Morning Joe - ‘We’re going to keep the oil’: Joe details his Monday discussion with President Trump

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

‘We’re going to keep the oil’: Joe details his Monday discussion with President Trump To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The oil business in Venezuela, oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world. The oil infrastructure. Venezuela, unilaterally seized and stole American oil. Oil industry, massive oil, Venezuelan oil, and rebuild the oil infrastructure, the oil companies. We're going to get the oil flowing the way it should be. They stole our oil. Oil is very dangerous. We're in the oil business.

We'll be selling oil. We'll be selling large amounts of oil. who have the greatest oil companies in the world. President Trump on Saturday with a focus on the oil in Venezuela. Good morning and welcome to morning, Joe. It is Tuesday, January 6th. Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have U.S. special correspondent for BBC News and the host of The Rest is Politics Podcast.

Caddy Kay is with us. columnist and associate editor at the Washington Post. David Ignatius joins us once again. And thus now, senior legal reporter and former litigator Lisa Rubin, who was in the courtroom yesterday for the arraignment of Nicolas Maduro. We'll get to that in just a moment. But first, President Trump is insisting the United States isn't at war with Venezuela and suggested the U.S. might pay oil companies to help rebuild the country's energy infrastructure.

In a phone interview with NBC News, he said, we have to nurse the country back to health, adding, quote, a tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it and then they'll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.

Trump also insisted his supporters will stick with him telling NBC News MAGA loves it. MAGA loves what I'm doing. MAGA loves everything I do. The president defended the move to capture Majero without congressional approval

saying Congress knew what we were doing though he declined to elaborate when asked what Congress knew, and whether any lawmakers had advanced notification about the operation. And with that, Joe, you also spoke with the president yesterday. What did he tell you? Well, yeah, you know, I've spoken with Donald Trump probably a half a dozen times since he was back in the White House. And yesterday was the first time I talked to him in a few months, and I called to get the reaction.

and to see what I might be able to glean on what was coming next. Just to set up the conversation, he was very excited and proud yesterday when I talked to him by phone to try to get those insights on his decision to launch a military attack on Venezuela. Now, most of the 20-minute call was filled with the president recounting the U.S. military's flawless execution of the operation, and he talked an awful lot about the courage shown by those who raided Maduro's fortress, and how quickly they dispensed with the scores of Cuban troops that were guarding the Venezuelan dictator. The president concluded his summary of the attack

by noting the message that this will surely send about America's strength to Putin, she, and Iran. Now, as with most conversations that Meek and I've had with Donald Trump over the past couple of decades, the challenge is often looking for a break to get a question in. And when my opportunity came, I commented to him about what I had said on the show yesterday, that just about everybody considers the military's operation to be flawless.

However, my question yesterday on the show and my question to him yesterday had to do with what would come next. Was there a timeline? Was there a plan for reconstruction, for elections, for democracy? The president's answers to that were the same that he's been given publicly and mainly general. But when I pressed comparisons with America's felt occupation of Iraq, the president's response was very different. He asked him. I said, Mr. President, when you say, quote, we're going to run everything, it obviously causes deep concerns because of the disaster in Iraq. The president's response, Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil.

And to underline his point, Trump said his comments, we're no longer on background and said in 2016, I said we should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil, the president said, and we're going to rebuild their broken down oil facilities. And this time, we're going to keep the oil. Saying the United States is entering a new era of geopolitical engagement seems to be an understatement. I would love to get Dr. Brzezinski's insight on this. Donald Trump's brazen as straws from 19th century imperialism is State Department yesterday declared this is our hemisphere. And of course, I know a lot of you saw Stephen Miller yesterday on Jake Tapper's show saying that Greenland could be next.

So this is a whole new world for America and its neighbors and the world. The question now for all of us is how far the far? administration actually plans to go. How much of this is bluffing? How much is this actually going to be by design in these military operations across the hemisphere and whether Congress will ever fulfill its constitutional duties and step up before the next military action begins? So, Willie, obviously, not a big surprise from much of what the president said yesterday. It sounded a lot like what we've been hearing, what he said to NBC reporters that reached out to him and New York Times reporters who reached out to him.

But obviously the thing that stands out is, he said, we're going to keep the oil. And he was proud of it. He said, you know, he always saw George W. Bush as a sucker for going to Iraq, you know, spending blood, oil, and treasure and not keeping the oil. This was, of course, what Brett Baer said to him, well, you can't do that. That's a war crime. The president brushed back on that. and agree with and certainly here we are nine years later and he's saying the same thing and he

still thinks this is fine for us policy it strikes me listening to your excellent conversation with president trump and other comments he's made right from the outset about oil that in iraq there was all this speculation that it was about the oil there were documentaries made and haliburton's involved and all the cloud that was over that war now president trump is just saying it it's about the oil we're going to open it up we're going to bring in exon we're going to to bring Conoco Phillips. Chevron's already there. This is a long project, of course, to get the oil industry in Venezuela up and running again. But he's saying explicitly, this is about the oil. Yes, regime change is nice. Maduro's a bad guy. He's illegitimate. Let's get him out of the way.

