The Dan Bongino Show - Maduro F'ed Around and Found Out | Episode 196

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro seized into American custody; The left defends an actual fascist; and a preview of what comes next. Watch VINCE Live on Rumble - Mon-Fri 10AM ET ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://rumble.com/vince⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Trump Announces Capture Of Dictator Nicolás Maduro During Early ‘Large Scale Attack Against Venezuela’ https://dailycaller.com/2026/01/03/donald-trump-announces-capture-nicolas-maduro-venezuela-attack-truth-social/ How the operation to take out Venezuela's Maduro unfolded https://www.axios.com/2026/01/03/maduro-capture-trump-venezuela-operation Someone made a huge profit predicting Maduro's capture. Here's what happened https://www.axios.com/2026/01/03/maduro-capture-bets-trade-prediction-markets Sponsors: Helix Sleep - helixsleep.com/vince Goldbelly - goldbelly.com code: Vince Brickhouse Nutrition - takelean.com code: Vince American Financing - American Financing.net/Vince.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Vince on a Monday. Great to be back with you in this, the year of our Lord, 2026. The 250th anniversary of our country. We've got a lot to talk about as we start off the new year. As always, it's great to have you with us. We have a very big show ahead. We go, our guys go into Venezuela, grab Nicholas Maduro, get out of there in less time than most major motion pictures in Hollywood. It's just incredible what these guys were able to point. pull off we'll talk about that experience what happened that operation and then what it means for venezuela for the western hemisphere and certainly for the united states of america that's all ahead on this program i will be joined by mike gonzalez today as well he's an expert on the commies including people like maduro and for that matter the the new communist mayor of new york zoran mam dani we've got a lot to discuss with mike gonzalez uh and a very big show and uh in a moment i I want to just give you a quick summary of the departure from the FBI of one Dan Bongino. He's done.

What comes next? Well, I'm curious, too. It's all coming up on this edition of Vince. Great to have you with me. Best audience anywhere. Hey, you know, winter hits, and suddenly you're spending way more time indoors, especially in your bedroom. Honestly, staying comfortable is absolutely everything.

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120 night sleep trial plus a lifetime warranty and if you're not happy they're happy with helix guarantee makes the return super easy and helix has an exclusive offer for you go to helix sleep dot com slash vince for 27% off site wide that's helix sleep.com slash vince and get 27% off site wide and make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know that we sent you helix sleep dot com slash vince jow walsh in the in the chat goes you're curious too yes i'm curious too uh i'm very excited to hear that Dan Bongino is officially done at the FBI, that I'm confident that comes as a great relief to Dan and his family, his great family.

It's, you know, it's been a crazy year. It's been an absolutely crazy year. And to summarize how Dan's year went, the FBI director, Cash Patel, sent him off last night. Five o'clock Eastern time last night on X. He posted the following. He said, Dan heads back to the private sector after helping orchestrate a record year for the FBI. And here's how cash ran the numbers down. He said there was a historic 20% drop in the nationwide murder rate.

Nobody disputes that, by the way. That's all over the place, that the homicide rate has fallen to record levels, record lows. A 100% increase in arrests from year to year. That would be arrests being done by the FBI. 1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted. That's a 210% increase over the prior year under the Biden era. Let's see, what else? It's 2,000 plus kilos of fentanyl that were seized.

That's up 31%. That's enough to kill 130 million Americans. And just to be clear on what Cash is saying here, have you noticed that drug overdose deaths, drug deaths in the United States have plummeted over the course of the last year? This is not a coincidence. When the FBI is pulling all this fentanyl off the streets, when we're blowing up ships that are trying to make their way to America carrying illicit drugs, when we lock down our border, it turns out it does save American lives. a lot of them it's a huge deal a huge deal what else nihilistic violent extremism arrests are up 490 percent you know what that is nihilistic violent extremism this is when people get on the internet and they try and groom children into hurting themselves and others yeah we're arresting

those people uh thanks to dan cash and the FBI that's up nearly 500 percent that's a that's a meaningful jump over 6,000 child victims have been located that's a 22% increase over the prior year espionage arrests that would be spies in the united states are up 35% and multiple successful surges including summer heat that was violent crime that was orchestrated by dan remember cash came out and he gave that big press conference saying the dan quarterback that whole thing over 9000 arrests in just three months and he goes on to say the FBI is saving lives and protecting innocent kids none of it possible without Dan's leadership and support thank you Dan bungee you know yeah thank you Dan thank you for your service to your country pretty pretty amazing stuff and you know you know

it wasn't even on the list that cash didn't include they caught the pipe bomber then Dan caught the pipe bomber too something that he was obsessed with uh as a private citizen goes in as deputy directed the FBI. They hunt this guy down. They take him into custody. So great. Honestly, as I said before, when we got the news that Dan was leaving, a lot of points on the scoreboard. And he can leave with his head held high, a lot to be proud of. And here's what I'm looking forward to. Look, I said before somebody pointed out in the chat, I just cited that, like, that I'm curious about what's going to happen too. Isn't that interesting? Vince is curious. Wouldn't Vince? No, I don't know. All of this is up to Dan. Everything that is going to happen next in terms of Dan's schedule.

