The Young Turks - Trump Attacks Venezuela - January 5, 2026

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Donald Trump declared the U.S. is now “in charge” of Venezuela after the capture of Nicolas Maduro. Benjamin Netanyahu openly celebrates Washington’s role in toppling Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration hints at wars with more Latin American countries. Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/TYT and use code TYT and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Hosts: Cenk Uygur & Jordan Uhl SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now watch his drive. I have concepts of a plan. Begah! We're going to be able to be. All right, welcome to the young Turks, Jake Uyghur, Jordan Ewell, with you guys on an exciting, horrible day where we have invaded yet another country. So we are going to tell a lot about Venezuela, and I'm going to explain to you all in a minute why it is a disaster. idea. And so we'll discuss that for sure throughout the program. And then a little bit later, are we also going to invade Greenland and Mexico and China and Columbia? Those are all different

possibilities that Trump has mentioned. But if you say the things that Trump has mentioned or Netanyahu is mentioned, oftentimes, of course, you'll be attacked saying, how dare you quote them? And Zora Mamdani and Bernie Sanders get involved as well. So lots to get to. Jordan, what do we got? Take a look at this. Nikolas Maduro handcuffed, appearing to limp and surrounded by drug enforcement agents, taken down in the eyes of the Trump administration from president to perpetrator. Still, there was a New Year nod to the waiting camera. Crowds waited outside the notorious New York jail, where he now faces charges of running a

cocaine trafficking empire, a claim he's always rejected as a front for regime change. The Trump administration carried out airstrikes on Venezuela before capturing its now former President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. As you heard in that video, Maduro was brought back to the United States to face trumped-up drug trafficking charges, even though Venezuela is not a major player in the international drug trade. But the most important question now is what happens next and why is it likely to be a gigantic disaster? It turns out one of the worst members of the Trump administration may be put in charge of running the entire country of Venezuela before I tell you who, Jenk, your two cents.

Yeah, I'm going to explain to you folks after Jordan gives you all the facts, why this can't possibly work out. There's only one scenario under which this is not an epic disaster. I'll tell that scenario as well. But we have a ton of evidence for you guys on why this is going to be epic in how terrible it turns out. So I want you guys to make sure that you know the downsides of this as some on the right are celebrating like we just accomplished a mission. It reminds me of that mission accomplished moment that Bush had on his aircraft carrier. So we'll get into all that, Jordan first give us the facts. Now, Maduro is currently jailed in New York and earlier today pleaded not guilty to federal

drug trafficking charges. But aside from his kidnapping, little has changed in the political makeup of the government of Venezuela. Its current acting leader, Maduro's Vice President Delci Rodriguez, was sworn in shortly after Maduro was seized by the US. And you might be wondering, What about that Maria Machado woman who the U.S. was supposed to install as a puppet leader? Well, Trump threw her under the bus. Is the U.S. aware of the location of opposition leader Machado? And have you been in contact with her? No, I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader.

She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect. Now, Trump is right about. one thing. Maria Machado is hated by people in Venezuela. In October 2025, poll from the pollster hinterlaces show that 91% of those consulted have an unfavorable opinion about the opposition leader Maria Machado. The poll also placed Machado as the most unpopular with a rejection rate significantly higher than the rest of the country's political leaders. But that's not actually why Trump shafted her. According to two sources who spoke to the Washington

post, the real reason is that she's bitter, is that he's better, rather, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an ultimate sin, said one of the people. If she had turned it down and said, I can't accept this because it's Donald Trump's. She'd be the president of Venezuela today, this person said. Now, despite Maduro's vice president getting sworn in, Trump announced that the United States will now run the country, even though our government can't run itself. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have

the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. Then it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about. Yeah, if there's one thing that Donald Trump is known for, it's a judicious and safe transfer of power. It's unclear ultimately what he means there. It seems that the Trump administration didn't plan for what would happen after Maduro was ousted. But according to the Washington Post, the White House is weighing giving Stephen Miller,

Trump's deputy, White House chief of staff, and Homeland Security Advisor, a more elevated role in overseeing post-Maduro operations in Venezuela, according to one person with knowledge of the conversations. Of course, Miller is best known as an anti-immigrant zealot who's led the mass deportation charge. But he's also took a central role in the effort to remove Maduro, according to the post. how he or any U.S. official will actually run the country of 30 million people hasn't been

laid out yet. Rodriguez, the newly sworn in president, is remaining defiant. She called for a Maduro's release and made it clear she opposes U.S. intervention. There's something that the Venezuelan people and this country have very clear is that we will never again be slaves,

is that we will never again be a colony of any empire of whatever kind. Now, in response to Rodriguez, Trump reasserted that the United States is in charge of Venezuela and plans to coerce current leadership in Caracas telling reporters aboard Air Force One that we're dealing with the people that just got sworn in. And don't ask me who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer, and it'll be very controversial. What does that mean, a reporter asked?

It means we're in charge, the president said. When asked what he needed from Rodriguez, Trump said, we need total. access. We need access to the oil and to other things in the country that allow us to rebuild their country. We're not the only ones who are skeptical about Trump's plan for managing a post-Moduro Venezuela. Elliot Abrams, Trump's own former special envoy to Venezuela, called Trump out on CNN for his implausible plan to run an entire country. How is the United States actually going to run Venezuela? I doubt there's much planning been done for this, but partly because it was necessary to retain operational security.

