Judging Freedom - [NEW GUEST ] Prof. Francisco Rodríguez : Mr. President: LEAVE VENEZUELA ALONE !

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

[NEW GUEST ] Prof. Francisco Rodríguez : Mr. President: LEAVE VENEZUELA ALONE !See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Today is Monday, November 3rd, 2025, our guest, a new guest for the show. Maybe won't be new after a while. Professor Francisco Rodriguez, Professor Rodriguez is a graduate of heart. Harvard University. He is a world-renowned economist. He was born in Venezuela. He once worked for the government of Venezuela. He has vast experience, not only in academia, but in business as well as in government. One of his academic posts was at one of my alma maters, the University of Notre Dame. We obviously were not there at the same time. Professor Rodriguez is now at the Carbell School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Professor Rodriguez, welcome here. Thank you for your

time. Thank you for allowing me to approve your expertise. Does Venezuela pose any threat to the national security of the United States of America, Professor Rodriguez? I think that the answer has to be no. In Venezuela, it's a country that has seen its economy collapse. It has its GDP per capita has declined over the course of the past decade by nearly three-fifths. It's a country dealing with very high levels of inflation, high levels of high migration, deep governance problems. And this is a country that's essentially sailed by its own internal problems. It's not a country that is generating threats in any significant sense in terms of national security. And even the so-called criminal elements that have

been emphasized by the current U.S. administration, there's really not that much to them. I mean, sure, there are criminal gangs that have their origin in Venezuela, as there are criminal gangs that have their origin in many other countries of the region. But there's very little, if any, evidence that there's any systematic attempt to destabilize the U.S. I mean, on the contrary, I mean, this is a country that just has a hard enough time keeping order of its own affairs. Is President Maduro the head of a drug cartel as President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio and Secretary of Defense HECSeth have been proclaiming for the past six months? I mean, there's very little evidence of that, but, you know, there's a complex reality here, which is that drug trafficking and narcotrafficking organizations have, I mean, obviously, this is a vast enterprise, and it's permeated the public sector in many countries in the region.

And, you know, just recently, we had a mayoral candidate in Argentina actually going to withdraw from one of the country's most important races based on drug trafficking allegations. So there have been many cases of corruption in Ecuador, in Mexico, in Honduras. I mean, the former president of Honduras, who was actually a very strong ally. of the U.S. and Secretary Rubio actually met with him several times, not as secretary, as Senator Juan Orlando Hernandez, is now in a U.S. jail because of his involvement in drug trafficking. So drug trafficking is a reality in Latin America. Now, there's no evidence that Venezuela is a major conduit for drugs. It's, yes, some drugs, because of its geography, some drugs flow out Venezuela, but the vast majority of the drugs actually flow through the Pacific, many of them

through countries that the U.S. sees the strong allies, for example, such as Ecuador. So there's really no evidence that what's going on in Venezuela is anything different from what you have in the region as a whole, which is kind of a drug industry which exists, which there's a market for, and of course, it's linked with criminal elements. And of course, that there are some figures of the government that are involved in it. But this idea, that there's a systematic attempt of a government to run a drug cartel. There's just no evidence of it. Now, what you've just said is profoundly contrary to what the Trump administration says,

yet the recently retired head of the Drug Enforcement Administration for Latin America. This is a career civil service job, not a political appointee, says the same thing you just said. And here's a guy whose job it was to be in charge of the people pursuing the export of drugs from Latin America into the United States as virtually exonerated Venezuela and has clearly exonerated the government of Venezuela, which brings me to, why does Marco Rubio want regime change? Do you know? Yeah, I mean, I think that if you study Marco Rubio's career, and it's very clear, he's had a very antagonistic vision of the governments, particularly left-wing governments and left-wing authoritarian governments. I mean, there's, like, let's see, yeah, there's no dispute that Mathuro is a dictator, and he ruthlessly stolen election. He's repressed his political opponents. You know, he's not a nice guy, nor. are, nor is the communist government of Cuba,

which is also a big enemy of Marco Rubio, nor is the government of Nicaragua. These are undemocratic governments. But what's happened, I think that what's happened, is that the idea of a military intervention to restore democracy is not something that plays well. I mean, it doesn't play well with American public opinion. It doesn't play well even within the administration.