is up to him uh and i can't wait to see it i'm as i'm as eager as you are uh to see him back behind a microphone talking to an audience uh and giving us his perspective on what exactly went down inside of that government and what the rest of us should make of it look in media there's there's something obviously true but just intuitively but i'll just lay it out which is you turn to people that you feel like have a good sense of what's actually going on because you want their help in understanding the world in which you're living right like what's actually happening in washington who should i trust who is untrustworthy who's a scombag the people that we choose to listen to or engage with in media are the people we think are giving us the best possible recitation of the facts

uh without without fear of favor that that's the way it should be and so one of the ways you do that is you try to accrue knowledge from the outside. I mean, this is what I have to do. I've been, I've had a year of rather a career in journalism where I try and get to know people, find out more information. I see a lot of news cycles come and go and I get a clearer and clearer sense with each passing news cycle about where things are headed, the trajectory of these news events. What's going to happen next? For instance, we're going to talk about Venezuela in a moment and there's a lot of comparisons being made to Iraq. People are like, oh, we're involved in regime change. It's going to be a complete disaster. It is really important to have a sense of history and a sense of how these

operations go, you know, what American benefits exist here. You've got to think clearly about it. You have to. And you're going to turn to people to help you make sense of it. Dan has always had a talent for that on the outside. Now, yes, Dan had a career in government before as a Secret Service agent, as a police officer. Those gave him excellent perspective. on the way things worked on the inside that he could use to inform his media career. But now imagine what he's got. Now, this is the thing. I was thinking about this this weekend.

I'm like, you know, I don't envy the kind of job that Dan just entered into and spent the last year doing. I don't envy that at all. It just seems miserable to me. It seems miserable to me. And God bless him for doing it. What I do envy is the perspective. What I do envy is the insider knowledge.

What I do envy is the ability. to see what's going on in the inside and now take it to an audience publicly. I can't wait for it. I'm super pumped about it. So anyway, a lot to be excited about all of Dan's announcements, whatever he wants to do. That's all on his schedule. Again, I'm as curious as you are. I can't wait to find out more.

But congratulations once again to Dan wrapping up his time at the FBI coming back to the rest of us in the private sector. Looking forward to that and a nice send off from Cash Patel. That's cool. All right. Let's see. No, don't make me the deputy. director let's go let's go no stop it stop that nonsense um all right maduro fucked around and now we found out in the f a foe sequence boy the maduro fo holy cow so here's what we saw and i in and for those

you've been following this show for a time you know a lot of these details but i want to recite some of the really clear facts about what's been happening in venezuela you understand that modern day Venezuela. Venezuela, the flourishing country really up until the commies took it over in the form of Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro was built by the United States of America. No, I didn't stutter. The country was built by the United States of America. The wealth as we know it in Venezuela has come to be because of the U.S. We built the oil. industry in this country and up until the communists stole it from American energy companies that country was on a an excellent trajectory but just like

everything else just like every other country the commies have touched they ruined what we had built they ruined what good hard-working people had built for their own cruel purposes we build all the oil infrastructure there everything Venezuela to be clear has the largest proven oil reserves on the entire planet proven in other words we know how much oil is underground at the very least and it is the biggest on the entire planet the United States through a variety of oil companies goes in drills for it refines it brings in all of the manpower to pull this oil from the earth and then eventually what ends up happening is Hugo Chavez steals it, steals it. Now, they call it expropriate,

which is a fancy word for steal. It's theft. They stole it from the American companies. And the only company that stuck around, Chevron, stuck around under duress. The way that worked was they said, Chavez said, okay, basically you own almost none of your company, but if you take a very tiny share of your own company, we'll steal the rest of it and you get to stay. So Chevron took the deal. all the other oil companies run right out of town run right out of town all their stuff was stolen and so ever since then what is you know and this was sold obviously the Venezuelan people this is going to enrich you this is going to be good for you this belongs to us this is what these commies say they'll say something like this they appeal to their national sensibilities or the to the

populace by saying we're doing this for you well how'd that work out well it got to the point that Venezuelas were eating zoo animals. Do you remember that? Where Venezuela has reached desperate levels of poverty and despair. Now, how has Maduro done in the midst of all of this? Well, he's done great. Maduro gets to live in palaces. Maduro gets to live a luxurious lifestyle.

He's surrounded by armed guards who protect him at every moment. Those armed guards, to be clear, are Cubans. They're not Venezuelans because if your family was eating zoo animals to subsist, chances are you might not be happy with your leader so the Cubans speaking of commies have been protecting Maduro and where's all that oil going well certainly the proceeds are not going to the Venezuelan people they're desperate and starving the proceeds go to Maduro and in the oil itself what goes to all the authoritarian regimes the Cubans get the oil the Iranians get oil the Chinese are the single biggest buyer of that oil from Venezuela but I thought there

were sanctions, Vince. Yeah, there are. And that's why they use false flags. They use ghost shipping in order to move that oil, starting through Cuba, all around the world. All around the world. Simultaneously, the way Venezuela operates is as a narco state. Maduro is the head of the state-run cartel. And they've been sending cocaine, especially, all across the planet and into the United States, into the hands of America's children, causing tremendous amounts of harm and despair. Maduro's been doing all of that. That led to an indictment in 2020. The Trump Justice Department began to hold Maduro accountable from afar.

