Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/9/26 Tom Eddlem on the Capture of Nicolás Maduro

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Tom Eddlem returns to the show to talk about Trump’s intervention in Venezuela. He and Scott discuss the actual problems with Maduro and the big-government “Chavismo” establishment in Venezuela as well as how every attempt by the US to intervene there makes the situation worse for Venezuelans and Americans alike.   Discussed on the show: “Florida Man Occupied Government vs Venezuela” (The Wayward Rabbler) Blue Collar Breakdown Thomas R. Eddlem is the William Norman Grigg Fellow at the Libertarian Institute, an economist and a freelance writer. He has written three books and holds a masters of applied economics and data scientist certification from Boston College. He lives in Taunton, Massachusetts with his wife Cathy and family. Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making it. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not only... We're going to take out seven countries in five years.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host. Scott Porton. All right, guys, introducing Tom Edlam from the Libertarian Institute, great writer of ours. Welcome back. How are you doing, Tom?

Hey, thank. Thanks for having me back, Scott. I'm doing great. Great. Good to have you here. So the reason I had you on today was I remember years ago, I interviewed a leftist. It may have been Max Blumenthal. It may have not. But it was about one of these attempted sort of regime changes down there in

Venezuela or another. And I remember you emailed me and said, you know, I'd like to quibble with some of the details of the history of these elections down here and this and that. And so what I like about that is that obviously, you know, you come from the right and have no love for these commies whatsoever. And yet I also know that you are committed non-interventionist and you're not here trying to stand for regime change. But you are here trying to get the facts straight and trying to make sure that I'm not

screwing up and letting bad facts go by. on my show without correction. So you came on and explained, actually the dude did lose this election, and then they abolished this, house of Congress, and they did this, that, and the other thing, and let's get our facts right. So that made me think that I would like to hear very much from you,

again, on really a lot of this history of the commie regime since the invention of Hugo Chavez and all of that, and then his successor, Maduro here. And then also, of course, I want to ask you about what you think about the recent, I don't know, president change, if not regime change there, and what that all means, the motives behind it and your concerns about potential consequences

and so forth. But I just wonder if you can make sure that, because even for me and I pay a lot of attention, I read anti-war.com every day and all that, but I admit I don't always read the Latin America stuff at the bottom of the page. You know what I mean? I'm not very good on this stuff. So first of all, can you just educate us on some facts about these. commies and just how legitimate or illegitimate any of their standing for any so-called elections

have been or not or what, and then, of course, the role of American policy in it all and et cetera like that. Thank you, please, sir. Okay. There was a presidential election in 2024, and it's pretty clear that Maduro cheated. Now, he'd, by, I think by all accounts, he'd won the popular election when he was first elected. after the death of Chavez. But because Venezuela's economy has been in a tailspin for, what, eight or nine years now, actually since 2014, really,

when the bottom fell out of the oil economy. I mean, that was what was propping up the Chavisa regime since it got elected in 1999. He needed to cheat in order to stay in power. So he cheated. and the interesting thing is he used some of the electronic voting mechanisms that are being promoted here in the United States. The, man, I can't think of the name of it, offhand.

But it's touted in the United States is, oh, you know, these are unhackable or whatever. But, of course, in Venezuela they hacked it just as many years ago, the most electronic system was hacked in the Mexican election. But if I... Is there anything the theory that they were involved? involved in 2020? What about 2020? What do you mean?

Oh, in the, you know, supposedly the Trump people think that, you know, the Venezuelans had some influence over the voting machines in the election and that kind of thing. You know anything about that? Oh, I don't think so. I don't think there's any proof of that. I think, I mean, I haven't looked into it, but it is the same company. I can't think of the name of the company. If I say, you're going to recognize it.

But the Venezuelans don't control it. What? Well, I wanted to suggest something, but I don't want to throw you off track, but like, was it? No, go ahead, go ahead. I don't think that was it. I don't think that was it was one of those names that you're going to, you're going to, you'd say, oh, yeah, I know. I heard that. But anyway, if I go back, I mean, Venezuela was a prosperous country because it was an oil country.

And it's, back in the 50s, the Danes, the, the, the Dutch brought there. engineers to Venezuela and started pumping out the oil. And they made a deal straight up with the dictator there. And the dictators continue to have contracts, and they extracted more from the companies. But again, this is a government negotiating directly with a company, not free enterprise, where the companies are negotiating with private property owners. So as Venezuela transitioned back to a democracy, if you want to call it, an elected parliament and having a president, the oil revenues got a little tighter for the margins of the oil companies, but they were still happy to pump oil out of Venezuela.

