Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump's Top Venezuela Aide Turns Against Him on Invasion

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Michael Popok reports on Trump’s last Special Envoy to Venezuela, lambasting the Administration for having no plan to install democracy in Venezuela, but more focused on must making the current Russian-puppet regime more docile to do US Big Oil’s bidding. The attack has left Senior Administration officials scrambling to deny Big Oil’s involvement as Trump makes Venezuela less secure by forcibly sidelining the true opposition Democratic Party in exile, who won’t be so “pro-US Big Oil.” Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast⁠ Legal AF: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af⁠ MissTrial: ⁠https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial⁠ The PoliticsGirl Podcast: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast⁠ Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan⁠ Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen⁠ The Weekend Show: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show⁠ Burn the Boats: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats⁠ Majority 54: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54⁠ Political Beatdown: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown⁠ On Democracy with FP Wellman: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman⁠ Uncovered: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We know who's in charge of Venezuela. It is U.S. Big Oil who bought and paid for a president. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the words from an interview of Donald Trump's last Venezuelan special envoy, Elliot Abrams, who's come out against the administration and Marco Rubio and said, look, we see it. This is about Big Oil and the Venezuelan plutocrats going to Mar-a-Lago and trying to get not a replacement regime,

democracy installed in Venezuela, but just a compliant regime with a decapitated Maduro off, but everybody else in his apparatus present, but have them be compliant and bend the knee, not to the Trump administration, to big oil. And this is Marco Rubio's wet dream. He's been trying to take over as Secretary of State places like his ancestral homeland, Cuba. There's a direct link between Marco Rubio, Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia that I'm going to talk about. But what people who are independent-minded, who are critics of the Trump administration, are saying is the following equation, good on getting Maduro out, bad on leaving the regime apparatus in from top to bottom.

And it's not just Delci Rodriguez. It's her brother who runs the national legislature. It's Deezado Cabello, who's the interior minister that is likely Maduro's number two. It's Vladimir Padrino Lopez, who's the head of the military. And it's the Cuban government, all supporting Venezuela, as they always have. There's a reason that more than 40 Cubans died in the kidnapping of Maduro, because Maduro pays Cuba in oil for mercenaries from Cuba to guard him. Cuba is a puppet state of Russia, as is Venezuela.

So we just picked a fight with a puppet state of Russia, basically threatening them to say, we're in charge of the Western Hemisphere, and by extension, by implication, seating the Europe, Eastern and Western to Russia and places like Ukraine and China, whatever it wants to do, just stay out of the Western Hemisphere.

That appears to be the Dunrow Doctrine. that's been espoused by Donald Trump. Look, folks, this is what happens when you get a mentally declining president who every day is worse than the day before mentally, who's taken three dementia tests by his own admission in the last 11 months. This is what happens when you have no plan other than what's good for big oil. I'm Michael Popock. You're on the Midas Touch Network.

Let's get to the reporting here and support, A.F. both at home and abroad. Let's start with Elliot Abrams, the last special envoy for the Trump administration to Venezuela in the first term. He went on CNN. He wrote an op-ed piece taking on the administration. Here's a clip from his CNN interview in which he says, where is the push for democracy? Where is the plan to reinstall the government in exile who are Democrats, who are Democratic? Where is that plan? And have we just bent the need of Bigel First of all, the United States should be demanding the expulsion of Cuban and Iranian officials from Venezuela. We should be demanding the liberation of all political prisoners right now.

And we should be supporting Edmundo Gonzalez, who won that election in 2024 with a 70% landslide. I thought that was the worst point in the president's press conference yesterday. the insult, really, to Maria Corina Machado, who is the leader of Democratic forces in Venezuela, that's what we should be supporting. The guy who won the election should be president. Yeah, the president said there was not broad support. It was not respect for Machado, which you're referring to right there. I'm wondering if you think the president also is leveling with the American public

about just how difficult this will be to run a country like Venezuela. Yeah, you know, nobody else used that word run until he did. And my thought is that that didn't appear in some, you know, paper done through a long interagency process, that it just came out of the president and that nobody else expected to run Venezuela. It would be extremely difficult. You know, it's a very big country. It's twice the size of California, 25 million people roughly. It's too complex for us to run.

What we should be looking for is a popular government, a democratic elected government, that can begin to rehabilitate the country with our support and support of the other democracies that surround Venezuela. That's possible. But the notion that we're going to run it from Washington, I think, is implausible, and it's just not going to work. Now, Marco Rubio, making his rounds as Secretary of State on all the morning talk shows, ended up with, you know, the wheels spun and landed on, faced the nation with Margaret Brennan. And she asked him point blank about that Elliott Abrams interview and op-ed piece about the plutocrats going to Mar-a-Lago along with Big Oil to get what they want, a more compliant regime, not a democracy. That is a difference.

Remember, we're supposed to be the leaders of the free world. So let's play Marco Rubio's half-hearted, feeble attempt to distract the questioning and not answer the question. Play the clip. The president used the word oil 20 times in this press conference. You talked about these tremendous oil assets that Venezuela has. But the president's last envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, is publicly arguing that you know better than. the policy you're backing. He said, quote, Venezuelan plutocrats or U.S. oil executives

seem to be coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone. Is that what happened here? No, that's not what happened here. What happened here is that we arrested a narco-trafficker who's now going to stand trial in the United States where the crimes is committed against our people for 15 years. and the person who helped them, of course, his wife, who was co-located with him, so she was arrested as well. That's what happened here.

As far as oil, look, oil is critical, not just to fueling economies all over the world. It's critical to Venezuela's future. Their oil industry is completely destroyed. It's destroyed all those oil fields that used to produce a lot and wealth for their country and their people. Those things are decrepit. They need to be reinvested in. It's obvious. They do not have the capability to bring up that industry again.