But now it's time to go in for the oil. And, you know, your question is the right one about what comes next. I don't think anyone disputes the military operation, the effectiveness of that, the impressive nature of it. But now is the hard part, as is all. always the case. What comes next in this country? And he hasn't had a great answer for that when he said initially the United States is going to run Venezuela. Most people said, what does that mean exactly? Marker Rubio, the Secretary of State, having to come in the next day and say, well, we mean run it through policy. We're not going to be in there ourselves actually running it. But then President Trump comes in and kind of muddies the waters again. And so maybe there will be boots on the

ground. Maybe we will be the ones running the country. So that's where it gets complicated. But he's been very, very clear about his desire to get the oil out of Venezuela. Yeah, and David Ignatius, you wrote about this yesterday and obviously spent a good bit of time talking to oil company CEOs or members of the board as to whether they would be willing to go into Venezuela right now. It seems obviously before any American company, before any American board of directors, as you've noted, is going to agree to send any workers into Venezuela. There has to be stability there. There has to be political stability. There has to be social stability. And right now, I would guess we're far from that point in the days after the

attack. Joe, in conversations with oil industry executives yesterday, they couldn't have been clear that although they're getting a lot of pressure already from President Trump and people around and to make commitments to invest in Venezuela. They look with great skepticism on those investments for various reasons. First, the amount of capital investment that's going to be required to rehabilitate fields that have been rusted out, left without repairs, where equipment has been literally stolen from some of these fields is enormous. So it's going to take a long time.

Second, the conditions on the ground in Venezuela now are so uncertain that the boards of directors and chief executives are going to be very reluctant to send their people into a country where they're not sure about civility. President Trump may offer to have troops or other security provisions, but if you're a CEO, you don't want to take that risk with the lives of your employees. You don't want to be depending on an assurance from the government to keep people alive. What concerns me, Joe, is that as in other areas of the economy, Trump increasingly is directive. You know, he may say, we're going to do this. We're going to take an ownership interest ourselves as the government. We're going to do it in partnership with the oil companies. And that will be a very different kind of energy policy than anything we've ever seen.

And so, you know, the kind of central baseline in your conversation with the president about getting the oil, having the oil for the United States and our allies, I think has some fundamental flaws as I hear the oil industry itself talk about the future. So, David, this idea of the United States, quote, running Venezuela, president kind of echoed that yesterday in a conversation with NBC News when he said, we're going to nurse the country back to health. The United States is going to take Venezuela and nurse it back to health. When you talk to people at the State Department, when you talk to people in the foreign policy community, what is their sense of what that means in the long term? So, Willie, the funny thing about Venezuela is that this isn't yet a regime change. The regime of narco-traffickers and left-wing chavistas is still basically in place. It's been decapitated. Nicholas Maduro is now in a prison in Brooklyn, but the person running the Venezuelan military,

the person running the Venezuelan security force are the same people. And there are people who were named in the original 2020 indictment of Maduro as a narco-trafficker. So it's not like the narcos are gone. They're still there. The administration's plan is to work with the newly sworn-in acting president. Delce Rodriguez, with whom they appear to have had secret conversations going back for many months about a post-Moduro governing transitional governance in Venezuela. And they think that maybe she can be their partner.

She's spoken since Sunday in much more generous terms about the administration. But here again, as with oil, the basic model for governance going forward has a lot of, for me, unanswered questions, you know, sort of what we used to describe as rosy scenarios that maybe that'll work out and maybe it won't. I remember this so well from Iraq, that this hope that somehow you can pull together a governance system from disparate elements. And I see that happening again, that kind of optimistic thinking based on pretty fragmentary frail evidence. I would say the one thing, though, that they are not doing, obviously, is they're not going down. on the Paul Brimmer path on debathification,

I would say, many people would say almost to a fault or to a fault, and that even the ambassador we had yesterday, the former ambassador of Venezuela said, the last thing you wanna do is completely decapitate the military and the government, the way we did in Iraq, because that creates a void. So there's going to have to be a middle ground where, again, there's a pathway to democracy,

whether that, you know, after the stabilization takes place, whether that's any six months or a year or two years. We'll have to see how that plays out even in the next few days in a guest essay for the New York Times entitled, Trump was right to oust Maduro, Vice President and Senior Director of the Atlantic Council Skokroft Center for Strategy and Security, Matthew Cronick, writes in part this.