I don't think many people in the government knew this was going to happen. The United States cannot run Venezuela. It would be extremely difficult, you know, it's a very big country. It's twice the size of California, 25 million people roughly. It's too complex for us to run. We haven't even scratched the surface of the oil side of things. We'll get to that in a moment, but Jank, I want to bring you in here. What do you make of this news?

Yeah, so I'll tell you what the plan was supposed to be. I'll tell you what it wound up being, and I'll tell you what it's going to be as we go forward. So the plan was to always replace the Maduro regime with Machado and her allies. Who came up with that plan, the neocons? In this case, the neocons are a little bit broader than Israel First. There's the same coalition that brought us to Iraq war, oil companies, Wall Street speculators, defense contractors. Yes, Israel First is in there.

We're gonna have a different segment about that later in the program where Netanyahu, Huckabee and Rubio are all saying, yeah, we did this for Israel. Okay, but that's not the only reason we did it at all. It's confluence of all of those factors coming together. And so they were supposed to put Machado in place. Otherwise, the plan is unworkable. Even Elliot Abrams, the guy you just saw, who's one of the top neocons in the country is saying, wait, we're gonna run the country from outside of Venezuela?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that wasn't a plan. The plan is put in a puppet regime and let them run it. So where's the puppet regime? Well, so that's flaw number one in there. plan. The guy who has executed is Donald J. Trump. And he threw the biggest curveball there is there. And he's like, Machado, I don't like her. And she should have given me the Peace Prize. That's not even a thing. Nobody's ever been like, oh, thank you for the Nobel Peace Prize, but I give it to Bob instead, right? But apparently since she didn't do that

ludicrous, unprecedented thing that was only in Trump's head, he talked her down. And he's like, no, we're not going in that direction. But wait a minute, her ally is the guy who we are. saying won the last election, and probably did, by the way. So how about him? Nope, there's no talk of him. So then what are we going to do instead, now that this giant curveball is in there. And by the way, putting Machado in place would not have been easy at all. That's going to get to the future as well because the neo-cons are going to go back in

that direction. In fact, they're already going back in that direction. But without her, we're screaming orders at the vice president that remains there and going, Okay, now we are running your country. Now let them ExxonMobil come in and take all your oil fields and, and okay, and kick out Iran. Israel doesn't like them. What do we do? Are you crazy?

Nobody's going to listen to that. And guys, I've been, since the moment we invaded today, I've been religiously checking to see what's happening on the ground. So if you've seen some celebrations, that's corporate media. It's not wrong. It's all about framing, guys. Are those people really celebrating yes? Are they real Venezuelans yes? Is two thirds of the country at this point kind of against Maduro,

two thirds of Venezuela? I would say roughly yes, okay? So those are real people getting excited. And our TV, cruise, corporate media comes and goes, you see that? Everybody loves that we kidnap their leader and attack their capital. And they can't wait for us to rule from an aircraft carrier off the coast, right? No, no, no, no.

There's the Venezuelan people, and then there are the people who are in charge of Venezuela today. And the people in charge of Venezuela today, including the vice president, which Jordan showed you, going, no, we're not going to be your slaves. No, we're not going to do what you want. By the way, corporate media is amazing. If you turn on television, they're like, oh, the vice president has obviously submitted to us and will be serving us loyally from here on out. I'm like, she didn't say that. She didn't say that at all. She said, oh, we're for global peace.

They're like, that's it, that's surrender, we win. No, in all the other videos, she's like, Maduro is still our leader. We're definitely sticking with him. And even more importantly, the defense minister and the military are sticking with Maduro. And I looked this up, I talked about it in a video I did it over the weekend. You should check that out too. There are local gangs and militias that are under Maduro's control. And they're now roaming the streets and patrolling the streets.

And they're not going anywhere. So what happens when Trump's bluff gets called, which is the future? So the minute they, we shout out an order, okay, you are to let do this or X, Y or Z, and they don't do it, Trump has said we're gonna do a second wave and the vice president is going to have a fate worse than Maduro, presumably death, right? He's gonna murder her, et cetera. But right now they seem unmoved by that. So then we're gonna have to do a second military attack.

But this time the Venezuelans will know for sure we're coming and be very well prepared for whatever good that does them. But much more importantly, then we have to have guys on the ground directing people. They're gonna run into the militias, they're gonna run into the military, they're gonna run into Maduro forces, and there we go, Quagmire, bogged down an insurgency. So either we're going to be totally ineffectual, they're not going to listen to us, it's going to be humiliating and we're going to have to tuck tail and turn around, or much, much worse, we're going to get there on the ground and it's going to turn into a massive

insurgency. So the future looks terrible in this regard. There are almost no wins. Jordan, the only scenario where I see that there's a 10% hope is the CIA is way better than I realized, and they got this thing figured out. though Trump and Rubio are all giving different answers, one is saying law enforcement, the other one is saying we're running the country, somebody else is saying attack and invasion, another one saying no, not invasion.

Like they look to be an utter mess, but if the CIA somehow already has the vice president and the defense minister and the militias in their back pocket, and this is all a show for internal Venezuelan population, but secretly they're working for the CIA, okay, like that's That's not a great scenario, but at least then that's our only prayer of avoiding some sort of quagmire here. But that is very unlikely the CIA hasn't been competent in decades. So what's much more likely is what's happening, exactly what happened to Bush after his mission accomplished site.