Now, they couldn't take him in the, or they didn't take them in the custody back then. And did the Biden administration get rid of the charges against Maduro? No, they didn't. They sustained them. They kept them in place. In other words, the Biden administration shared the assessment that Maduro was guilty of something. And that brings us to the current day because finally, somebody's done something about this. President Trump's Justice Department with the help of the United States military,

the extraordinary help of the United States military, just went in and in the course of three hours, we're able to raid Caracas, grab Maduro, get him out on a helicopter, and put him on the U.S. S.Ewo Jima and bring him back to New York. They did all of this in very rapid succession in a well-orchestrated, amazing, unparalleled military operation that happened like that. In fact, speaking of he after round and he found out, here's the news this weekend from the press conference with the president and his cabinet members. Take a look. Cut one. Last night on the order of the president of the United States. States. And in support of a request from the Department of Justice,

the United States military conducted an apprehension mission in Caracas, Venezuela, to bring to justice two indicted persons, Nicholas and Sassia Maduro. Nicholas Maduro had his chance until he didn't. He effed around and he found out. This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military. might and competence in American history. Like, I don't understand yet how they haven't figured this out. And now, if you don't know, now you know. Because this is the way it's going to play out.

And I think people need to understand that this is not a president that just talks and does letters and press conferences. And, you know, if he says he's serious about something, he means it. Don't play games. Don't play games with this president's in office because it's not going to turn out well. Amazing video. the amazing piece of audio produced by the White House, kind of a wrap up on the weekend's events.

Really, really phenomenal. So here's some of the pieces as we understand it. You had members of the FBI, speaking of a reason I want to hear from Dan, you had members of the FBI involved in this operation to arrest and get Maduro out of the country. You had Delta Force involved, Delta Force. These are the most elite military members on the planet going in grabbing this guy. You had the CIA, which by the way, last year, for those of you who follow the news closely, you'll remember this. I think it was October of last year when President Trump

confirmed that the CIA had been deployed in Venezuela. A reporter just randomly asked the question, why did you send the CIA in? And President Trump just accepted the premise. It was like, hey, you got to do it. I forget what he said, the quote, but he confirmed that the CIA was deployed. And obviously, they were there laying the groundwork for this operation, months in the making and pulled off with immense success. Everything from the airstrikes that were going on, they filled the air with aircraft in order to just create a lot of chaos in the air and to basically create this massive distraction of military air power.

And then simultaneously, they shut off power in the city. This is amazing. Don't mess with the U.S. We shut off power in Caracas. And then they get into the military. military base where Maduro was being held. And according to the president, he and his wife made a sprint for a safe room. They were trying to get behind a steel door for a safe room. And Delta Force got on them before they could close the door. And in the process, they killed 32 members of the

Cuban military, Cuban guard that were there to protect Maduro, all killed. According to the Cuban government now, they say 32 were killed, not a single American casualty, not a single one. They grabbed Maduro and his wife. The door could not be shut. If it had been shut and sealed, the military was also ready for that. They had blow torches and whatever devices you needed available. The president said it would have taken them approximately 47 seconds. I'm not sure if he chose that number on purpose.

It's the 47th presidency. but 47 seconds to get through that door if it was locked, not locked. They got a hold of them and they got them out of the country. The president said he's never seen anything like this. Here he is in some of his first public accounting on the subject talking to Fox this weekend, cut two. I've never seen anything like this. I was. I was able to watch it in real time and I watched every aspect of it.

And I listened to the communication between, you know, where we were in Florida. and out in the field in Venezuela. And it was amazing to see the professionalism, the quality of leadership, the professionalism, General Raisin-Kane is fantastic. Don't forget, we did another one not so long ago. It was called the knocking out of the Iranian nuclear threat, the nuclear power.

And that was unbelievable what they did there. And this is something that, gee, I don't know, it's amazing. and to have a few injuries but no death on our side is really amazing. It really is amazing. He said a few injuries, a few injuries, but no death on the American side. Really an amazing thing. Meanwhile, dozens of Cuban Guard killed in the raid. Wonderful stuff.

And I'm glad these guys are on our side. Aren't you glad Delta forces on our side? Holy crap. Could you imagine what the chaos of that must have been like? How are they reacting in Venezuela? How are Venezuelans reacting all around the world? You know, that's a country where millions upon millions of people have fled because of the commies who have been running the whole show. I've got details on that coming up. Celebrations around the planet. I'll share that with you. But first, I'll tell you about one of our great sponsors. Have you heard about Gold Belly by any chance? Goldbell. It is amazing. If you missed it during the holidays, well, you don't have to miss it anymore. Don't miss it anymore. It's an amazing site that celebrates the best of America by shipping our country's most iconic foods from legendary restaurants right to your door. Anywhere in America. It's perfect for game day, Valentine's Day or anything else you've got going on. Goldbelly is going to ship you. iconic Chicago deep dish pizza from Lou Melnotties. The original Buffalo wings from Anchor Bar in Buffalo. Guy Fierry's unbelievable trash. can nachos, real Philly cheese steaks, or even the legendary Franklin's barbecue straight from Texas right to your door. You know, we've got Valentine's Day coming up. Can you believe it?