President Trump's military raid on Saturday to remove President Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela from power has been widely criticized. Former Vice President, Harris blasted the decision as unlawful and unwise. Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called it a violation of international law that risks entangling the United States in an open-ended conflict in Venezuela. And Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez of the United Nations said the attack set a dangerous precedent.

In fact, Mr. Trump was right to do it. The potential benefits of Mr. Monroe, Maduro's removal run much deeper, particularly in Venezuela itself. Mr. Maduro was an odious and incompetent leader who engaged in human rights violations and badly mismanaged his country's economy. While he was in office, Venezuela's gross domestic product contracted by 80%. The poverty rate rose to 90% and hyperinflation peaked at 130,000%. Mr. Maduro's removal provides the opportunity for a better government, economy, and future for the Venezuelan people. Caddy Kay, several things, as we always say here, can be true at the same time.

I said it yesterday. I agree. This was the top op-ed, by the way, in the New York Times this morning, that it's good that, I believe, it's good that Maduro's gone. It's good for the Venezuelan people in the long run. But the question actually is, is how does that look? How do the next couple of years look? And is America going to sort of go back to the future to sort of a 19th century imperialism that will completely upend and shatter the order, the post-World War II order? I know it's causing a great deal of concern in Europe and certainly did even yesterday at the United nations. Talk about it. Yeah, it is causing concern, and certainly the Danes are taking

the threats that are coming towards Greenland very seriously. I mean, I think two months ago you might have been able to dismiss this as owning the libs. I don't think anyone in Europe is doing that anymore. And you're seeing this rare display at the United Nations of European leaders who have worked very hard, fallen over backwards to try to accommodate Donald Trump and be nice to him and flatter him in public, also take a pretty hard line, including Finland, which has been pretty close to Donald Trump, saying, look, Denmark is the one that has authority over Greenland, and the people of Greenland don't want America to be in there, and this would be a rupture of NATO. So you're seeing this kind of movement in Europe to, I think,

of some alarm about the state of Greenland. But you only have to, you mentioned the Stephen Miller interview yesterday, one of the most striking things that's worth reading out. We live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power, no one is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland. And I think that tells you exactly where this administration is. It's where the administration has been on Ukraine. If you listen to Donald Trump's words to Vladimir Zelensky, it was effectively Ukraine was wrong to fight back because it was weaker, because Russia was going to win. And that is now the governing philosophy of this administration. When it comes to Venezuela, it would be good if

there was more of a plan. And the arguments around oil from the people I've spoken to in the oil industry in the last 24 hours who watched Venezuela say this is just going to take a very long time to get the oil out. And even, as Jared Baker points out in the Wall Street Journal this morning, were you to flood the world with this Venezuelan oil, the price would sink to such an extent that would no longer be worth it for American companies to be there. So I think the oil is the issue in Venezuela, but the calculations are. curious ones, given how desperately decimated the oil industry is there? Yeah, we'll talk about that. Stephen Miller, CNN interview a little bit more in a minute.

It was extraordinary the way he framed it. He said, we're going to go into Greenland because we can, who's going to stop us? But going back to the op-ed, we just read from the Times, David Ignatius, which makes the point that I think most people would agree with. Maduro illegitimate. The Biden administration said the same in his election that he was bad for the people of Venezuela and his not being there in the long-term likely good for the people of Venezuela. I guess the larger question is, is it the role of the United States of America to look around the globe and say, who are the bad guys? Let's go get rid of them. And then, of course, the question of oil and incentives here. So, Willie, I think those are the central issues people need to

think about. Looking at Maduro and his rule, nobody should mourn his departure. And you can argue given his actions, he belongs in the Brooklyn jail cell where he is now. I think that the striking thing about this action, what the world is trying to digest, is that we lived until Trump's second term in what a series of presidents referred to as the rules-based order. We now live in what is proclaimed as the power-based order. And the world is trying to react to that. It was very interesting to see the comments made by Chinese and Russian leaders in the aftermath of Venezuela. Wang Yi, who's the top Chinese diplomat, said, the United States can't be the world's police. You know, and the Chinese are suggesting they're going

to resist that. And Vladimir Putin, more pointedly, said, nobody can accuse us now, even formally, reproach us for our actions in Ukraine, meaning the U.S. has done the same and more. My fear is that we're going to wake up one morning and find out that Russia has snatched Vladimir Zelensky from his offices in Kiev, arguing why don't the same rules apply to us that they do to the United States? So then there are the legal questions around this. Of course, Nicholas Maduro, his wife, Celia Flores, making the... their first appearance yesterday in a New York courtroom. The two pleaded not guilty to federal

charges related to drugs and weapons and will be held without bail until their next court date that comes in mid-March. During the arraignment, Maduro dressed in prison garb, appeared defiant describing himself to the U.S. District Judge as captured, innocent, and quote the president of my country. His wife echoing that sentiment, calling herself the first lady of the Republic of Venezuela. Those words could offer a window into a defense strategy. if Maduro tries to argue head of state immunity, although the U.S. does not recognize him, as we said, as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