And what happened was there was a drop off in the oil price. And the politicians who were elected couldn't keep up. Hugo Chavez got out of jail after trying to do a military coup and he won a popular election in 1999. And oil went up in price throughout the 2000s. So he was able to bankroll his. socialism. And this was real socialism, not the socialism that we talk about, you know, with while the Democrats are a bunch of socialists. They're not socialist. They don't want to

nationalize the oil industry or the steel industry. Hugo Chavez did. I mean, he had agricultural collectives. He nationalized the oil industry. And of course, this really pissed off the oil companies that were making money with the government. But again, these are crony contracts. These are not, this is not free enterprise. This is a contract with the government for monopoly control. And Chavez did very well until he died of cancer. And Maduro, his vice president, he was a bureaucrat, got elected as his successor. And he kept it going because they could, with the high oil prices,

they could keep pretending that socialism was successful. Venezuela fell behind some of its neighbors and other. countries in South America, certainly Chile went way past Venezuela. But in 2014, the oil price tanked globally, and that meant they could no longer just pretend to have this fake prosperity based on oil revenues. And of course, the United States didn't like Maduro because he was friendly with Israel, that so we had sanctions on it and it hurt the Venezuelan economy even more.

And what did Venezuela do? Well, they turned to the people who would buy oil from them. For a while, we bought oil from them. Even after 2014, we continue to buy oil from Sitkao, which was bought out by the Venezuelan government. But eventually, they looked for other customers. And who did they find in customers? Cuba, China, and other countries that Washington is not friendly with.

So that made them even more want to get rid of the get rid of the Chavez slash Madera regime. So what they did was they started growing replacements in the United States with money from the CIA, the NED, and they also tried direct coups. In 2019, they took this guy who was a Harvard graduate and said, oh, well, this guy won Guido. He's much more popular. They made him the, with American influence, he got elected to be the opposition president,

which is a non-government position, but he was basically the leader of the opposition parties. And they said, oh, he's the guy. He's our guy, but the coup didn't work. It didn't work at all because Juan Guadal had no popular support. And the pressure continued, but there was no solution from Washington's standpoint. And on the fringes, there was another candidate they looked at, Maria Carina Machado. And Maria Carina had lived her life as ping-ponging between Venezuela and the United States.

United States. She went to a girls' boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts as a kid. I think it was Dana Hall. I think that's the only girls' boarding school that I know of in Wellesley. I'm from Massachusetts. But whatever, she started here and then by 2001, she created a group called, it was a non-governmental organization. I say non-governmental. It's more like near-governmental. It was called, let me see if I can get that. I haven't written down here. somewhere. She created this thing called Sumate. And very shortly thereafter, it started receiving National Endowment for Democracy funding in 2003, in 2004, in 2008. It received tens of thousands, actually over $100,000 in 2004. And also at the same time, she is going to these events.

In 2005, she became a young global leader of the World Economic Forum, and she was educated as a Yale World Fellow in 2009. So, I mean, she's being groomed by the establishment to take over. And she heads the party, what is actually the Libertarian Party in Venezuela. It's called Vente Venezuela, come Venezuela. and she actually has, I think, a lot of popularity. And in 2024, she ran for president in Venezuela. And Maduro realizing, gee, I'm going to lose to this woman, got her kicked off the ballot.

So she nominated a friend to run in her stead. And by all counts, not by all accounts, but by most popular accounts, most reasonable accounts, Butoro lost that election. And the, you know, the Ventei Venezuela did win. The Vente Venezuela candidate won. So it was condemned all around the world. And, of course, what happened was the establishment rallied around Maria Karina. She got the prize from the European Parliament, the, what were they call it, Sakharov Prize.