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Take a look at this, cut six. As Maduro is like, happy New Year, happy New Year, he says. Yeah, happy New Year. He felt the animal. He's walking. Good night. Happy New Year. Good night.

Happy New Year. Yeah, good night, son. DEA agents perp walking him. Yeah. Pretty wild. Trump tweeted a photo of him or posted a photo of him the truth social. He looked, he looked, you know, ridiculous. They had a, they had a hearing protection on him. They had the, like, not the headphones, but, you know, like basically to block his hearing. And then they had blinders on him, too, to block everything out. So basically, so he didn't know, you know, where he was going and couldn't look at anything, couldn't hear anything. And so President Trump posted at the truth social. kind of a wild uh image to see people were saying it looks like a like a a video game streamer called dr disrespect have you seen this at all so here's what the guy the guy here's where it looked like this is the white house uh post nicholas maduro on board the u sseu ojima look at this it looks a little uh saddam husseinish actually and then uh and then the doctor disrespect guy posted

it and he said stop linking this to me it's not funny because what does he look like the disrespect oh he's got they've got it at the top he fellas can we fix the screen a little bit there look at the top of the screen he he dresses up like this guy all the time he looks like the exact same there he is anyway that's that's that's maduro in custody how are venezuelans feeling about this hey any uh venezuelans in the chat right now how do you feel about this that maduro is no longer leading that country that the United States is now subjecting him to justice. Because here's what it looks like among the Venezuelan diaspora.

In the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina cut three, they were throwing a hell of a party. Watch this. I'm telling you, I'm seeing these party videos. Did you guys see these, Isaac? Did you see the party videos? I, dude, I wanted to get down with these parties. I was like, I don't know what they've got, but they've got a vibe.

There's a vibe going on. Cut forward. Look, more dancing, Venezuelans. Dude. that i got i got to do i got to get some ai research done on that song or something i don't know if shazam will tell me i got to find out what song that is i'm going to put that's a bob i'm putting that on in the car i don't know that's a great that's a great rundown um it's really funny and then uh of course there's no no celebration of something that makes people happy

that trump's responsible for would be complete without y mca and the trump dance take a look cut five It's so funny. I love that. People are telling me not to dance. You know what? No. I'm going to dance. It's so good. I love it, man. I just like happiness. I'm a big fan of joy. And I'm a big fan of commies being displaced. Now, what is this all about? What's going on here? So as I mentioned, the American energy industry was like straight up stolen by the commies. Can I say something to the American left? Let me, let me, let me, address them for a moment. How many times do lefties try and force you to do land acknowledgments and claiming that you live on something that you stole? Now, of course, they're lying about it, but let's just go with that for a moment. Oh, you stole this land. So you have to make a land acknowledgement. Oh, the Cherokee were once the owners of this land and we inherited it from them or we stole it from them or whatever they say. Okay. Well, then why shouldn't the Venezuelan communist government have to do oil acknowledgments that they stole our

infrastructure from America this oil industry was built by America no they don't have to subject them to that standard why is that exactly why is that why is it that i'm beginning to come to the conclusion that you just hate us meaning Americans at every turn right now the left is freaking out that Donald Trump just enforced an actual criminal indictment against Maduro. And Maduro is not the president. Even in the Trump administration, they've been kind of referring to him as the president. They just as a title. He's not the legitimate leader, was never the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

He was there fraudulently. He seized power. If you listen to Venezuelans, they referred to him as an occupying. not as the leader of the country somebody who seized power against the wishes of the country and speaking of that country you know there's in a moment we'll talk to mike gonzalez and get his his expert assessment of all of this but i do want to focus on something for a moment you know there there is a lot of legitimate concern about what comes next totally legitimate you know in the united states i think we have developed a very cynical view for good reasons

about the use of our military in foreign countries, especially when it involves, quote-unquote, regime change. But here's something that I'm thinking about right now and that I'd like you to think about as well. This is definitely not Iraq. This is in no way the same set of circumstances. Venezuela is within the Western Hemisphere. So in other words, it's in the most important sphere of influence

for the United States. It is of paramount importance for national security that the Western Hemisphere be under American control. I mean the whole Western Hemisphere. Additionally, China has made – and all of our adversaries, but China especially, has made massive inroads into Venezuela as a staging ground for its adversarial relationship with us, buying illicit oil from them stolen from the American people. and we're supposed to be just okay with that? No, we're not okay with that. We will assert ourselves again

and reestablish dominance in our own hemisphere and push back our adversaries, big ones. The other piece here is when you look at any time a regime changes, anytime there is a military conflict of any kind, even if it's a short little tiny one, like the one we just saw this weekend, 90 minutes, three hours, there's nothing. But then you displace the person who's acting as leader of the country, what comes next?