Yesterday's hearing came to a dramatic close when a man in the courtroom stood up and screamed at Maduro in Spanish, saying he will pay for his crimes. The ousted leader responding, I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war. Lisa Rubin, you were there. Take us inside the courtroom what it was like yesterday.

Well, Willie, let's just start by saying that decorum is always an expectation in any federal courtroom. And before this proceeding began, the court security officer gave everybody assembled a lecture about how we were to comport ourselves. One of the instructions was

you may not comment on the proceedings and notwithstanding that, as Nicholas Maduro was leaving the courtroom yesterday, the altercation that you just described happened. The gentleman who confronted him as a man named Pedro Ruggas. He was imprisoned in Venezuela for four months in 2019.

We had an opportunity to speak with him after court and ask him, why did you come here today? What brought you here? Peter Rojas lives in Atlanta. He's an applicant for political asylum here in the United States. He operates mechanics business in Atlanta. He woke up and took a 4 a.m. flight with the intention of doing exactly what he did yesterday. And I asked him yesterday, did you come here with this plan? And here's his response translated into English. Of course, I restrain myself greatly out of respect for American justice and respect for an American court. ask forgiveness and apologize to the United States for that. But I could not remain silent in the

face of a man who ruined a large part of my life and has ruined the lives of more than 40 million Venezuelans. Wow. So it was an extraordinary powerful moment to watch that. And of course, to watch Maduro and his wife so humbled in their prison garb, handcuffed, walking out of the courtroom, and yet in their words as defined as they were a market contrast. And in that voice from that man, the voices of millions of exile, Venezuela, it's here in the United States. In terms of a legal defense, did we learn anything? Did you hear anything? Could you read between the lines yesterday? Yeah, and it's not just reading between the lines. Barry Pollock, who had represented Julian Assange and now represents Maduro previewed that he is going to make motions

to dismiss on the basis of not only head of state immunity, but about the legality of the abduction in the first place. And I think that Mr. Pollock would have been very interested Joe in the conversation you had with the president yesterday, had that conversation taken place before the court appearance, I expect that comments like that would have been addressed, and he would have told the judge, this was pretextual, this was a military operation all along. It was always about the oil that the president intends to keep, and not about an indictment or a superseding indictment of Nicolas Maduro, who has been under indictment in the United States already for five plus years. So talk about the head of country defense.

and why it most likely will not work here, because the United States obviously didn't recognize him as the head of Venezuela after he stole the 2024 election. Well, the reason it won't work is because it's subjective. As you just noted, the United States has not recognized Maduro as a legitimate head of state. And courts in the past have held that what matters is how the executive branch thinks about a head of state,

not how that de facto ruler thinks about themselves. That having been said, we have a long, longstanding tradition. It is in international law that heads of state are supposed to have sovereign immunity from prosecution in another country. So that is going to be, I think, a large part of Maduro's defense. But even turning to the indictment itself, if you look at the ways in which this newest indictment contrasts and compares with what we saw in 2020, the allegations against Maduro and Celia Flores are not the things that have changed here. In fact, the allegations against them, and in terms of the narcotrafficking conspiracy, the drug conspiracy, the possession

of handguns and destructive devices, and the conspiracy to sort of traffic those arms, none of the things that they are said to have done in the indictment are new facts. All of the new information is information about other people and their participation in the conspiracy, but the specific allegations against Maduro and Sierra Flores, those go back any number of years and certainly well predate that 2020 indictment. All to say, Barry Pollock, I think, has a good argument that this is merely pretext. This is political theater dressed up

as a domestic legal proceeding. All right. David Ignatius, final thoughts. So, Joe, thinking again about your conversation with the president, it's not surprising that he's feeling excited, proud of what was done by the U.S. military Friday night, Saturday morning in Caracas. And, you know, for a president, that's the headiest experience imaginable. The concern I have is that we have now 30 years of evidence of presidents sort of overwhelmed

with their power to change events through military force, discovering that in the end, that power isn't infinite, and that it's harder to get out of these wars than, people think it is. You know, the famous comment of General Dave Petraeus on the way into Baghdad, tell me how this ends. I found myself asking that about Venezuela. Tell me how this ends, because I don't see how you easily get the oil out of the ground. I don't see how you easily stabilize the country and have a pathway to democratic elections. So I'd sure like to hear more in your next conversation with the president about how this ends, because I don't get it yet. And you have, of course, the David Petraeus quote,

tell me how this ends. That echoes, of course, the Powell Doctrine. Right. You break it, you bought it. Colin Powell, who lost so many friends in Vietnam when he was in power. He came up with the doctrine. Basically said, before you go in, tell me your exit strategy. Yeah.