They don't, they don't have a plan for running the place and the place is crawling with Maduro forces, the minute we go on the ground, we're screwed. And I think it's going to be complicated by the next point. So let's get into the oil element of all this. In the wake of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela, corporate interests in Wall Street are chomping at the bit and salivating over a new opportunity to extract resources and turn profits. According to Brian Schwartz at the Wall Street Journal,

Wall Street is already at the ready post-Niclos Maduro's capture. by U.S. forces, about 20 business leaders, including those from some of the top hedge funds and asset managers, are preparing to go on a March trip to Venezuela to look at investment opportunities there, including an energy and infrastructure. The trip is being led by Charles Myers, the chairman of consulting firm, Signum Global Advisors. Myers estimates they will be between $500 billion and $750 billion in investment opportunities in the country for foreign investors over the next five years. Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he has specifically after Venezuelan oil.

We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure. the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. But no, we're going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country. And that's why today, S&P's energy index hit an overall.

one year high of 2.5% with heavyweights Exxon Mobile and Chevron rising 2.5% and 5.5% respectively. And of the oil companies, Jenk, Chevron is the one that stands to benefit the most because of their pre-existing presence in Venezuela. And then refineries, other external or other associated companies in that broader industry have all seen massive upticks in their stock price today. What do you make of this? Yeah, I wouldn't count their chickens before they hatch. So I understand why those prices went up because Trump is saying, yeah, we're going to steal their oil. Period. We're stealing their oil in the tankers. We're going to steal the oil in the ground.

And if you don't know why we're hostile to Venezuela in the first place, originally Venezuela used to be our best friend in in the in South America. That was literally one of our presidents said that, verbatim quote. And so what turned? Well, eventually they got a democracy. And when they did, and we couldn't control their dictator as a puppet for us anymore, the democracy then said, hey, wait a minute, why are we just giving you our oil? Why don't we take 50% of the proceeds? Which makes sense. And the oil companies eventually were like, God, God damn it, we like stealing it from you. But okay, fine. We'll pay the 50% and they did. And they still make a gigantic amount of of profit. So it worked out fine. And then they had another leader, and he asked for 65% of the

oil revenue. And guess what? He got it, and the oil companies still made a gigantic amount of profit from Venezuela. So things were fine. But then when they got to a point where they got past 65% with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, and they privatized it, and they said, not privatized, nationalized it, and said, this is Venezuelan oil, and we will sell it at whatever price makes sense, that is best for the people of Venezuela. We're like, that's it. You know good communists, how dare you try to control your own resources. And we've been on a collision course ever since, because this is about the oil.

It's not a mystery where we attack. Venezuela is the number one oil reserve in the world. Iraq is top five. We've got Saudi Arabia as an ally locked up in the top three. And by the way, the other one in the top five is Iran. And we're threatening to topple them as well. So these factors are huge. There's another factor that's very important.

There's refineries in the Gulf. And they were built for Venezuela, for the type of crude oil that they have. This is back when we had deals with them at 50%, at 65%, etc. But that's still very profitable. And now that oil was set to come to us. But when they nationalized the oil industry, Chevron stayed, everybody else left, and that business slowed down and we started doing sanctions and we didn't allow their oil. So all of those refineries on the Gulf coast of America are now being underutilized.

So there's a lot of business interest. The oil interest, the refineries, Wall Street, they're all looking to make billions and billions of dollars from this. And then as always, you have Israel first coming in, and oh, they worked with Iran, we hate But that's a different story, but it is part of the confluence of events here. And you could tell that the donors are going to make out like bandits here because secretly the corporate Democrats are leaking to the press. I mean, removing Maduro, that made a lot of sense. I mean, we get that, we like that one.

I mean, they did it slightly wrong. They did it slightly wrong. They shouldn't have done this way, but that's not such a bad thing, et cetera. So you get a sense, all the donors in Washington are ecstatic over this. And of course, of course, it's never done for us. And by the way, if you're not aware of this, when we quote unquote take Venezuelan oil, the American people get none of it, zero. The companies get the oil, they sell it at the same exact price to you,

sometimes because of the instability, the price goes up. And that might be another reason why their valuations are going up, because they're about to make a killing, right? So you don't get it for any less at all. They just keep the extra profit. But remember, we didn't give the politicians millions of dollars. The donors like ExxonMobil, et cetera, did. In this case, I think the refineries are more excited than the oil companies, Jordan.

Because the oil companies are like, yeah, but I got to invest tens of billions of dollars to get that oil out. And Trump is telling me I gotta do that, but I'm not sure that Venezuela is going to be stable enough. So final thing on this, and actually two things on the oil part of it, we told you about Michael Bury last week. He's the guy who was in a sense the star of the big short. He predicted that the housing collapse would happen and he's not predicting an AI collapse and a Palantir collapse and we're rooting for him on that. But he's just a businessman, he's not progressive at all.