Well, it helps to understand. what the country looks like right now. Not every country that has withstood a change in the way its government is structured or regime change has ended up in complete disaster. Famous examples of great successes have been Germany and Japan in the wake of World War II. Now, how did that happen? Well, both of those countries had more cohesive cultures than, say, Iraq. The Middle East is plagued with sectarian and tribal violence that you don't find,

in places with more homogenous cultures like Japan and Germany. So culture is probably the leading indicator. Venezuela has that. Venezuela has cultural cohesion. The other is whether or not the country has a legacy of real democratic institutions. Iraq was a joke. Iraq was a joke run by the Hussein family, a complete authoritarian dictatorship,

didn't have a reasonable legacy of democratic institutions to fall back upon. And as a result, it became a complete disaster in the wake of, in the wake of the overthrow of Saddam. But Germany had a history of democracy. Japan, we convinced the emperor to basically swear off his own divinity as we changed the government there. But again, had a homogenous culture. Venezuela does have a history of functional and stable democratic institutions up until the communists took over in the form of Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro. So you have people who grew up in a world where they recognize the stable and thriving democracy that they once had and they'd like it back, please, which is why you're seeing Venezuelan celebrate right now. So there's all sorts of reasons for optimism here that this is going to work out.

But I'm going to explore it more with Mike Gonzalez in just a moment because, again, this really comes down to, is it good for us or not? And I would submit, it is. It is. More in a moment on this coming up. all right hey let me thank our great sponsors including brick house nutrition just absolutely amazing doctors call weight cycling a complete disaster and half of americans do this when you lose 10 or more pounds and then you put those that weight back on plus a couple of more it can be tough on your body and it probably probably leaves you really frustrated and the bottom line is simple most people need help losing weight and here's a great way to do that non-prescription lean by Brickhouse Nutrition. Now, it was created by doctors, and lean as an oral supplement,

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This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and it's not a substitute or alternative for care from a health care provider. Not at all. And so thank you to Brickhouse Nutrition. And thank you also to American financing. If you're worried about those upcoming credit card bills after the holidays, you should know this. homeowner, there's no better time than right now to call American financing and wipe out that debt. You can eliminate your stress and set yourself up for a very strong 2026. The Fed dropped rates

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foundation he's wonderful and he's an expert on all of these commies and communist movements all around the planet, the Marxists. Mike, good to talk to you, as always, sir. Glad to have you with us on a Monday. Vince, I'll tell you when I'm an expert on, the ketchup song, which is the song you were just celebrating. I put the link in the chat. It's a wonderful song.

It came out in Spain in 2002. So I completely agree with you. It's super catchy. It's called the ketchup song? It's called the ketchup song by a group called the ketchup, that's ketchup, last ketchup, last ketchup. they did the daughters of a of a flamenco the singer that was called tomato tomato so they named themselves the ketchup group and it's a great song i just put the uh the link and sorry i don't want to i don't want to take up your your time but you have the link there in the chat oh i love i swear to you i'm

putting it on in the car as soon as i get out of here today i've got a list of this thing um it's really great so uh so mike let's talk about this operation it's stunning operation to go in there, grab Nicholas Maduro and his wife, get out of the country, all done within, in the course of about three hours, they said, to get it all done and over with. What did you make of it? It was land, sea, and air.

We suffered very few casualties. We suffered about seven wounded. None of them are in critical condition. Apparently, we killed 40 to 50. It's not known. What is known is that 32 of the... was killed with Cubans. Yeah.

32. So if we killed 40, that means three-fourths were Cubans. More than three-fourths. And why are Cubans protecting Maduro? Because he could not trust Venezuelans. The Cubans have been, it's about maybe an estimated 15,000 Cuban henchmen in Caracas right now. In Trump won, according to Carlos Fuente, the former Mexican foreign minister, he was ready

to leave. He was ready to get on a plane to Havana or Nicaragua. New York, sorry, or Sochi in Russia. And the Cuban said to him, no, you're not leaving anywhere. You're the president. Go back to the palace and act presidential. And these Cubans were surrounding him. And the Cubans have always denied, we have nobody in Caracas until last night when they had to acknowledge that 32 of the people killed were Cuban agents. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the justification for this. Why is it in the American interest to see Maduro brought to justice in this way. So I think they just and more should be made of this

is that the people, the hundreds of thousands that are dying of drug overdose, a lot of them are in MAGA country. They're very important to Trump and J.D. Vance. If you read J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elogy, you understand that these are people. If you travel America, like I travel America. You know, I went to a very beautiful town in Idaho, not in Iowa, in about two years ago, and I said to the waitress, this is a beautiful town. She goes, yeah, it's really beautiful, but 90 percent of the people here are cooking meth. So a lot of, a lot of these towns in America are falling into desolation, unemployment, and I think this is very serious to the administration. So in order to address these twin threats of narcotic smuggling, which Venezuela, you have to

understand the Venezuelan government was not a government. It was a cartel. Yes. He was not the legitimate leader of anything, Maduro, he was the head of a cartel. It's what do they call it, the cartel de la Solis. The cartel of the sons. And they were trying to not just so havoc on our streets with narcotics, but I have, you know, I've talked to a Venezuelan defector, a former senior official who told me that Chavez gave a lot of money to Black Lives Matter, for example, to one of the founders of Black Last Matter, even before the group was founded to sow mayhem on our streets. So these are people who were committed to create and havoc. And if you want to take care of that, these are Americans who were not, were absent under the