So they've come up with this other idea, this idea that somehow this is about fighting against drugs. So it's kind of like, I mean, it's very reminiscent of the whole deal with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, except for the fact that here it's actually even clear that there's no evidence of this. I mean, you've cited one example, but there's what the administration is saying is going against all of, both its internal intelligence assessments as well as what intelligence experts have said about the Venezuelan government, what United Nations experts have said. Everything indicates that this is not what's going on there. So this is a pretext, and it's a pretext that could actually land the U.S. in a very costly military intervention, and even potentially into a war.

is maduro the lawful president of venezuela no no but but but but hold on i mean you know there's important and again maturo's not a nice guy and i really dislike him uh the but but you know the reality is that um there more than three quarters of the world's population live under authoritarian governments. And there's a lot of, you know, bad guys who are running countries that are not legitimately elected. I mean, the king of Saudi Arabia is not legitimately elected. The government of China, the Chinese Communist Party, is not legitimately elected.

That doesn't mean that we're going to go with guns blazing into China to try to depose a Chinese government and to impose another government. I mean, part of the real politic of U.S. international affairs is that there are governments whose political system you're not going to like, and there are governments that are going to do things to their citizens that you don't like, and you may object to them, and there are terrains where you do that in the international stage, but you also have to coexist with them. I mean, they're there, and they're there many times for a very complex political region.

Now, if we really think about, you know, the reality of Venezuelan, we delve a bit more about the history. How did Maduro come into power? Maduro came into power because he was a successor of Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez was a very popular Venezuelan politician. To this date, Hugo Chavez is revered by a majority of Venezuelans. Opinian surveys show that more than half, close to 60% of Venezuelans have a positive vision and a positive view of Hugo Chavez in power. So now what's happened is that Maduro was not able to be as popular as Hugo Chavez.

He was also faced with significant economic difficulties. The economy collapsed. And then on top of it, you had U.S. economic sanctions. Things have been very, very difficult in Venezuela. So Maduro's not popular. But on the other side of this, you have an opposition, which in this context, a very deep polarization that wants to drive Chavismo from power. And if you ask a bit where Marco Rubio's stories are about the Venezuelan government

as being just this criminal enterprise they're coming from, they're coming from the Venezuelan opposition. And the Venezuelan opposition is doing the same thing that the Iraqi opposition did when it wanted to get the U.S. to invade so as to put them in power. It's telling the U.S. government everything that they want to hear. It's giving them all the reasons why these are the evil guys and you have to come in and you have to intervene. And history and the story is a lot more complex than that.

So what you really have is a polarized politics, polarized country that has evolved into Chavismo being in power, being very afraid of the opposition. The opposition also, I mean, you know, imagine, imagine that you're in government and you have an opposition that says, oh, you guys are drug traffickers. And what we're going to do is that once we come into power, we're just going to get to get the U.S. to send you guys all to jail in Guantanamo. You know, what are the prospects that such a government would hand over power in that situation in Venezuela or in any country in the world?

So what you really have in Venezuela is a much deeper problem that you get in a lot of polarized societies, that you get in a lot of civil wars, which is that you have a problem of coexistence. And that's the problem that you have to address. What the international community should be doing here is going to Maduro in the opposition and saying, what does it take for you guys to reach a deal? so that you can coexist peacefully in this country so that Venezuela is not exporting its problems to the rest of the world.

That's what it should be doing instead of threatening to invade, which, by the way, the U.S. It's the worst of all possible scenarios because the U.S. is not going to invade Venezuela. The U.S. right now has 10,000 soldiers stationed off of the coast of Venezuela. Venezuela has an army of 109,000 active duty personnel. The U.S. does not have the support of any country with land borders with Venezuela, which would be Brazil or Colombia, so it would have to carry out an amphibious invasion. Carrying out an amphibious invasion with less than a two-to-one ratio in your favor is just complete suicide. So the U.S. is not planning to invade.