Tell me that the majority of the American people are supporting it. And tell me how this is central to America's foreign policy. interests. And so those are always good reminders. The Washington Post, David Ignatius and MS Now, senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin, thank you both very much for coming on this morning. And still ahead on morning, Joe, the Trump administration makes sweeping cuts to childhood vaccine recommendations. And at least one top Republican is pushing back. But first, our next guest says Trump's American dominance may leave us with nothing. The Atlantic's Ann Applebaum joins us with that. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travels forecast this morning from Acqueweathers, Bernie Raynow.

Bernie, how's it looking? Make it we're tracking some rain here on your Tuesday, your exclusive weather forecast showing the rain in Chicago, maybe a little ice and green bay this morning. Rain this afternoon, Albany, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C. It's not cold with clouds for the most part. Not cold in the south, 75 in Dallas. We're going to keep an eye on fog in Charlotte in Atlanta. it's going to be thick enough to cause any travel delays there this morning, and we're fine in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.

To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the ACUweather app today. But the president said it's true. The United States of America is running Venezuela. By definition, that's true. Jake, we live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake. that is governed by strength, that is governed by force,

that is governed by power. By definition, we are in charge. Because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission.

For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States. States is in charge. The United States is running, so the country during this transition period. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller in a contentious interview with CNN's Jake Tapper about Venezuela. Miller also said, quote, nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. So, John. John Lamar is here. John Lamere is here. A lot to digest this morning. My conversation with the president, where he

just openly said, unlike Iraq, he basically, you know, he didn't say Bush was a sucker, but he said Bush's mistake was. He's always sort of felt that way about George W. Bush. He said Bush's mistake was he didn't keep the oil to pay for the operation. He said, we're going to keep the oil. So you have that, and then you have Stephen Miller going on Jake Tapper and saying, well, you're going to do whatever we want to do because we're the United States, and that this involves Greenland. Of course, this is what people like Ann Applebaum, who is with us and we'll be going to in a minute, is said for some time.

This is great power, spheres of influence, which obviously blows apart everything that we've built since World War II. I'm curious, though, in that Stephen Miller interview, I always talk about separating signal from the ground noise. Based on everything you know, is that the signal? coming from the White House? Is that what we're going to be doing as a country? Or is that ground noise? So two things here. First on Venezuela in your interview with the president. There's been a comparison to what's having Venezuela to what happened in Iraq in 2003. And President Trump's

answer to that is he rejects that because he says, well, the difference is, I'm me. He was George W. Bush. He made mistakes. I'm not going to make those same mistakes, including taking the oil and using it to pay for the operation. What we also then saw from Stephen Miller is confirming the premise that we talked about on the show yesterday, that this is sort of a, by the U.S. running Venezuela, it means, well, we're sitting outside using our military almost as a loaded gun in this image and just dictating our terms. Like, this is an extortionist relationship. We'll get what we want out of you. And as far as Greenland, and I wrote on this yesterday, too, with a couple of colleagues, there's something here. There's something real here.

Now, there's no belief that the U.S. is going to use military force to take Greenland. But here's the thing. They wouldn't have to. We talked to a lot of European officials yesterday, including those in Denmark. If Trump this morning were to put on truth social, Greenland is part of the United States. Europe has nothing to do. Can't do anything about it. Okay, help me out here on Greenland, first of all, and help our viewers out on Greenland. You know, we've all grown up seeing Greenland, you know, ironically named. It's just a sheet of ice. Suddenly, over the past three, four years, we've heard about how strategically it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's gained so much force. You know, president, president's looking at things and whether it's, you know,

the $40 trillion that's underground in Venezuela or if he's looking at Greenland, there's a reason he's looking at Greenland. Can you talk about, is it minerals? Is it the fact that we've heard for some time that Russia, possibly China could could use routes there to strategically undermine the United States? What is the obsession with Greenland? It's all of the above and not just that that looks disproportionately large on those flat maps. It's not to speak of a green that looks like it's the biggest country in the world. It is. It is the minerals underground, 100% right.