Biden administration. And now they're not absent anymore. They matter a lot to Trump and Vance and to Rubio. And I think that's really at the bottom of this. And I think we'll be looking at activities in Mexico. Mexico has also lost control of its territory. I've talked to to northern politicians in the north. They've told me that there's extraditions already taking place. American planes landing, taking out drug kingpins. Colombia also has to look out because Colombia is the world's top exporter of cocaine. So, and Petro, I know the Marxist president does not really have control. He may be cooperating himself with the narcot traffickers, but not to the degree that Maduro was. So I think that this is really an operation that is focused on America, on our streets, on our urban areas,

and our towns across the U.S. make sure that the scourge of narcotics is wiped clean. So priority one is to stop the deaths, the deaths due to drugs in the United States. And by the way, they've had a lot of success, massive plummeting in drug deaths over the course of the last year. They deserve a lot of credit for that. But also there's the oil component to all of this that I've been talking about, which is that America built Venezuela, as we know it. We built the oil industry there. Hugo Chavez and Maduro in succession were both seizing all of this American energy infrastructure. And then they didn't, despite their false promises, give the wealth to the people or something like that. Instead, they used it to enrich themselves and then send all of that oil in illicit ways to our adversaries, especially China. Can you talk about the impact on the global oil economy now as a result of this?

Yes. I mean, Chavez basically expropriated the oil resources, Pedevezza, which was a very well-run company, oil company. was collectivized, the same way that Mamdani and his tenant person, Sia Weaver, want to expropriate property from landlords in New York and have the city buy it and run it because cities are such great landlords just took to the people of Havana and Moscow about this. You know, Chavez and Maduro did the same thing to Pelevesa. So when you end up after, you know, this whole thing begins in 1999, after 30 years, 30 plus years of collectivism, you have a country with the deepest oil reserves, the proven oil, the best, the largest proven oil reserves in the world, which sells a fraction of what we sell in the open market because the government doesn't know how to run anything. It's wild. And so what President Trump says is that we're going to try and recoup the stolen costs of all of this for the American energy companies.

And then simultaneously, for the first time, actually benefit the Venezuelan people. If you're Venezuelan, you must be dancing with joy right now at your change in your change in fortune. And they are. The Venezuelans are very happy. The only people who are not happy are the China along. groups here in the U.S., the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Answer Coalition, all of these groups that you're seeing demonstrating on our street, they're all China aligned and they're there.

These are the same people who were demonstrating for Hamas, for the terrorist group Hamas. These are the same people who were demonstrating with Black Lives Matter. So you mentioned the New York City mayor, unfortunately, now Zoran Mamdani, and I kind of want to talk to you about him a little bit, but there's a link here because he released a statement, condemning the Trump administration for this action this weekend and suggesting that it was somehow illegal according to the Constitution or international law or whatever. But it seems like, just like every other communist

I've seen through the years, the only common cause they seem to share is with Marxists, is with communists, not with American citizens. Is that what's happening here? Basically, the commies in the United States are rooting against this progress for our country? We were told not to commandanty a communist.

and then on his first day, at its inauguration, he said he was going to replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Collectivism killed a hundred million people in the world. The person he's appointed to run the tenant groups in New York City, Cia Weaver, has been very clear in her writings and her comments that she's going to put the screws to the landlords so they have no choice but to sell their property to the city of new york this is expropriation that is taking place he's a collectivist uh he put out a ridiculous tweet yesterday saying he had been briefed on the on the on the maduro arrest just the same way as my wife briefed me

yesterday morning on my need to blow the leaves um you know uh well let me i want people to see this what we're talking about here's um here's cut nine fellas if we go put this up this is ma'am donnie uh in his inaugural address but by the way he was sworn in by bernie sanders it's this is unbelievable and uh here he is uh talking about the the glowing warmth of collectivism or whatever cut nine watch this we will draw this city closer together we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism if our campaign demonstrated that the people of new york yearn for solidarity then let this government foster it because no matter what you eat how you pray or where you come from the words

that most define us are the two we all share new yorkers by the way a city whose population is dropping especially if people have the means to get out of the city in light of all of the collectivism that's been happening for years there he wants to take it to a new level i'm sorry refresh my memory on this you're the expert on the subject isn't the warmth of collectivism responsible for the deaths of nearly a hundred million people in the last century? That's right. Yeah, most of them in China and the Soviet Union, many in Cuba. I think one third of the population of Cambodia was wiped out by collectivism. It is beyond chilling, Vince, that the new mayor of New York says he's a collectivist

and he wants to bring collectivism to New York. I have lived on the very, on the many bad mayors. I lived under Beam in the 70s. I lived under Dinkins in the 90s. And New York is, I'm sorry to say, because I'm a New Yorker at heart. I'm a Yankee fan and a Giants fan. I'm sorry to say, New York is not going to fare very well if Mamdani is able to do the things he wants to do. And he, so just another reminder that Maduro is not the only collectivist in New York at the moment.