So he was explaining today, he's like, oh, this is why I've been long on Halliburton. Halliburton is going to go back to making a tremendous amount of money. So that's the defense contractors and all those guys who are about to stick their, you know, nose in the trough there and eat off that pork that's being delivered to all those guys. So but I, Jordan, I think they're all wrong. I don't think we're going to be able to occupy Venezuela. I think it's going to turn into a giant mess and they're not going to listen to us until unless we have troops on the ground.

So I don't think the oil companies are going to get what they want or the refineries or any of them because this is a totally dumb plan that I think has almost no chance of work. I mean, it's certainly going to be a mess. I don't feel confident saying it's going to look one way or another. I wouldn't, I wouldn't doubt or I don't know what the word I'm looking for, But we can't overstate the influence the oil industry has and how willing they are to put other people in the firing line on their behalf. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be messy and it's going to be a massive risk. But not for the CEOs. Why do they care? Not for the executives. They're fine. If other people are caught in the crosshairs, if other people suffer or languish or injured

or whatever on their behalf, they don't care about that. So I guess I'm curious what it might look like. It might look like some sort of militia or other fighting force in there. We could see contractors in there, protecting drilling sites. But who knows? Who knows what's going to look like? time will tell, but I just, I don't know, I'm, I guess I'm not as pessimistic on oil companies just throwing up their hands and saying this is too much of a mess.

Yeah, no, remember, if they're going to refurbish Venezuela's oil industry, because it has fallen apart at the seams, they're only producing about 25% of the oil that they used to. So the Maduro and Hugo Chavez regimes didn't work in terms of efficiency, et cetera, and being able to get that oil more productively out of the ground, but also the sanctions hurt them, et cetera. But in order to rebuild that industry, they're going to have to put tens of billions of dollars in. There's no question about that. So companies are not going to put in that amount of money unless they have security guarantees. And the only way they can have security guarantees is if we do complete regime change.

We put in our guys, they control the country 100%. So there is no way of getting the oil companies to invest until we do regime change. That's why this thing isn't even close to over. I think what a lot of the right wing is seeing is, oh my God, we had great tactics. And there's nobody better than our special forces. And we were able to get in and get out, and we kidnapped a guy. effectively and who cares about international law. It's another thing we'll get to a story we'll get to later in the program where

the right wing is some in the right wing are literally saying that. Who cares about the rule of law? We're bigger, we're stronger, so we took their stuff. No, but you didn't take their stuff. You gotta get on the ground to take their stuff and that's where you run into a buzz saw. So I don't think any of this stuff is gonna come to fruition. I think these knuckleheads push for a plan that they thought would profit them to the tune of billions of dollars.

But the only one, like maybe some of the speculators will win. The oil companies will might win on the instability alone, right? Because that drives up gas and oil prices. And certainly the defense contractors always win when there's a giant conflict. But we will lose. And I think at the end of the day, we will not get that oil in the way that they're imagining. Yeah, time will tell. All right, we're gonna take a quick break here when we come back.

Yes, there unfortunately is an interesting. Israel angle here. I root against it every time, but unfortunately it pops up very, very frequently. And for folks who are not sure that that's true, good news. We'll show you the videos and then you can make up your own mind and there are a good number of them. We'll be right back. We must stop the terror. Now watch his drive. I have concepts of a plan. I don't know. All right, back on TYT, let's go to our members on TYT.com.

MountainCast says they can't even run the Kennedy Center. How do they think they can run a foreign country? A collective miscellaneous says, it's almost as a FIFA Peace Prize Trump got was just a sham. Almost. Boomer Dragon Cat says, I'm petrified thinking how this will all go down. The world may look very different in the not so distant future. white knuckling the next few days. No, this is an absurd thing to say,

but I wouldn't worry about it too much. In this case, I often say, I hope I'm wrong because I make these predictions about how things are gonna go very poorly, nine out of 10 times because they do go very poorly, nine out of 10 times. But in this case, I think we're gonna run into so much trouble that we're gonna have to leave at some point. And so it's gonna be a rough ride for a while,

but I think this is Trump's Waterloo. And I know as people are ecstatic, some on the radar and some mainstream media are, wow, we got him, we got him. Oh, yeah. We also got Saddam had that turnout for us several trillion dollars later, several thousands of dead Americas later. Embedded dude says to all of you contemplating joining the military, would you give your life for ExxonMobil?

That's the question you have to ask. If you're joining the U.S. military these days, would you give you a life for Exxon, on mobile for J.P. Morgan Chase or for Israel. Okay, that's just the stone cold reality. Okay, I know I wouldn't. And the, you know, the only upside of the Trump administration is that they're not hiding in. They don't call a Department of Defense anymore. They're like, we're not doing any defense. We're just going to offense. Department of war, war, war, war, war, from the guy who ran as anti-war. Tap tap, tap makes a similar point that I did about oil, that the Venezuelans have crude oil that is similar to Canada.