And then, of course, in last year she got the Nobel Peace Prize, even though she'd never, negotiated a piece, and she was actually calling for the bombing of her own country. So, and she's back to the United States coups in, in, in, in, a coup, in, U.S. coup in Venezuela on her behalf. And the interesting thing is, I think there's a little personal dynamics in here, because, you know, the United States went in and our excuse was, well, it was, at first it was the drug gangs, you know, the drugs are coming out of Venezuela, and look how many tens of thousands of Americans die every year from drugs. But most of those are from meth and especially from fentanyl,

and none of that comes from Venezuela. If you look at DEA reports, all the fentanyl's coming from China through Mexico. It's not coming from Venezuela. Some of the cocaine does go through Venezuela, but it's not from Venezuela. Basically, most of the cocaine comes out of Colombia, and it's shipped either through Venezuela or most of it's through Mexico. You have a small portion of it goes through Venezuela. But it's not an inconsequential part. But it's a big difference between saying, we're trying to stop tens of thousands of deaths in fentanyl

and saying we're going to do a coup so that some stockbroker can't do an eight ball in a weekend bender. I mean, that's a big difference. So what they did was they said, well, he's not the legitimate, Maduro's not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. That's how the narrative changed.

But the interesting thing is, once the coup took place, once they kidnapped Maduro, Trump basically went with Maduro's vice presidential candidate. I mean, it's the same regime. I mean, you don't think that, gee, if Maduro got elected with this woman

was the vice president, and he's not the legitimate elected, he didn't, get, well, why would his running mate be legitimate? She wouldn't be. And if Maria Carina was actually won the election, or at least her stand-in, then why wouldn't she? But of course, Trump had in the weekend after the invasion, he had said to reporters, well, I don't think she, referring to Maria Carina, she has any popular support. And I thought to myself, hmm, okay. So, So from the standpoint of the Trump administration,

what we've got here is we went in because Maduro is not a legitimately elected leader, and we're going to go with not the one who was elected, but with the one who was illegitimately elected and ran as the running mate. And, of course, Trump sort of let everything out of the bag in the last couple of days in the sense that he said, we're going to take the oil, we're going to seize all the tankers and unload the oil. and it's our oil, he said. It's amazing how our oil always ends up under their sand and their forests.

But from Trump's perspective, everything's a deal, everything is about force and leverage. I mean, he, even in his business career, never really cared about property rights. He used that in a domain to kick an old lady out of her house and build his casinos. So if the oil companies created a special, crony deal with the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan government reneged, well, he's going to, he's going to defend the oil companies. And that's basically where we're at. I don't want a filibuster here. Expandesigns.com. That's my friend Harley Abbott's company. And he is the webmaster for the Scott Horton show, as well as the Libertarian Institute. He is the guy that redesigned the Ron Paul Institute for

Peace and Prosperity website. He's done a lot of great work for other friends of mine. And unlike a lot of webmasters and web developers and different guys that I have worked with over the years, the thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable and a hundred percent vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there. You got a website. You need it fixed up. You need a new one. You're setting up a business. Working on any kind of online project like that, check out expanddesigns.com. Well, there's a lot there, including, first of all,

just goes without saying, Tom, but we got to say it that it was George W. Bush, who tripled the price of a barrel of oil and did all of that, you know, gave all of that benefit to Venezuela and to Chavez's Venezuela, just the same as he gave to Vladimir Putin's Russia. Here, let us just triple the price. price of your main export for you. You don't have to work any harder to make three times as much money as you already were making. And so as you, it was funny because I almost interjected, because I know what you mean, but I was a little afraid because the way you said that I was a little afraid

people would misunderstand you because the way you said, I forgot your exact words was something like, yeah, so Chavez was a great success. And then you went on. And it was just a couple of seconds later that you clarified, of course, that under the illusion that, you know, that, you know, socialism could possibly work simply because W. Bush had tripled the value of their oil revenue, even as their probably overall production is declining, they're still making bank because of the wars in the Middle East that they had nothing to do with. And so that was what sustained the illusion of the success of socialism for Venezuela. And then as you say, then they got way overextended, of course. And when the price of oil fell, hell, they didn't have any other industries left because of socialism,

all their agriculture went to hell. You said they created socialized agriculture? Yeah. And then it stopped producing things. And so, like, their highly diverse economy stopped being highly diverse. It was completely dependent on oil resource curse style. And then, of course, yeah, everything went bust. And all their big promises went to nothing. But it was all America that fed the illusion the whole time on their behalf, which is the irony here from the massive, as everyone always agrees in every other context, the massive unforced error of Iraq War II that nobody had to do.

Right. And it wasn't just, it didn't just benefit Putin. It benefited Iran. If Iran is the boogeyman, well, this is what Bush helped. But let me emphasize, socialism was an absolute failure

in the sense that the very, Venezuelan economy under Chavez and later under Maduro before the oil collapsed was flat. And the natural tendency of an economy is to grow. And why was it flat? Because the incentive to work and create a business and profit, that was taken out. I mean, I have a friend who, I don't know if I told you a story. He bought a house before he left Venezuela. I know a few Venezuelan immigrants.