Yeah. And by the way, it also, this is another reason why they should handle Maduro and Florida, not New York. I mean, New York's, New York's a mess for a bunch of reasons, but now that Mamdani's in charge of the city, my instinct is the last place that I want the communist, like, fake dictator of Venezuela is to be in New York City right now. He should have been sent to Miami, which is when Noriega was sent. Obviously, the model here is Manuel Antonio, Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who, who, by the way, imprisoned me and threw me out of the country when I was a young journalist in my 20s in the 1980s.

And a year later, George H.W. Bush arrested him the same way we just arrested Maduro. And he was tried and ended his life in a prison in Miami, which I think Maduro will do. Maduro is going to cooperate. Yeah. I think he will be very cooperative. I hope he tells, he gives the goods on how much money he's given to U.S. groups, how much money he gave to Black Lives Matter or to Antifa. He was also a big supporter of Antifa, these groups that are demonstrating in the streets of New York today on his behalf, went to Caracas, trained in Caracas, attended conferences in Caracas.

It's all connected, Vince. I want to talk more about that in a moment, but you just brought up something about your own biography that's super interesting. So Noriega arrests you for your journalism in the 80s. And then a year later, you see Noriega captured and brought to the United States to stand trial in Florida. Right. And how just so if you could give me the perspective of what a Venezuelan must feel right now, how elated were you by the capture of Noriega? Oh, I was, I was very, very happy, along with most Panamanians who, Panama, by the way, I was just there. I visited the president in the palace last year.

and all he wanted to talk about was my being captured by Noriega because he was also captured by Noriega and I was looking like I was a member of a delegation said look sir we're here to talk business and he said to me you cannot deny your history this is part of your history so don't try to deny it so I'm like I'm not trying to deny it this just happened many years ago

and I was only put in prison overnight so yeah I know I think Venezuela are going to be super happy about this they did not want Maduro can you imagine a country run by a cartel. This is what we've had. And in the person that we're trying to work with right now, the vice president, Delci Rodriguez, is also a drug kingpin, but we're going to try to make her do the things we want to do. Yeah, we've kind of got her in a headlock right now. I know a lot of

people are thinking, are being like, well, she's a commie too. So how have things changed? Well, it really comes down to whether or not Trump and Secretary of State Rubio and others, if they feel like they can control her through this transition phase because that's really the key math here. I was talking to an administration, somebody in the administration yesterday, and I said, what if she doesn't want to cooperate? And he said to me, we have options. Two hours later, Trump pretty much said, if she doesn't cooperate, we're going to kill her. And immediately after that, she issued a statement saying that she was going to be very, very cooperative. Yeah, sometimes a little bit of muscle goes a long way.

especially after what they just experienced. We shut the power off in the whole city and grabbed the guy who was pretending to be a leader. Let me end on a point that you just made a moment ago that I think is worth dwelling on. This is a feature that you and I have talked about for years of these Marxists around the planet. And so far as they interfere with American politics,

which they do a lot. They often do it by fomenting the kind of chaos we see from regions like Antifa and BLM, these operations that cause a lot of trouble in the United States. The point you keep making, Mike, is that it's often orchestrated by these communist governments outside of our country, places like Venezuela and the CHICOMs, for instance. How often is that a feature of all of this? Well, I tell you, I'm going to come out with, I'm going to bring news here. I have a paper coming out this week, a very long paper on how really the whole thing is orchestrated by Cuba.

And in fact, we have two senior Venezuelan officials in prison. In December, they both issued, wrote letters to President Trump saying the whole thing is a Cuban plan to sow dissent here in your country. And it's Cuba's ideas with Venezuelan money and muscle from the Colombian guerrillas, the narco-Marxist guerrillas in Colombia. And these are the people who have been smuggling drugs. Cuba has really been behind all of this since 1959. I'm going to get chapter and verse on this in a paper. but yes obviously China today very much a lot of the groups that are that are creating havoc in New York and other cities today on behalf of Venezuela are paid for by a millionaire who lives

in Shanghai with very close connections to the CCP I write about him often many people do Ashranomani has done a fantastic job on this data Republican on Twitter also does a very good job on this, on detailing all these networks. I don't know why we allow these networks to exist since they're really Chinese and Cuban agents. The People's Forum is run by Cuban agents who trained in Havana for years. Manolo de Los Santos, he is again involved, the People's Forum, headquartered in New York, again, very involved in these demonstrations. So just as a rule of thumb, if you see Promo Degro demonstrations, they're not grassroots, organized by pro-China groups. If they're anti-Moduro, these are really spontaneous outpourings

of emotion by Venezuelans who have been suppressed for decades now. Amazing. It's just amazing. What a change in fortune for them. Thank you, as always. Mike Gonzalez, great, great to get your insights and happy New Year to you, sir. Happy New Year to you, Vince. You're looking great. Feeling great. I'm going to go listen to that music. I'm going to go be all pumped up in the car. Thank you very much, brother. Good to see you. There's Mike Gonzalez from the Heritage Foundation. He's been through it. He's been through it.