is it's hard to extract. That's why the oil companies are more ambivalent than you might imagine. But the refineries, Wall Street, and some of the oil companies are more excited. So it's a mixed bag in that regard. Jenks left tricep or fury says, does international law even mean anything anymore? No, no, not at all. Now between Israel, Russia, and us means nothing at all. So whoever's stronger, go grab any land you want, slaughter anyone you like,

kidnap anyone you like, kill anyone you like, there are no rules anymore in the national scene at all. And by the way, China's got to be looking their chops going, you just gave me Taiwan. I like no, I don't even need an excuse. What was your excuse? You didn't have an excuse. So all right, that's it. I'm taking Taiwan and God knows what else. We'd be lucky if they don't and it'll just be luck because they easily could. Michael Catalano, YouTube member, says, Jake, it was great to see you on The Rising earlier today. I've never seen Robbie so unable to argue with a guest. Epic showing for the team. Keep that up, man. I appreciate it. I don't know that Robbie wanted to argue with me on that. I think there's a lot of conservatives who realize

this is a super dumb idea. They're kind of keeping their powder dry right now because a lot of the right wing is so excited that we killed and kidnapped people. Kulu says the U.S. is real tough attacking militarily weaker countries. I know. All right, we'll be back. All right, back on TYT, Jenk and Jordan with you guys, but also Larry Miller, who joined and then gifted five Young Turks memberships on YouTube. Larry, you're awesome, and we appreciate you. CDN Norse Dog Dad gifted a membership as well and Melody loves music gifted 10. You guys are American heroes. Look, during this holiday season and even afterwards now into the new year, we're trying

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You can scan the QR code there, or again, the URL ZZZT, t.com slash switch. Number one, you never pay over $50, so boom, already problem solved. Number two, they give you money for if you don't use all your data. And I use a lot of data and I don't even come close. So they give me money back every month. I only paid about $33 this month. And then on top of that, they're giving you a $50 bonus for signing up right now. So I jump on that.

You're going to save a lot of money, t.yt.com slash switch. All right, Jordan, what's next? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't hesitate to express how overjoyed he was to see the United States effectively kidnap Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro while bombing his country. And we've got more and we'll show you his reaction. But, Jank, what is your initial take here? Yeah, I don't know that Israel first is the primary reason we're going to Venezuela. And we do have a poll for you guys asking you about that a little bit. But I do know it is definitely one of the reasons.

The reason I know it is because of the videos we're about to show you where they're like, yes, finally received transgender Venezuela. So what does Israel have to do with this? They're gonna tell us and you're gonna see in a second. And so, but I wanna note one of my favorite things about this story is the gaslighting hypocrisy. It's so over the top that it's kind of hilarious. We'll show that to you as well.

So first, here is Netanyahu vocalizing his support for the regime change mission. Regarding Venezuela, I want to express the entire government's support for the determined decision and action of the United States to restore freedom and justice to that part of the world as well. I must say that across Latin America right now, we are seeing a transformation in several countries that are returning to the American action. and not surprisingly, also to a connection with the state of Israel. We welcome this. Now Maduro is not a fan of Netanyahu's or of Israel's. He has vocally defended the Palestinian people while condemning the genocidal regime in Israel on multiple occasions.

He also condemned Israeli air strikes on neighboring countries. Here's more from a speech Maduro gave last summer. The United Nations has allowed the bombing and destruction of Beirut and Lebanon. They have allowed the bombing and destruction of Syria. Every day they allow the bombing of the Arab people of Yemen, and now they will also look the other way? Now, what does Berlin say? What does Paris say?

What does London say? What does Washington say? Will they continue to support the Hitler of the 21st century, referring to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? attacking the noble and peaceful people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Well, I say the Bolivarian, humanist and peaceful people of Venezuela say no to war. This madness must be stopped. Perhaps this is why Maduro's vice president, who was immediately sworn in to take Maduro's place amid his arrest by the U.S. government, suspects that Israel has something to do with the attack.

of that the Republic Bolivariana of Venezuela, victim and object of of an attack of this nature that has, in doubt, a tintentionist. And for the podcast audience,

Rodriguez said that governments around the world are shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has become the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones, Prior to the U.S. airstrikes on Venezuela, Netanyahu tried to tie Venezuela to Israel while speaking with Greta Van Sustern. We've had an unbelievable success, and by degrading Iran, which was the first-rate power, now it's a second-rate or third-rate power.

They were throwing their weight all over the place, exporting terrorism, not only to every part of the Middle East, but to Venezuela. They're in cahoots with the Maduro regime, you know. they're exporting terrorism to America, to the American hemisphere. And then they want these Hezbollah and Hamas to get their guys into the United States. So Hamas and Iran's and its proxies are a threat not only to us, but to all, to Israel, all America's allies in the Middle East, and to America itself. U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, couldn't contain his joy following the airstrikes and capture of Maduro. that the U.S. overthrow of that government is great news for Israel. Take a look.

A lot of people may not make the connection as to why this matters to us in the Middle East. What they don't know is that Hezbollah is very active in Venezuela. There has been a 20-year partnership between Iran and Venezuela under both the two previous dictators. The ties are deep. And Hezbollah operates in 12 different countries throughout South America. It is not just a threat in the Western Hemisphere. It is a threat to the Middle East. Jank, what do you make of some of these comments? First quick side comment there.

How can we start that video by saying it's a threat to us in the Middle East? Who's us, brother? Like what Venezuela is a threat to America in the Middle East? It sounds like you're speaking on behalf of the government you actually represent, which is Israel. All right, so in this case, there's the two things that Israel first crowd is doing at the same time. And it's kind of hilarious and it's related to our poll. So I'm going to read you the poll that's on t.com and I am genuinely curious about your ideas.