What's the U.S. going to do? It's going to throw some tomahawks at Venezuela. Who's it going to kill? It's going to kill regular Venezuela. How is this going to drive by the order for power? So what you're doing is that you're making things worse. You're essentially making Venezuela a more polarized and more militarized in society instead of helping solve the problem.

Before I start asking you some questions about this woman, Machado, what should the international community do about an American president who thinks he can murder people and speedboats off the coast of Venezuela. Well, this is a very serious problem. It's a very serious problem because they're clearly legal experts and human rights experts have condemned this. These moves are, I mean, these assassination. These are extrajudicial executions.

I mean, you know, it's interesting. As of Venezuelan, you asked about, you know, the legitimacy of Maduro, but, you know, there's a government lose legitimacy in one of two ways. One of them is they lose elections. The other one is they start doing things which go against the rule of law. And the strongest argument that there was against Maduro actually had to do with extrajudicial executions by his security forces. Now, let me give you another example.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is standing trial before the international and criminal court because he ordered his security forces to do exactly the same thing that Donald Trump is ordering his security forces to do. For exactly the same reasons. He said, go out and shoot drug traffickers. And now he will likely spend the rest of his life in jail. Now here's the really dangerous terrain that Trump is bringing the U.S. into and the U.S. military forces into.

as long as he carries out these boat sinkings and extrajudicial killings as highness as they are in international waters there is at least it's a it's a gray area a very gray area in terms of jurisdiction because no country actually has explicit criminal jurisdiction in international waters if the u.s decides that it's going to be carrying out airstrikes not invading carrying out, just carrying out airstrikes, doing the same thing in Venezuela. Venezuela is a signatory to the Rome Statute. What that means is that any killings of Venezuelans in Venezuelan territory are under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The U.S. is whether the United States is a signatory or not. Regardless because they happen in Venezuelan territory. In fact, this is the problem that for the past two decades, U.S. governments have been trying to extricate themselves from this problem in Afghanistan, which is that U.S. service members committed human rights violations in Afghanistan, Afghanistan was a signatory to the Rome Statute. Now, you're going to get the U.S. into a similar problem in Venezuela, where you're going to get U.S. service members possibly indicted criminally

for violating and for committing war crimes, or crimes against humanity in Venezuela. And it's even worse because it turns out that if you look at every time the Secretary Hexa announces that one of these killings has occurred, he, not coincidentally says, at the direction of President Trump. Now, it turns out that in most war crimes cases, what is most difficult is to establish chain of command. You cannot find, despite all of the allegations against Maduro, for good reasons, you will not be able to find, any statement in which any member of his cabinet says, oh, I was ordered to do this by President Maduro. Well, Secretary Hex said it's admitting that he's doing so at the orders of President Trump

so that we could very well end up in some years down the line with an international criminal court indictment of President Trump for having committed crimes against humanity. This is a fascinating observation. professor. In my prior life, I was a legal scholar and an expert in the U.S. Constitution, and I did not make the connection that you just did. Leave it to an economist to educate a lawyer in the law. It must be the Notre Dame and both of us, but thank you very much for that. Tell me about, tell us about Maria Mashado. Is she an instrument of the CIA and the Israeli Mossade?

Well, I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I guess if, you know, if the CIA and the Mossad can do their job well, then I shouldn't know if I should definitely not have evidence of whether that's the case. No, I mean, Ms. Machado, whom I've known for years, she is a Venezuelan politician. She's somebody who is deeply committed to her cause. And I think that she is fighting for some things that all Venezuelans would like to see. I mean, Venezuela was a democratic country, and Venezuela is no longer a democracy, it's under a dictatorship. And I think that, and I would recognize in Ms. Machado that last year, she did something quite admirable. She was able to organize the Venezuela in opposition so that it could contest Maduro at the ballot box.