In fact, there was a story not too long ago that explains why Venezuelan medicine failed. I think it was in the Financial Times, but it might have been the New York Times. But it talked about how some amazing percentage, maybe it was more than, I think it was more than half of Venezuelan doctors had emigrated because they just couldn't make a living. And they figure out, hey, I'm a doctor, I can go anywhere. And what happened was they talked to the story was, hey, there's this great bonus that a lot of Latin American countries have and that now they've got all these extra doctors. But Venezuela lost all their doctors because they all fled the socialism.

So, you know, the socialized medicine failed in that sense too. but the economy was flat while the oil was going up. But once the oil stopped, it went down. Venezuela, their economy has been negative for 10, 11 years now. And it's just, there's this great diaspora of Venezuelans. More than 10% of the country has fled to other countries, including the United States. And I had one friend, just to give you an idea of the massive inflation in Venezuela, He came to the United States, I think, in about 2018.

But around 2015, his friend said, hey, hey, inflation's coming. You got to buy a house. And he goes, okay, no, he was just right out of college or not too long out of college. We said, all right. So we put together a bank loan of 300,000 boroughs. And it saved up to 10% of 30,000. And he bought a house.

And it was like 10 to 1. So the property's cheap. It was like, you know, $30,000 in American money. But it was a nice house. And the payments were, I think it was $250 to $300 a month in dollars. And it was 10 times that, 11 times that in Bolivars. But a couple of years go, he leaves Venezuela, he comes to the United States. And, you know, even though he's got a college degree, comes here and works as a laborer, as a plasterer.

And a couple years after he's in the United States, his, is, his, His wife says to him, honey, the mortgage payment just went under a dollar a month. And he goes, what? It was 250, not that long ago. And it was because Venezuelan inflation had gone up to 200,000 percent. So basically, he should have had, in principle, in dollar level, maybe more than three quarters of the principal left. And in fact, he did in Bolivars. He still had 240, 250,000 boulevars that he owed.

So that should have been roughly $25,000 U.S. dollars. But he paid it off for $120-something. He paid off the whole mortgage for less than one day's wages as a laborer in the United States. So they ruin the currency as well. The socialists always ruin the currency. But in every way, the country was mismanaged. Yes. Yeah.

Now, a couple different things. I guess it goes to, if there's nothing left except the regime, it kind of goes to the idea of why Trump decided to go with the vice president because the idea was the other choice would be to truly try to debathe the government, get rid of the entire gangster crony commie regime that's there, the entire deep state that supports the current leader. and create some new better government, which that's just too crazy to try,

even for the Republicans. They don't want to do that. But so then he says, okay, listen, Vice President Lady, you can stay, but you just have to do whatever I say, which, you know, raises the question of just how much he's going to tell her to do

and just how compliant she can be before that same commie regime turns on her for being willing. He already did threaten to kill her, by the way, he said, you know, And what happened in Maduro would be nothing compared to what happens to you, lady. So talk about playing hardball there.

But I think it goes to show, though, right? It was that he knew that even what, if you arrest the top 10 guys or something, that ain't going to do it. You have this whole commie regime there that runs what's left of everything. Yeah, I think a lot of this is not really about Venezuela. I mean, for Trump, it's about stealing resources and basically old, old style gunboat. imperialism. But I think for the State Department, this is more about Cuba. Well, no, here's the thing. In Venezuela, the Venezuelan armed forces are thoroughly integrated with Cuban troops that are basically their higher guns, they're mercenaries. The deal is

Cuba sends their commie troops to Venezuela. and Venezuela sends them oil money. And I think the idea behind this is, hey, the Cuban government is being held up by a small amount of oil money. I mean, there's not that many million people in Cuba. I mean, it doesn't take that much oil to float their regime.

And the expectations after 70 years of communism is, is it 70? 65? What is it? It's closing in on 70. the expectations by the populace are very low. So even a small benefit is something that may placate them enough. So I think a lot of it is Marker Rubio looking to Cuba and not so much about Venezuela.

And certainly it's not about liberating Venezuela because all we're doing is liberating them of their oil and not liberating them of the Chavista regime. Yeah. Hey, guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, that I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul

in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that too. They're available again from the great artist, Rick Casali. Just go to my website, Scott Horton.org, and look in the right-hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping, at least in the lower 48 states.