And I'll tell you which way I'm going to vote on it. And then I'll tell you the glaring, amazing hypocrisy here. here. So do you think Israel was involved in the U.S. attack on Venezuela? A, yes, they drove the decision. B, yes, but they were one of several factors that led to the decision. C, no, they had no effect on this decision. D. No, and it's anti-Semitic to even bring it up as a possibility. Okay. Now, we included D there because at the same time, we have all of Israel supporters in the country go, yes, yes, we invaded Venezuela. It's the greatest thing in the world. Benchabro is like, this is America at its best.

Mark Levine is like, finally, that government is terrible and disgusting, supports Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran, and we wiped it out for Israel, right? And you see Huckabee and you see, and we didn't put Rubio in here, but Rubio was on with Kristen Walker on Meet the Press, and he's like, you know, Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran, Hezbollah, right? So Israel, we took it out for you, right? And then Yahu comes in before, they're in cahoots with Iran. It's time to take them out. And afterwards, he's like, this is great for Israel.

And then we go, it seems like they kind of wanted this war, right? And people go, anti-Semite. But wait a minute, I'm just quoting them. I just showed you their videos where they're like, this is great for Israel. And you should do this for Israel. I'm just quoting them, Jew hater. What? What do you mean?

They're saying they wanted it and they're ecstatic we did it. And of course there's, but they're never, ever satisfied. There's another thing that's going to come. But I'm with the majority of the audience that you just saw there on your screen. I don't think it's the only reason. I think it's the confluence of events. I think it's B. But are they happy about it?

Well, they're ecstatic about it. You just look at any Israel first account. You're Shapiro, Mark Levine, Laura Luma. It doesn't matter. They all, they're like beside themselves with, with, glee, right? And so, okay, now the, I don't know if that also makes Netanyahu anti-Semite, because he seems to be suggesting that Israel was involved. We are pressed, the monstrous liars that they are, are like, how dare you say Israel? You're all anti-Semites. That's a ludicrous

conspiracy theory. Now here's a tape of Netanyahu saying it was for Israel. Bravo, way to go, Israel. We did it for you. You said we did it for them, you anti-seman. Like this is, come on, it's getting tired, right? Like, guys, like this is, I don't know. They're making it so freaking obvious. But Jordan, this is not enough because, and how I knew that Israel first was a giant part of this, other than them all saying it at once, is corporate Democrats behind the scenes.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Moskowitz, and many, many others. Now, they have a couple of different factors, too. Those two are from Florida, in Florida, there's a large Venezuelan expat community, also a Cuban community, and they both wanted this war, right? A lot of the folks in those communities, but they're also Israel first, et cetera. And all of them are saying, Maduro being kidnapped, awesome, awesome, yeah, wait, I thought you were a Democrat. I thought you were going to say, well, I didn't quite like the way we did it, right? Wink, wink, wink, wink. But I really love that we got Maduro.

But that was just the first round. Now the second round, Jordan, is they're now coming around and going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need to put Machado in charge. The plan was for us, us, of course, meaning America, not Israel, was to put Machado in charge. Why is she not in charge? No, we need regime change. And Jordan, they're not wrong about that. You can't just yell, as I've been saying all day long, you can't yell orders from an aircraft carrier.

No, you need to actually do the regime change if the oil company. Israel 1st and everyone else involved is going to get what they want. So right now, and you will see, and this is why I like doing the predictions, you'll see who's right and wrong. And I'm telling you right now that all of Israel 1st will now start to the second stage where they will demand that we attack again and that we not stop until we have a puppet in place. And their puppet is, and it's not purely theirs, if I'm right, again, oil companies, Wall Street speculators, defense contractors, et cetera, they all have decided Machado is their puppet.

And they want Machado, except you on the Nobel Peace Prize, which is we reported in the first segment. Ironically, mad made Trump so mad that he says she shouldn't be in charge. So Jordan, what's your take on their reaction so far and what's going to come next? I mean, I think the audience was right. Sure, maybe Israel was part of it. I think it was really an afterthought here. This is ultimately been about oil. And this is something that people like Marco Rubio,

Elliot Abrams, even though he's critical of Trump, they tried this in 2019, and it was an absolute disaster. It was a mess. They tried to prop up Juan Guaido, and it was an international joke. So I think I'm sure maybe they just happen to have the same perspective. Of course, Netanyahu doesn't want anybody to work with or trade with or partner with Iran or Lebanon, whatever. So that's their interest. Maybe there's some people in the government, Huckabee, that would put that above the oil company's interests, for instance, maybe.

But I think the largest driving force here, we shouldn't really try to confuse people. stay focused. This has always been about oil. The oil companies in the United States have wanted this for years, and they're finally potentially going to get it, like we acknowledge, this is just day one, Jank. I mean, this happened on Saturday. We're 72 hours removed. This could go on for a long time, and who knows what it might look like. Who knows what will happen next if they continue to strike? Trump didn't rule that out. Initially, he said, we may not have to. We got but as people are going to continue to point out, yeah, but they installed his vice president and everybody else is still there. The regime is still intact. It's just missing their figurehead.

There's a lot of things that could happen over the next day, week, month, year that will continue to reshape this problem, this, this conflict, this coup. I think it's premature to say it will or won't happen for or against the oil companies. But I think any Israeli involvement, I would highly doubt a direct involvement or direct order. They've wanted this for years, long before the Trump administration's coziness with Netanyahu. Yeah, but nobody else was crazy enough to do it, and Trump is giving them everything they want. So look, I have to agree with you. They tried it in 2019 again. Yeah. So I-Aubrams. Yeah, so look, I have agree with you. I think that for example, the Cuban Americans want this more than Israel First does.