it could get people to vote against Maduro massively. And Maduro lost that election. But not only was she able to lead this organization, but she was also able to organize the activists that were able to collect proof that Maduro had lost. So it's one thing for the government to steal the election. It's another thing for you to be able to prove it. And they collected the tally sheets from nearly 80% of polling stations. in the country. And plus, because of the electoral system that Venezuela has, each of these is

identified with a QR code. And you can effectively sum them up. They're published. The opposition has published them online, and you can see evidence of the opposition's victory. So, I mean, all of my recognition goes to Maria Correa Machado for that. But, you know, I mean, the Venezuelan story is complex, you know, and in the same way as I was telling you, look, you know, there's a lot of bad things about Maduro, but you shouldn't believe everything that you hear about them. Well, there are some good things about Maria Correa Machado. There are some things that are not so good. And I don't mean this necessarily as a judgment on her personality, but I do mean it as a judgment on her political positions. Maria Correa Machado has this uncompromising approach to the Venezuelan conflict. Mara Marie Curia Machado is actually among the oddest Nobel Peace Prices that I have ever seen because this is the only peace recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize that comes out one day after getting the Nobel Peace Prize for a military invasion of her country. Now, this is, I mean, it's not a price for courage. It's not a price even for the defense of democracy. It's a price for the peace of democracy. It's a price for the peace. peaceful resolution of conflicts. Now, really, you know, the thing is that, of course, the Nobel Peace Prize has kind of all of this cloud associated with it, and it's very prestigious. But there's also an underlying reality. And the reality is that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is appointed by Norway's parliament. This is only the only price that's not given by Sweden, it's given by Norway. And the only one that is not given by academic institutions. It's given by a committee that is appointed by a political body.

And if you look at what's been happening in Norwegian politics over the course of past few decades, you see the ascent of the Freedom Party, which has become a much more important. And this is the far-right party in Norway. So basically, Norway's equilibrium has moved to the right, and that's affected the composition of the Nobel Committee. And, you know, in the same way in which the Nobel Committee was giving the a price 20, 30 years ago to some figures which were way on the left. Now it's giving it to some figures who were way on the right.

But I actually think that probably even the Nobel Committee is actually surprised. I mean, let me put it this way. This Nobel price is not aging well. I mean, what you do not want to give a price for somebody that is designed. And this isn't the will offered noble. It is to reward those who have made tangible efforts towards a peaceful resolution of conflicts and to have this person the following day saying, oh, what we want is for the U.S. to invade Venezuela and get rid of Maduro. Here she is.

This is about a minute long, this clip. It's very recent. It's from a podcast saying that Venezuela does pose a threat to the national security. and that it's almost can't believe it, but you hear it out of her own mouth and it's in English. Chris, cut number 11. Who are you in touch with in the administration?

Who are you having these conversations with most these days? I will not get into those details, Michelle, for obvious reasons. The Secretary of State feels the most strong. I certainly believe the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is one of the people in the administration that better understand the, threats that are posed into Latin America and from our region towards the United States. And are you in touch with him?

I have been in touch with him, of course, and with his team and I have to say even further in Congress. It is certainly a matter of national security of the United States and the hemispheric security, but it also brings, and I want to insist on this, the biggest opportunity, for democracy, for stability, and for peace in our region. So she is a tool of Marco Rubio and mouths the line that somehow, without giving reasons, because the reasons don't exist, then Osweila is a threat to American national security. It's one of the reasons I asked you, we'll put aside the Mossad, if she's a tool of the CIA. Yeah. Well, I mean, now here's a couple of things that I think is worth pointing out. I mean, imagine, imagine just for a moment that, you know, the Russian government started killing Americans in international seas, saying, you know, accusing them of drug trafficking or whatever. But imagine also that the government of another country decided that it was going to, you know, forcibly deport hundreds of thousands of Americans.

denying them due process because this is really something important. Actually, interestingly, President Trump yesterday in an interview in 60 Minutes said that Venezuela had exported hundreds of thousands of criminals, hundreds of thousands, he said. I mean, there's approximately 900,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. So he's basically saying that all or most Venezuelan immigrants are criminals that were intentionally deported by Maduro. Or escapies from insane. Or escapees from insane.