And he does custom work as well. See, I kind of think that that's all BS too, because you can't do anything with Venezuela and oil at these prices. Trump says he wants to keep the price low. You have to probably red-lid in this same oil to make it expensive enough to then get it to market. But what they can do, though, is they can keep it out of the hands of the Chikoms. And as you say, the revenue out of the hands of the Cubans and try to collapse the Cuban regime finally. I totally agree with you about that.

Brad Pierce has a great article about that, the wayward Rattler, about that. But there's a whole thing, too, about the Chinese getting in there on the oil industry and also on the minerals. And so from the Pentagon's point of view, and I thought this was notable to. And I forget, I read a great article about this, but I'm sorry I forget who to credit for it. But they talked about how, you know, it was Trump's tariffs last year, you know, almost a year ago, not quite a year ago. That caused the Chinese to then react by putting all these limits on all their rare earth minerals. And so now this policy is meant to make up for that. Oh, oh, China is now exercising this extra national control over their rare earths.

So now we got to make sure that they're not monopolizing control over the mining and development of rare earth minerals in Venezuela. So just like with the oil, companies are happy to help, but they're not the ones really driving this. This is the Pentagon Joint Staff, Pinky and the brain deciding how to rule the world and how to keep resources out of the hands of competing nation states, right? like when they did the pipeline wars in the Caspian Basin. That was all just about screwing the Ayatollah

and screwing the president of the Russian Federation wasn't about, oh, we just have to please our masters in Houston who demand that we do this. In fact, the oil companies in that case, they would have rather gone through Iran. It's shorter. Right.

Cheaper pipeline. But the Pentagon, as you said, the State Department, they wanted to go, and the National Security Council, they wanted to go due west to freeze, you know, their national compliance. competitors out, forget about business competitors. I think that's probably a big part.

I wouldn't argue. I think that that's also on their minds. I would agree with that. I mean, they say the Wall Street Journal, I can't keep up, honestly, man. I have so many jobs. I really got to get back in a habit of just making sure read everything at antire. com and probably the journal every day. I mean, Trump said, I hear by demand that you cut off all ties with China and Russia and Iran.

Don't do any business with them anymore. No more oil, no more whatever. I say so. and he's just declaring himself world emperor and they better bow down. They had no choice. Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny?

He does have to that. Like the only reason Venezuela sold oil to, why would they sell oil to Russia? Because we had them under a virtual barcade. But that's it. Like, you know, they were always sold to us until we blockaded them and said, we're not taking your stuff.

And then they look for other customers and, oh, well, you know, you can't sell to them. either. I mean, you know, I guess 7-11 has been Cogas my whole life, at least in Texas. I don't know about the different brands around the country. Same here, yeah. Well,

what else I want to ask you? Oh, I want to ask you this. I know that you sure are, obviously, anti-comi and the way these regimes have handled their economics down there and all that. I know you're also an American patriot, and that means you're very anti-American government, too. And this government, it's really nice. mean a lot of the times and it does really horrible things to people like wage massive economic

wars against them and for people in business and government out there around the world there's probably no two words scarier other than if you're talking about direct military action than treasury department and these guys they rule the global financial system and if they decide to put a massive economic war on your ass they sure can't put firepower on target but so much My question to you is, what difference does it really make? Here's this ramshack-o-commy economy run by a bunch of political idiots making idiot decisions, and they would have and could have and did run their country into the ground anyway. But then they also had a lot of help from W. Bush starting at least 05 and maybe before,

and then Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump some more ever since then too. And so how do you gauge or do you have any idea how to ballpark? how much of the failure of, say, for example, the inflation rate you're talking about and just whatever breakdown in their economic system is due to America's sanctions and threats against international corporations that might want to deal with these people. Because after all, you could be a commie and still hire some French company to run your oil program for you. You know what I mean? Or something like that.

But the Treasury says, stay out. Don't mess with me. And then so they do, right? Yeah, yeah. It's hard to gauge that. I know what you're saying. How much of Venezuela's economic collapse is socialism, how much is, let's face it, the collapse of the price of oil.

I mean, it's right, you know, the gas station right next to me is $2.39. If you adjust that for inflation, that may be the cheapest it's ever been in my lifetime. I mean, I remember pumping for 87 cents in the late 80s, but 239 right now is cheaper than 87 cents in the 80s. 80s if you adjust for inflation. So how much of it is oil prices, how much of it is sanctions and how much of it is the failure of socialism.