They need investment from private companies who, are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions that has to go to the benefit of the Venezuelan people right now all of that wealth is stolen it's stolen and it goes into the hands of oligarchs around the world and the oligarchs inside of Venezuela a handful of people benefit from it the people don't benefit from it on top of that it's very simple okay in the 21st century under the trump administration we are not going to have a country like Venezuela in our own hemisphere in the sphere of control and the crossroads for Hezbollah for Iran and And for every other malign influence in the world, that's just not going to exist.

Now this, let's focus on Marco Rubio's wet dream for a minute, shall we, from My Perch in Miami. Marco Rubio, his ancestral home is Cuba. He claims, although there's been some debate, that his family came as a result of the takeover by Fidel Castro. And in the Miami Cuban community, if you came before Castro or after Castro seems to matter, in terms of your pedigree. And there's been a challenge within the Miami Cuban community about whether he did or didn't, his family did or he certainly tells everybody

that his family were in exile after Castro. And he really cares about Venezuela and the oil, but he really cares about Cuba, his ancestral home. This is a nothing more than a dress rehearsal for Marco Rubio before he runs for president to try to take over Cuba and change and do regime change there as well. His entire focus for most of his career has been on Cuba and not on Venezuela.

The problem that most of us have is not that Maduro was kidnapped and lopped off the top of the regime. It's at the apparatus, not only was the apparatus left in place, it now appears to be an intentional decision by this administration to just have a more docile communist dictatorship that's in favor of big oil rather than install democracy. That's why Marco Rubio

had to do his double talk to Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation about why he's no longer supporting and why they are strong-arming and holding at arm's length the exile group of But Mundo Gonzalez and the Nobel Prize winner, Maria Carina Machado. Why aren't they being installed? Why aren't there any discussions with them? Because they don't want there to be any. Because they don't think they're going to be as willing to play ball with big oil in the U.S. as the existing apparatus scared out of his wits about a potential takeover.

That's clear. Listen to the answer where he is reminded that at the top of the administration, They supported the legitimate installation of the government of Gonzalez and Machado, but now they seem to be walking away from it because the operation has changed. Play the clip. The opposition leader, Maria Karina Machado and Mundo Gonzalez, won that 2024 election by your own account. They were some of the first people you called when you were Secretary of State.

You said Mundo Gonzalez is the rightful president of Venezuela. Is that still the U.S. policy? And if so, are you working on a transition? to have those elected leaders run the country well i think the couple things i had tremendous admiration for maria carina machado i have admiration for edmundo we have all those views about what the election that happened the last time and not only us but many other countries around the world there's that and there's an then but there's the mission we are on right now we have been very clear from the beginning because i still think that a lot of people analyze everything that happens

in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 to 3 000 you know 15 or 16 the whole whole, you know, foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere. Within the Western Hemisphere, we have a country, potentially a very rich country that has cozied itself up under the control of this regime, has cozyed up to Iran, has cozyed up to Hezbollah, has allowed narco-trafficking gangs to operate with impunity from their own territory, allows boats with drugs to traffic from their territory. And we are addressing that. And by the way, for eight, nine million people in the largest mass migration event

in modern history have left that country since 2014. But that regime is still in place. That is what we are addressing now. When you spoke yesterday, we're not just addressing the regime. We are addressing the factors that are a threat to the national interest of the United States. So we're not in the democracy making business any longer. We're in the whatever is good for big oil business. That's why regime change here. regime change in Iran. 50 years ago, and the rest, if Venezuela didn't have oil and wasn't a puppet state of Russia, you think we'd be going in? But it is the diabolical nature, because there's only two choices. The Trump administration either has done no planning or their plan all along, which is what Elliot Abrams is saying, was to bend the need of big oil, which bought a president over half a billion dollars worth of fundraising investment in Trump.

at his request while he ran against Kamala Harris, where he sold off and auctioned off to the highest bidder, his environmental and energy policy to big oil. So that's, or those are the only two explanations. And the one that Elliot Abrams is saying is, the plutocrats of Venezuela and the oil company seem to have the same idea. Don't disturb the status quo.

just soften it up a little bit. Calibrate it to our interest a little bit. And again, it puts a lie to the administration's position that all they're doing is not a war. It's not the Trump's war powers as commander-in-chief about imminent threats, all right, and clear and present danger. It's about regime change in favor of oil. And certainly are not, they didn't kidnap. They didn't kidnap him and get in control of Venezuela in order to enforce an indictment in New York, which was the first thing they tried on Saturday. Hey, this is just a Department of Justice by extension operation. Yeah? Where's Pam Bondi? She wasn't even on the stage, the Attorney General. Where was Jay Clayton who indicted him in New York? Wasn't there? It was all the spooks. It was all the suits. It was all

the CIA and the Joint Chiefs and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, you know, who's Marco Rubio, whose star is ascended, J.D. Vances, whose star has fallen off the table along with Pam Bondi. We're going to continue to follow it all right here. You're on Midas touch. Come over to Legal AF and help us in 2026 continue to expand our reach. We're going global. We have to because Trump's gone global with his Dunrow doctrine. So we have to match it at the intersection of U.S. law, politics, and international law. You know, it's not just following the indictment in New York of Maduro. It's about all of the international conventions and laws that have been or will be breached by Donald Trump. So there's a way to do it. Come on to legal AF substack,

and for it, we're running a sale 20% off, help us grow and accomplish our international additional vertical goals for 2026. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of legal A.F. Me neither. That's why we formed the legal A.F. Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing in the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F. What else? All the other contributors from legal A.F are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? A.F. on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.