They think that this is going to topple the Cuban regime. Marco Rubio is a Cuban American right winger who's wanted that for a long time. Trump is talking about how that might be part of the dominoes, et cetera. So I don't think this is purely Israel first, and I'm not even sure they're the major player here. But as we discussed in the last segment, the oil companies are a little bit conflicted here. Yeah, they want the trillions of dollars in crude oil that's in the, under the ground in Venezuela, but it requires tens of billions of dollars in investments and Trump is having to kind of goad them into it. But there's no black

and white here. Whereas the oil refineries in the Gulf Coast want it very, very badly. The defense contractors want it. So look, you can't do this kind of spectacularly wrong decision without a lot of interest on one side pushing down the balance, right? So this is not as clear cut as Israel. wants us to attack Iran, that is the only reason why we're attacking Iran, period. That's not even close, right? This is not like that. At the same time, we see them saying, yeah, we want it.

And when they help push, it usually has a large outsized effect, especially Jordan, because it gets all those establishment Democrats to go, secretly we want it. We kind of want it, and they don't have a lot of oil donors, as far as I know, the Democrats these days. But they have tons of A-PAC donors and defense contractor donors. Oh, Dems have almost an equally bad problem taking oil pack money. It was a big push to get 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls to sign, I think there was like a big oil money pledge to say, I'm not going to take it. And very few committed to it. And some of the ones that did kind of like winked and nodded. Yeah, also on your pledge and then just took money from

executives at the oil companies directly. So it's still a massive problem on the left as it is on the right. It's similar to the military industrial complex, similar to big pharma and the private insurance companies. Oil is a massive spender in Democratic elections. as well because they need to control both parties. It's sure maybe there's some more on the right because Dems are generally more favorable to renewable energy, but Democrats do have a big oil money problem as well. Yeah. So last couple things. So I wouldn't, I don't think this is Israel first top priority at all, right? Iran is their top priority. They have many other priorities, getting $100 billion, MOU, et cetera. But are they, do they love the idea of anybody who works with

Iran or Hezbollah being having their regime decapitated and replaced with a puppet regime who will aid and abet Israel and work for Israel? Yeah, of course they love that. And in fact, Machado, the so-called Nobel Peace Prize winner, has said in her speeches, now I get in charge, American oil companies, which goes to your point, will get everything they want in Venezuela and they will be able to make tons of money from billions from it. She's literally said that. She's also said, and we will serve Israel.

We will make sure that we're top allies with Israel, will kick out all of Israel's opponents. Now, you're not going to say that unless you think that that crowd can help sway things in your direction. So obviously she thinks they have a tremendous amount of power. The one person who agrees with her appears to be her opponent, the vice president that we showed you earlier, Delci Rodriguez, saying, yeah, it was the Zionist. Now, again, even she didn't say it was purely the Zionist, but she did say it was undoubtedly

the Zionist, and that's the person currently leading Venezuela. And by the way, that could also be for internal political reasons and blaming a scapegoat, et cetera. So I understand all those motivations. Here's what Jordan and I and everyone else that is reasonable can agree to here. It certainly wasn't for the American people, we're dead last in this calculation. And we're not even considered. Would nobody even bothers to think of us?

It's just a matter of which donor did Trump and the Republicans do this for? Yeah, all right, we gotta take a break, guys. So let's take a break here. And when we come back, Trump promises a lot more wars. And I'm worried about one thing in particular. We'll tell you about that when we come back. I'm going to be a bit of me. All right, back on TOT.

Let's go to Super Chat. Deb Long writes in, I have friends in Greenland who are extremely worried about Trump and his threats, which are valid. I'm just wondering your opinion on Trump's threats. So we're gonna get to that story in a second, but I'll tell you, look, he's, it's militarily attacking Denmark to try to capture Greenland and make it part of the US. is even too mental for Trump. Not to say that he wouldn't think it, he's thinking it right now, but even his advisors

will be like, how does this help Israel? No, you know how serious this? They're gonna be like, you want us to invade Greenland, right? So look, I, if he's that, if he's in that direction, the country is so far gone, we've become so ridiculous and I mean, there's probably a billion other things going wrong if we're attacking Greenland. Samurai champion says the neo-consertism to neoliberalism pipeline is always working and working whenever there is war. Totally. Neocons and neolibs are the same people. And they run government no matter who wins the elections, period. And it's you're seeing

it with your own eyes. So, I mean, I know mainstream media will be like, it's conspiratorial to say that we would engage in these wars no matter who wins, except no matter who wins, we engaged in the wars. So all right, Brian S. Pasca says, I'm in Italy and Maloney. The PM was in support of the invasion. However, Trump criticized her and then she realized that flattery means nothing to him. I don't know the Italian end of these politics, but anyways, none of our leaders represent any of us. DC studio films, thank you for the donation. Appreciate it. Let's go to YouTube members. Crack an engineer writes and never forget who you're fighting for and then writes it insert photo of Epstein slash Trump, BB and an oil rig. Yep, my love Nebraska says, I'm glad to

see Jenks seems to be feeling better. I was worried about him in a few weeks ago with that cold or whatever it was. I never bothered to figure out what it was, but I was totally okay. Thank you though, you're awesome for caring about me. I appreciate it. I care about you too. Duncan, your mate writes in many small countries will join bricks. Oh, the whole world right now is looking for a way around America. Because America has become this unstable country that everyone's elects like a, first of all, the normal guys we elect, they're already disasters, like the Joe Biden's, et cetera. We attack you, we take your stuff and we don't follow international law and we let Israel break all the laws, et cetera. Then every once in a while you get

