted anyway. Support the mission, become a paying subscriber. We love you and appreciate it. Mark, have a good one man. I'll be in touch, okay? Red Sox are going to win the World Series.

I don't believe it, but I hope so. Thank you, Mark.