It is the fact that it's strategically located as a shipping routes, the China and Russia want. Also, the U.S. has talked about wanting another base there, which infuriates the Danes because they, as we talked to them yesterday, they're like, if you want to build another base here, we'll let you. You just ask us.

You don't need to seize this island in order to do so. It also plays into the spheres of influence. It's in the Western Hemisphere. So therefore the United States, President Trump, thinks it should belong to us. And it is, you know, it is something where he is not that concerned with the sanctity of the European Union or even the sanctity necessarily of NATO. Because, of course, if the U.S., and that's the subplot here, if the U.S. were to actually say, we're taking Greenland, either by force, by coercion, even offering a referendum, hey, let's have the residents vote on it. There's been speculation on issuing cash payments to voters. Like, well, if you come to become American, we'll give you a couple thousand dollars, whatever it might be.

Even just doing that would disrupt the NATO alliance and because it's based on Article 5. If you're making an incursion on one, all the others have to respond. And there's a sense there that NATO would splinter over Greenland, as you say, largely just a she device. Yeah. At the same time, you ask signal or ground noise. I think we've learned to believe Donald Trump, especially if he says something several times, it's the plan. It is the signal. And Stephen Miller is right in which there's not going to be a war fought over Greenland.

Europe is not going, there's not going to be a shooting war over Greenland. If the United States simply wants it, there's not much they can do. Caddy Kay, obviously there were protests over Venezuela. Greenland would be something altogether different. Talk about how badly any action, again, any hostile action against Greenland, whether it's military intervention or something less, would splinter the United States alliances with Europe, with NATO, with the EU. Well, I think, first of all, it would split into the United States.

I mean, I do think this would be an action that would produce more of a reaction, perhaps from some Republicans in Congress than we saw over Venezuela, because it is dramatic. Because when it comes to America's relationship with European alliances, it would be the end of everything that we've known since the Second World War. This would be the moment at which Europeans say, we do not trust America to be an ally to this continent. I mean, it's so unthinkable for Europeans, except as Jonathan says, now they're waking up to the realization that something that was unthinkable two months ago actually looks a lot more possible today. But how would European countries trust America to get again? And how would European countries manage to go to their populations?

Were America ever to need alliances in the West and say, would you help us? Would you support action in favor of America right now? I think you would lose so much goodwill that America would effectively be on its own. And maybe America thinks, maybe the Trump administration thinks that's fine, that the American military that pulled off this daring operation in Venezuela can do anything at once. But there have been incidences in the not very distant past when America has turned to European alliances. I think it would find those alliances were no longer there. And the prime minister of Denmark said yesterday, if the United States goes in and just seizes Greenland, which is

controlled by Denmark, without resistance, it would mark the end of the NATO alliance. That's the word of the Danish prime minister. Let's bring in staff writer at the Atlantic Ann Applebaum. Her latest piece is titled, Trump's American dominance may leave us with nothing. And good morning. We got a little window into this idea of American dominance from Stephen Miller. You heard those quotes there yesterday on CNN where he said effectively, we're the strongest country in the world. We've got the best military in the world. Therefore, we do as we please. Walk us through a little bit more of your piece and why this may not all end so well. So the Trump administration seems to be operating on an old idea of foreign policy, namely that what the point of foreign policy

is is for the United States to dominate. And in particular, they want to dominate the Western hemisphere. There's some implication that they don't care so much anymore, what happens in Europe or in Asia or in Africa. This is what they want to do. And in our hemisphere, we get to be the bully. We don't have to explain. We don't have to justify. I was very struck actually by in the your previous segment, the long conversation about legitimacy and legality. Actually, that's not how Stephen Miller talks. That's not how Donald Trump talks. We don't have to explain if we feel like taking Maduro will take him, if we feel like taking somebody else or threatening somebody else, will do that too. And that's their idea of how they will increase American power

and prosperity. It is directly opposite. It is directly contrary to the way in which America built its power and its prosperity over the last 70 years. We did so by building a network of alliances, by creating friendships, by supporting values, the value of democracy, the value of legitimacy, rule of law when it was possible, international law when it was possible, by creating institutions that lots of people bought into by having friendships. And this new way of speaking and this new way of acting will destroy all of those friendships and all of those institutions and all of those links.