Ooh, that would be a study. I would say all of them are factors. I know the lefties like to say, oh, it's only because of economic sanctions. But if you look, a lot of the other countries have survived economic sanctions and done okay. Even something like Iran. Iran is not, they're one of the most sanctioned countries in the world.

They have the oil. They had the oil collapse. They had an example, actually, Tom. They're undergoing a massive inflation. They are now. But I mean, I'm just saying as far as overall, their, their economy is, you know, probably middling

to maybe above average, slightly above average among world countries. and Venezuela is not. I mean, Iran, yeah, they're doing the same thing to their currency that Venezuela did. But I would say all three are factors, I couldn't put a percentage on which one is which, though. Yeah, fair enough.

Oh, let me ask you this. Trump keeps making a big deal about the nationalization. Now, first of all, I think, if anybody just thinks this through, It's just completely absurd to say that if any American corporation goes and makes investments in another sovereign nation beyond the political borders of the United States of America,

that thems are the risks, and they know the risks, and they could lose that investment. And it's insane to think that just because an American company can make a deal anywhere, that then that justifies having a world empire to enforce all of their claims anywhere in the world that they may go. If you applied that universally to all the other nation states, well, that wouldn't work very well, would it?

It's completely nuts the way that they, you know, use that as their excuse. There's no way that they could, you know, universalize that at all. However, though, obviously Trump is very animated, at least by the talking point, that they nationalized the oil that American companies invested a lot of money in developing, as you said there. But they originally nationalized it 50 years ago, 1976. the same year I was born and you can see how old I am. And so then I know that they made some settlement and some deal and smooth that over.

And then I know as you're talking about, they had these companies back in there, but more on contract. And then Chavez screwed them again, right? Chavez chased out everybody except Chevron. And I know Chevron stayed and there's some great articles. And I'm sorry, you got to, I know that it's evil propaganda, but this is who the government talks to you. You have to read the New York Times in the Wall Street Journal.

They have things in there. You're supposed to hate read them, but you still got to read them. So anyway, they have these in-depth things about Chevron's ongoing relationship because they had a guy that is the New York Times story, I think, says they had a guy in their board who was a close personal friend of Hugo Chavez. I think they just hired a close personal friend of Hugo Chavez to be on their board to keep that relationship. So when Exxon and everybody else got kicked out, Chevron stayed and all that.

But anyway, I'm off on a tangent. My question for you is just how bad did these companies get screwed? And I know even Chavez ended up settling and paying them off something. How close to hole were they made or not? I mean, I don't really care either way, as I said, but I'm interested, like, if you took that talking point at face value, like how much money adjusted for inflation or not or whatever, how much does Venezuela actually owe Exxon or any of these other companies anyway? Or have they just already agreed and settled that?

and it's a totally move point at this point or what? Wow, I haven't gone into it in too much detail, but a lot of the, even though there's a lot of, a lot of expense in oil exploration and oil extraction, a lot of the contracts are written up so that most of the profits are, most of the costs are recouped right away. So it's really not so much a matter of, gee, these companies lost money.

It's a matter of, gee, they were making good money, and they had already recouped their losses, and they were making profits, and now that profit was taken away from them by the central government. But one of the things I want to say, because, I mean, look, none of them went out of business. None of them reported huge losses.

I mean, it's, you know, there's no, there was no, you won't find a Wall Street Journal article talking about how ExxonMobil or Conoco or any of those other countries companies had risk bankruptcy over what happened in Venezuela. You just won't do, you won't find that. But let me just say one thing. You know, we talk about nationalization of the resources and how the Trump administration really invade heavily

against how they were nationalized. Well, they've just been re-nationalized. I mean, Trump is just taking, now the money is no longer being administered by the Venezuelan government, But as he said in a truth social tweet, by me personally as president of the United States, all of the oil is going to go to the United States. They've been just renationalized to the United States, not nationalized by the Venezuelan government. So these companies are not going to get reimbursed that way, I don't think.

You know, maybe they could sue in U.S. court. But I even had already voted that, you know, we might have to subsidize the companies to get them to go back. because they're not going to want to take the risk. So maybe we'll have to help pay for it in the first place and all this. So far from getting to get their dividend check now or, you know, somehow make extra profit of this. It's weird. I just wrote last month an article, the title of it was billionaires, not socialism,

are the greatest threat to the free market. And what does Donald Trump do? He nationalizes the Venezuelan oil industry on behalf of the U.S. government. And of course, he also extracted 10% value out of, what was it, what was that company, a tech company, not AMB. I don't know a percent. I think he put a guy on the board of Intel or something. Yeah, so, I mean, here he is nationalizing the means of production, at least partially.