So imagine that you were the politician of a country and that another country was stigmatizing your people, your migrants, and that it was killing them in the open seas. Now, imagine being silent with respect to that. Imagine not saying anything. And every day, the U.S. State Department is, showing images that where Venezuelans are being blown up in extrajudicial executions, where the U.S. has actually admitted that it doesn't even know the names of the people

whom it's killing. And imagine not saying anything with respect to that. Now, in that sense, for me, Machado, she actually brings to mind an example of an African leader who was Jonas Savimbi, who was the leader of the UNITA movement in Angola. And this was a movement that was fighting against the Marxist government of Angola. And what it did is that it made a pact with the devil. And it got the support of the South African apartheid regime. And, well, that doomed its political career. I mean, in the end, you know, who, what African leader would want to have the support of the South African apartheid regime?

I think that Ms. Machia is exactly in the same situation. And you're, you hate Maduro and you want to dislaught him from power so much that you're counting with the support of a government that is actively singling out Venezuelans for extrajudicial killings. And you're not willing to say a word about that. Last subject matter, Juan Guaido, was he an instrument of the CIA? I mean, at one point, the federal governor of the United States of America said that he, while he was a grad student in Miami, was the lawful president of Venezuela. I mean, Juan Guido is another example of the failure of Venezuela's opposition and being able to propose a viable plan for the country.

I mean, because Juan Guaido was a completely unknown politician. He was somebody who had gotten about 40,000 votes in an election to be the legislator of the state of Lagoida in Venezuela, which is a relatively minor state. the i mean he was nobody uh most people didn't know him in fact you know the the the the going joke in washington when all of the sudden he came out and proclaimed himself president uh was to call him one why who because really nobody knew who he was uh but but the first trump administration got into its head the idea and this is actually quite peculiar because it's an idea uh that was

very much much pushed forward uh by um by John Bolter, by the former national security advisor, and by Mike Pompeo, of saying, well, you know, let's just, you know, go use this arcane interpretation of the Venezuelan constitution to claim that Juan Guaido is the president of Venezuela, and let's just recognize him, and that's going to magically generate regime change in Venezuela. And it did nothing like that. I mean, Maduro is still in power. If anything, it consolidated Maduro even more. But what you did do is that you gave a small group of the Venezuelan opposition control over billions of dollars in assets in the U.S. In fact, there's, and much of it, we don't know what happened to it because it is under accounts, for example, that are managed by a state-owned oil company. EPA visa does not make its account publics. But we do know that in keeping alive this fictional

government, they spent $340 million out of an account that was held in the Federal Reserve of New York. So just to give you some idea, the whole annual operating budget of the organization of American states is $90 million. So these Venezuelan opposition politicians were able to spend this money in paying for the functioning of a government that does not exist. This really highlights a basic problem in Venezuelan institutions.

And, you know, one of the dangers I mean, most likely the attempt to unseat Maduro is going to fail this time around. But if it succeeds, you might have an even worse problem, which is that the governance problems in this country,

and the lack of institutions are so large that we could very well end up with similar, if not even worse levels of corruption from the Venezuelan opposition. In Venezuela, it really needs a program of institution building. It needs to build democratic institutions and it needs to build institutions that actually restrain and oversee and put checks on its state. If you don't do that, then this country is going to undergo a lot of problems regardless of who's running it. And what we're going to see is that the leadership of the opposition

may not be that different from that of Chavismo and Maduro. If I recall correctly, President Trump during one of his State of the Union addresses, had one Guaido in the audience and introduced him as the president of Venezuela. And of course, the crowd just lapped it up. Professor Rodriguez, this has been a fascinating, conversation. I'm deeply grateful for your time. I hope you'll come back again. I want to mention

your book, your masterpiece, The Collapse of Venezuela, Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012 to 2020. This is the book on the collapse of Venezuela during that eight-year period. Professor Rodriguez, thank you for your time. I hope you'll come back and join us again soon. Thanks very much for an invitation. A pleasure for being here. Sure, all the best to you. Wow, a great conversation, a new guest that I hope can become a regular. Coming up in 30 minutes, if you're watching us live at 2 o'clock this afternoon, more on all of this by our resident expert on Venezuela, Kyle Anzalon, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.