And you can hear it happening already. I mean, you've already been discussing Greenland. You know, that is the, that's the significance of Greenland for Europeans. You know, what they're hearing is not some conversation about shipping lanes or minerals or whatever excuse the Trump administration is using for wanting the island. And I should say, the Danes have said repeatedly that there's almost, not almost, there is nothing that the U.S. could possibly want to do. do in Greenland that the Danes wouldn't arrange for them to be able to do. But what they're hearing

is the U.S. saying, we can do what we want. We don't care about the rest of you. We don't share your values anymore. Goodbye. And let's talk about Ukraine. After speaking with the president, I called around to try to figure out the latest on the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. And what I learned was that Europe and U.S. negotiators were coming close to an agreement on a NATO Article 5 like security guarantee. I'm curious if that is agreed upon by European leaders and the United States over the next week. And it's something that European leaders and even Zelensky can agree on. Do you have any confidence at all that Vladimir Putin would sit down and sign that agreement? It's even worse than that. I have no confidence that he would

sign that agreement. He has still never said that he wants to end the war. He's never given any indication that he's given up on his primary goal, which is the occupation and the incorporation of Ukraine. Worse than that, though, is the question. of whether, given the way the president has been speaking over the last several days, and along with some of his advisors, why would anyone believe that the United States is a reliable partner in a security guarantee? I mean, what you're going to see in Europe and around the world, actually, as a consequence of this new language is all kinds of countries hedging and making new alliances, but also doubting whether the United States.

States can be trusted. So we have, we now have several poles of distrust. You know, we don't trust the Russians, we don't trust the Americans, we don't trust the Chinese. And yesterday, the New York Times reporting that Ukraine has developed extraordinarily dangerous new technology with AI and their use of drones. I'm curious with the losses that continue to mount. against Vladimir Putin and with reports that, oh, he's certain to sweep across the rest of the Donbos, we've been hearing that now for a year. It's just not happening. The Ukrainians continue to fight back, fight back harder, and the toll is just growing with the Russians economically and also militarily. Does he ever?

at some point, throw up his arms and realize that if he can get the Dunboss, he should take the victory and go home? So had we been putting real economic pressure on Russia, had the Trump administration used the tools even that were being used during the Biden administration to put pressure on Russia, this war might be over. Putin cannot continue this indefinitely. he is losing a thousand men every day, every day. So think about it. I mean, the United States lost, what was it, 60, 65,000 people in Vietnam, and that was a trauma that lasted for generations.

We made movies about it. We're still talking about it. And the Russians are losing that number of people every two months. It's not something they can continue indefinitely. And the Ukrainians, in conjunction now with the Europeans, who are now the primary supporters of Ukraine, both financially and militarily, have held the line in a way that I think they aren't given nearly enough credit for. I mean, both in terms of their ability to constantly reinvent the way the war is fought, whether through AI or through new drone technology or new missiles, also with their national resilience, you know, this administration and many of the people around it like to downplay the role of values and the role of ideals, you know,

what do those things matter in a world of hard power? and transactionalism, Ukraine is a country where ideals and values are part of what are making them continue to resist. And, you know, I can't give you a date and I can't give you a time, but no, the Russians are not going to be able to do this forever. It's just their economy can't take it. Their society can't take it. Staff writer at the Atlantic, Ann Applebaum, thank you very much for coming on this morning. We appreciate it. Her latest piece is online right now. And coming up, Democrats on Capitol Hill today will mark five years since the January 6th Capitol attack. Former Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will join us ahead

of his testimony before the reconvening House Select Committee. That's next on Morning Joe. It's a beautiful live shot of the United States Capitol at 6.52 in the morning. There, later this morning, House Democrats will mark five years today since the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 by reconvening the select committee that investigated that attack. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffrey says today's hearing will examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections posed, he says, by the current Trump administration. Join us now, former lieutenant governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan. He is scheduled to testify at today's hearing.

As a Republican, he broke with Trump after the 2020 election. Coming a vocal critic amid Trump's pressure to overturn the election results in his state. Duncan officially switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party last year and now is running for the governor of Georgia. Mr. Duncan, good to have you with us this morning. I want to talk about your campaign and what you look forward to, but let's talk about this anniversary, a somber won five years since the attack on the Capitol, January 6th, 2021, remind our viewers, because so much has been clouded and whitewash and attempted to be rewritten in these five years since that terrible day about where you were and the pressure you were feeling from the Trump

administration to flip results ahead of that election. Yeah, we were on the front lines of Donald Trump's attempts to not validate an election, which is what he continues to try to explain his egregious actions as validating. an organized, unlawful attempt through multiple acts to try to upend democracy. And, you know, look, he was putting pressure on us to try to call a special session for no reason other than to just continue to sow seeds of doubt and to create chaos. That was their only game plan was to create chaos and plant enough seeds for doubt on social media in interviews and phone calls. He was very granular. As you continue to hear some of these conversations play out, you know,