I mean, I may have to read an apology the way Trump is going. That maybe socialism is an actual threat. But for the most part, it is what you just described about oil companies being subsidized. It's the crony capitalism, what used to be called fascism. It's the subsidies, the gateway regulations, gatekeeping regulations, rather. It's those kind of things that are the real threat and really what hurt the American consumer, the American taxpayer. Yeah.

All right, guys. Well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use Amazon.com, all the time because what are you going to do? They got prime. They bring the stuff right your door and all that. So that's fine. But what you do is make sure it's stop by Scott Horton.org and click the Amazon link in the right hand margin there. Get yourself a bug assault shotgun for destroying flies, trespassing on your property. And then also whatever you get from Amazon and Scott Horton's show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale, which is very nice. And look, this whole thing about, oh,

We, boy, as soon as they start talking about we, like I'm not trying to be a language national socialist here, but I am saying that like, well, wait, just who all counts as we in this thing? At least let's stop and ask. We are all going to benefit so much from stealing this oil. We're going to get all this oil for free. And that's supposed to drive the price down a nickel for everyone or whatever. We should all be so grateful for something like that. the overall contribution to the American GDP there,

essentially no matter how many what, how many tens of billions of dollars would they have to just outright make and profit off of this where you could say that, oh yeah, no, overall the American people's standard of living was bolstered by this marginal increase in hydrocarbon imports. I mean, it's completely preposterous. It's like when they say, look, American tax money,

they take the money from you, Tom, and then, yes, they give it to Israel, but then Israel spends it on Boeing products made in Washington State. Aren't you thrilled that you're getting your money back? But then that's a bunch of crap, right? You don't live in Washington State and you don't work for Boeing, so you ain't we in that context at all. Same kind of here.

Yeah, when Trump says we benefit, I first have to check, wait a minute, is he pregnant? Does he have a tapeworm? because that's how you speak of yourself in the plural then. But really what he's talking about is the oil barons, you know, the oil executives. He's not talking about the average American consumer. We're not going to get anything out of this. And probably it's not going to make much difference in the price of oil.

I don't see the price of oil going down much more than it is, no matter what the supply is. I mean, at some point, they just shut down all the oil fields in Oklahoma that are, that they're fracking that is fairly expensive to extract. I mean, that's one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia went full on a few years back production. They wanted to keep the price of oil really low and they wanted to get rid of all the frackers,

but they also wanted to hurt Iran because Iran at the time had basically pegged their national budget to $90 a barrel and it hasn't been that for a long time. But what will happen, is there'll just be less production. So it's not going to, it's not going to lower the price other than maybe a few weeks a month or two. I mean, that's, that's the best case scenario. So us stealing all the resources from Venezuela is not going to benefit us unless you're a major stockholder in Conoco Phillips or ExxonMobil or any of the major oil companies. Yeah.

It sounds like what you're saying is the policy will benefit Saudi oil producers over American oil producers and will help drive Americans out of business because they're doing all this fracking and shale oil and all this more expensive stuff. Right. And Saudis by driving the price down, they bankrupt American producers and try to keep us and everybody else more dependent on the Eastern exports. Yeah, I mean, Trump's their side in that. I mean, you know, Americans, you know, if you go back to 1980, they were talking about

peak oil. Why? Because all the easy oil had been extracted. I mean, they, you know, a little roundtop, which was first tapped in the late 1800s, it gushed for 30-something days. And it continued to provide oil, even into, I think, into World War II. And all of the easy oil was extracted. Now it's very difficult. But you could still go to Saudi Arabia, stick a toothpick in the sand and a gusher will come up. I'm exaggerating, but not by a heck of a lot, comparatively speaking. The Saudi oil is easy to extract if you contrast it with the United States. And it's also, by the way, easier to refine than the heavier Venezuelan oil. Yeah.