Can you imagine? Imprisoned by Noriega? Yeah, he's got some perspective for sure. Mike's great. Okay. So today, as we are, as we're launching today's program, we get the breaking news. And this just happened ahead of us beginning to do the podcast today. Tim Walls, Tampon Tim Walls is officially bouncing.

out of his race for re-election as the governor of Minnesota. In other words, we've reached, I guess it takes $19 billion in fraud to run a Democrat out, or at least you knowing about it, to run a Democrat out of office. Tim Walls has announced today he is no longer seeking re-election in Minnesota, and his statement is about as absurd as it gets. Let me, I'll just summarize it this way. He claims the reason he's not running anymore is because he wants to spend more time pursuing the fraudsters. That's like a spit take.

That's unbelievable. That's him, no, come on. That's him waving with both hands and saying, please stop focusing on me. This guy deserves to be behind bars. Forget the fact that he shouldn't be on a ballot. It's good that he's not running for office. This guy should be behind bars. at the very least he knew this was going on and turned a blind eye to it because it was a political

coalition that supported him that's as simple as that at the very least worse than that he was involved in aiding and abetting it and there's there's already plenty of evidence that this guy was a campaign beneficiary in terms of political money you see how these backscratching operations work is the same is true in california with greasy gavin newsome what ends up happening is These left-wing disastrous operations outright fraud, they get money from taxpayers. And in return for receiving that money, they turn around and they give cash to Democrats for their election campaigns. And then those Democrats, in turn, don't scrutinize or allow law enforcement to pursue them. That's what happened here.

Where you get like these fraudulent operations through something called feeding our future, taking all this money pretending like it's about feeding hungry children in the end all it's doing is lining the pockets of Somali fraudsters were stealing a ton of cash the same is true of the daycare operations run by these Somali fraudsters in Minnesota just stealing tons of cash no kids being taken care of and in fact there's a massive intersection between these things massive intersection did you know that some of the daycare operations that were taking money were also part of the feeding our future scam. Look at this. This is a daily caller headline on the subject. Vacant Somali daycares in viral videos, you know the ones captured by the great 23-year-old reporter Nick Shirley. These vacant Somali daycares are also linked to $300 million in the feeding our future fraud. Multiple Somali daycare centers highlighted by Nick Shirley are at the center of a $300 million scam, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. The now infamous videos from Nick Shirley posted on December 26th, Merry Christmas,

showed several purported Somali-run daycares receiving millions in taxpayer funds despite any evidence that children were actually present at the facilities. Now it turns out that five of the 10 daycare centers that Nick Shirley visited were operating as so-called meal sites for feeding our future, which is the Minnesota-based nonprofit implicated in a massive fraud scheme that has already produced. dozens of convictions so not only do you have daycare fraud going on the very same people were committing fraud there are committing fraud with the food program in minnesota and the end result is we're looking up upwards of 19 billion dollars of either proven or suspicious payments

that are all believed to be fraud at the hands almost entirely of somalis in the state of minnesota allowed to do that by the Democrats who run the state. And yes, that includes Tampon Tim Walls, who is now bowing out of his race for governor because he's annoyed that you noticed his role in all of this. Now, of course, he's pretending like, I just need to focus on the fraud. I can't focus on a political campaign.

He's just bullshitting you. It's just a lie. He's been caught. And now he's become, once again, just like last year, a liability for Democrats and their electoral ambitions in 2026. You know what happened here. Tim Walts didn't just step aside of his own volition. They gave him the heave-ho.

They gave him the Biden treatment. They threw a hook around him. They dragged him off the stage. This is how Democrats operate, by the way, as a party. They got rid of him because he's an albatross around the neck of the entire party. It just reached a level of noticing that they couldn't withstand anymore. Now, one of the things that's hilarious is Democrats are running around saying that some Democrats are claiming that, oh, this is awful. You allowed a conservative media campaign to take out Tim Walls.

A conservative media campaign? What campaign are you talking about? The one where we just simply tell you the truth? If the truth leads to your extinction as a political candidate, you should have never been a political candidate. Sorry, we noticed what you were up to. One more person to thank in the midst of all of this while we're on the subject. Thank you to Kamala Harris for taking the bright light of a vice presidential nomination and putting it right on tampon Tim Walls.

The best decision Kamala Harris ever made was to put Tim Walls in front of the rest of us. So we could spend a couple of minutes just observing his two-handed waving and his theft of the American people and his role in it. thanks Kamala you did something useful tampon tim walls no longer running uh they say amy klobuchar wants the job though the senator yeah she's she's a she's something else we'll get to her we'll get to her i got a big national radio show coming up today the vince show you can get your local listings the vins show dot com to find out where you hear me on radio or you can watch us on rumble rumble dot com slash vince we do it live we got the chat going it's amazing and we're going to have uh we're going to have a great

program today and I'll be back with you tomorrow it's an exciting new year and I'm glad to be doing this with you the best audience anywhere see you soon