last week, the New York Times released some audio where he put pressure on the Speaker of the House. You know, I was the Lieutenant Governor and the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House is over on the House side, where he talked about the pressure that he's putting on him. And he's even talked so much about the person, one of the people were running against in our election for governor is Bert Jones. He said he was one of his. So, yeah, this was a very granular attempt by Donald Trump and the MAGA supporters to upend democracy in Georgia. To your everlasting credit, along with the governor there, to Brad Raffensberger, the Attorney General in the state of Georgia, you all as Republicans who supported Donald Trump at the time said, no, you did not win this state and we're not going to find those nearly 12,000 votes you need to win the state. Can you talk a little lieutenant governor about what it's been like in these five years since? Because so many people in your state, so many elected leaders did circle the wagons around Donald Trump and support his false claims that the election were stolen. What has it been like for you to continue to say, no, they weren't, and I oppose Donald Trump?

Yeah, it's been difficult. I mean, there's no way to hide it. It's certainly been difficult for me and my family over the last five years. I mean, in the immediate aftermath of the election results and Donald Trump's lies. We had armed guards around our house. We had, you know, death threats coming in. We had our kids getting picked on at school. Folks stop waving at us in the neighborhood. I mean, this continues year after year after year, but I continue to be asked, why am I doing this? And it's because I'm guided by our family motto of doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing. And this is the right thing to do. And, you know, to that point, the right thing to do for me in that moment was to stand up against Donald Trump and to speak at the DNC and to campaign for Kamala Harris around the country and to now be a Democrat. It's the right thing to do because being a Republican right now only means one thing. You have to just bow down to Donald Trump and accept whatever bad idea he has in that moment in time, whatever attacks against democracy he wants to think of that morning, you've got to rubber stamp it. And I'm not willing to do that. And I see millions of other Republicans starting to wake up. and see the other side. Lieutenant Governor, I want to ask you about your run for governor

and switching parties in just a second, but obviously, as Willie says, a lot of other Republicans broke with Donald Trump after January the 6th. There won't be many of them there who are supporting your efforts today. What is it about remembering that election and remembering how Donald Trump handled that election that is important for America today?

Why does America need to keep its eye? On what the president still says, He still said on the plane up from Marilago that he won 2020. I think that's the point. Some folks ask me, Jeff, why do you continue to talk about the post-election issues in January 6th? And it's because Donald Trump continues to talk about it. MAGA continues to talk about it in a way that's trying to whitewash history. The reality is it was an egregious attempt to overthrow a legal election and to usurp democracy.

And I'm on this journey to put the facts out there, to continue to tell the truth. so that something like this doesn't happen again. I think we have to understand. Most Americans don't realize how close we came to the edge of breaking democracy. If just a handful of state legislators like myself would have just turned around and said, you know what, actually I changed my mind. I've seen enough proof here. There's some fraud happening.

Just to make political points with Donald Trump, we would have a totally different landscape and would be referred to as one of these third world countries that we're talking about in other parts of the world that have erroneous elections. You've been a lifelong Republican. You now have to go out and persuade George. Democrats to vote for you as their gubernatorial candidate. You understand that some of them may be suspicious. Why is this guy who's always been a Republican?

Now they want Democrats, some progressive Democrats, you'll need to have them vote for you as well. How hard a sell is it going to be? You know, some of my skeptics out on the campaign trail ask, Jeff, have you lost your mind? And the answer is, no, I found my heart. I really truly wake up every day as a proud Democrat with a better toolkit to serve the needs of Georgians to meet people where they're at. I don't have to make excuses when I drive by that hospital and see folks scared to go in because they don't have health insurance. I don't have to drive by that school any longer and blame the teachers instead of the government systems that support those schools. I don't have to make excuses. I don't have to lie for Donald Trump or be expected to lie for Donald Trump.

I wake up with a whole new batch of ideas. And look, my job in this campaign is to meet Georgians where they're at. I'm focused on three things. I think most Georgians, including Republicans, are worried about three things. The affordability crisis, the health care crisis, and the Donald Trump crisis. All of this stuff going on in Venezuela and Greenland and all this stuff that Donald Trump's creating is not solving a single person's problems that's standing at the grocery line that can't afford all those groceries. That person that just graduated from college or that family, middle class family, that can't afford rent. None of that's being solved or somebody waking up today without health insurance. Donald Trump's not solving America's problems. He's just continuing to sow chaos around the world.

It's a Ponzi scheme. That's what Donald Trump's running is. is a Ponzi scheme that's every day got to get 1% shinier, 1% more bombastic, so that you forget about all the egregious promises he made the day before. All right, former lieutenant governor, current Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Jeff Duncan. Thank you very much for coming on the show this morning.