Hey, by the way, I was reading this thing, which I don't remember the guy's name or the names of the molecules. But anyway, this guy clearly knew he was talking about. And he was saying, listen, when you're talking about refining the heavy, oil sands and shale oil and all this stuff from Canada in the United States, well, that's all polluted with what you call it molecule, whereas the Venezuelan crude is polluted with sulfur and these other things, which is a totally different process. You can say they're both kind of heavy crude,

but it's a much more expensive and difficult process to refine the heavy Venezuelan crude. It's the yuckiest stuff in the world compared, especially like you're saying, to the lightest, sweetest crude in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Greg Pallas used to write about years and years ago was how the Saudis would do this. They'd crash the price. They'd raise the price so that they can make as much money as they can

off of doing the same amount of work. But then when Canadian and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Texan oil producers start ramping up their more expensive techniques, then they crash the price again, drive them all out of business, and then start the cycle again, you know. Exactly. Yeah. That's a Saudi strategy.

And at least, you know, it has been for the past few years and probably will be for the next few years. And, you know, as a result, we've got what we've got. But going back to Venezuela, I don't see, I think it's going to be tough to get into Venezuela just because it's a heavier oil. It's a little more expensive to, not so much to extract, but to refine. And it'll be a hard road for Venezuela to become a major oil producer with the price where it's at right now. And I don't know that it's going to go up that much more in the next few years. Hey, by the way, I interviewed earlier today a guy named Chris Brunette, who used to be at the Manhattan Institute, and then he got real wise.

and now he's writing on Substack, and he wrote a thing all about Paul Singer, the vulture, and how he got away with this sweet deal to take over Sitco. His privately owned company, I think it's called Amber, now is a single private owner of all of Sitco because he was able to gangsterize this debt through lawfare and take over this company. And now he is going to be one of the prime beneficiaries.

of, you know, or it's primed to be, I guess we'll see what happens, but it's set to become a major beneficiary now of this if we can get that up and going again. So this is a lot of that stuff going around. I mean, there was a story floating around the last couple of days about how a lot of big bets were put on OLLI market about Maduro being losing power. Yeah.

So, I mean, and you know, I've thrown a few bucks into Cal Sheet, which is a competitor, Paul. market, same kind of thing. And, you know, it's amazing. Like, you could make some serious money during that. If you're in a policy, the action end of the policy making. That's how accurate I've got to be on the timing. Well, that's it.

I mean, you know, but if you look at these markets, they say Maduro will be out before June, before August. Like, you know, you can place any kind of number of bets. So, yeah. And maybe I do need to get into that, so don't have any money to gamble with. All right, this has been so much fun. Thank you for coming on the show

and talking to us about all this great stuff, Tom. And please write all about whatever you think and know for the Institute on the subject, too, if you can. Yeah, I'll do that. Can I do a plug for my little podcast? It's called Blue Collar Breakdown, and it's on YouTube and Facebook and Rumble and soon to be in a lot of other places.

talk about mostly economics, but... How many episodes do you have? Yeah, we'll feature it at the... I've done 20... Yeah, yeah, I've done 27 episodes. I just started enough, I didn't... No, no, that's right. Twenty-eight episodes.

Listen, please get in contact with Harley, and we'll add it to the front page, man, and add you two... Harley have... He already offered, okay, and I said, no, I want to do a few episodes before they... You know, I want to get it... I want to get the style down.

I want to make all my mistakes first. which I've made some mistakes. So if you listen, you'll see some mistakes. But I wanted to make those before I put it on the Institute. But I think I'm ready to go. And we do have a feed, everyone, that is all of us at the Institute. You get all of our shows if you sign up for the Libertarian Institute fee, which is a pretty cool thing.

And soon we will feature Tom Edlum there. And what was your name of your book again, Patriots Descent? Is that right? It was, shoot, it's what the judge called me. I shouldn't have said that. It was, man. It's blue. That ring a bell?

Yeah, I know. It's weird that I can't think of it. It's something sedition. Oh. He called me, he called me. Oh, man, I'm having an old man moment here. You know, he's 260. I forget a lot of things, but I remember the names of my gang books that I wrote.

That was such a problem. Hang on, I'm looking at Amazon now. and there is a rogue's sedition, of course. That's right. That's right. He called me a rogue.

He called me a rogue. Rogue juror. That's what the, you know, I have that in there. The stuff I wrote for the Rockwell.com about my jury service.

And I got jury service coming up at the end of the month. So we'll see how it goes. I got kicked off that jury. Ah, well, that's good. Get back to work. All right.

Thank you, Tom. Appreciate you, ma'am. All right. Hey, thanks, Scott. This Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos, Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places, and check out my books, fools errand, enough already, and my latest, Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scotthorton.org, and I'm serializing the audio book of Provote at Scott Horton. Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by dissident media, audio mastering

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