Bush or Trump and we'll just turn into lunatics attacking random countries and trying to take their stuff. So of course the entire world is going to start uniting against us economically. It is going to be an epic disaster, but we can't get anybody to listen because we got Maduro. Oh my god, our special forces are so good, we got Maduro. And the and part is very important and they never have it. With a gal says, I've understood why other countries hate us for quite a while. All you have to do is go to another country and ask, trust me, they'll tell you, that's when you find out what our government is really all about. And you know,

The point of that isn't that you should hate America. I don't, I think, although we have a million problems, et cetera. The point is American media lies to you 24-7. That's why you never find out what the reality is. All right, back on T.YJing, Jordan with you guys, Jordan's got more news. The Trump administration appears poised to start even more. more wars following the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro amid an onslaught of airstrikes. Before we tell you which countries we might be at war with soon, Jank, your two

sounds at the prospect of a broad international forever war effort. Yeah, you know, what I take to be the phrase anti-war is bomb, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Iran and if I did I say that twice, we might do it twice, and Venezuela and try to do regime change in a couple of those countries. That's the true anti-war position some are actually saying. So of course it's not, so Trump drunk on what he thinks is a success of Venezuela, which is about to turn into a gigantic failure, is telling you all the countries he wants to invade. Jordan's gonna tell you that, and then I'm gonna tell you whether any of them are even,

plausible and how they're reacting to these threats. The Colombian president's got a newsy for us. All right, Jordan, take it away. Now Zateo journalist Prim Tucker reported that Trump is very interested in secret plans drawn up last year to send U.S. Special Forces to Mexico. He recently asked for updates on preparations for a possible military operation there. And we should believe him, especially considering Trump's recent militaristic actions around the world. In the past week, the Trump advanced administration bombed Nigeria, bombed more boats at sea, bombed Venezuela, abducted its leader, threatened military action in Iran, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico, and accepted the Israel Prize

and hosted Netanyahu whose soldiers have killed Americans at Mar-a-Lago. They didn't kill them in Mar-a-Lago, you guys know what I'm saying. In fact, Trump bombed Nigeria and Somalia on Christmas day like any God-fearing Christian would. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the U.S. could be targeting Cuba soon as well. Is the Cuban government, the Trump administration's next target, Mr. Secretary, very quickly? Well, the Cuban government is a huge problem. Yeah, the human government is a huge problem. So is that a yes? But I don't think people fully appreciate, I think they're in a lot of trouble. Yes, I'm not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be.

and our policies are going to be right now in this regard, but I don't think it's any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime. Senator Lindsey Graham, who's never met a war he doesn't like, was far more overt in his desire to invade Cuba. You just wait for Cuba. Cuba is a communist dictatorship that's killed priest and nuns. They've preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We're going to wake up one day. I hope in 26, in our backyard, we're going to have allies in these countries doing business with America. Graham, by the way, also posted this picture of him smiling ear to ear with Trump

holding a sign, Make Iran Great Again hat. If you think the Trump administration wants to stop at Cuba, wait until you hear what the president has in mind for Colombia. Colombia is very sick to run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States and he's not going to be doing it very long let me tell you what does that mean he's not going to be doing it very long he has cocaine mills and cocaine factories he's not going to be doing it very well be an operation by the US and it sounds good to be and there's more Trump has renewed his desire to annex Greenland. Here he is. And we need it for national protection. We need Greenland for national protection. They have a

very small population. And I don't know, they say Denmark, but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say that Denmark was there 300 years ago or something with a boat. Well, we were there with boats too, I'm sure. Adding to those calls, former Trump Deputy Press Secretary Katie Miller, who's also married to Stephen Miller, posted this on X soon with Greenland in an American flag. Yens Frederick Nielsen, the Prime Minister of Greenland fired back, saying, when the president of the United States says that we need Greenland and links us to Venezuela and military intervention, it's not just wrong, it's disrespectful, which I guess is the most Greenland. response you can possibly muster. The prime minister of Denmark also weighed in as Greenland is an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark.

Matt Fredrickson said on January 4th that it makes absolutely no sense to talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland. The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom. Jank, what do you make of this? So first I want to add Columbia president's statement as well, and then we'll talk about what's going to happen next. Gustavo Petro said, I'm waiting for you here. Don't threaten me.

I'll wait for you right here if you want to. Come get me. Okay, so now that's a hell of a thing to say after they just went and got Nicholas Maduro. So why is he more confident? Well, I mean, how many wars can America fight under the anti-war president? We might find out. And secondly, of course, what every leader has done now that Trump has

Trump has criticized at all, they've now are going to quadruple 10x, 20 X their security. And they're going to lay ambushes for us if we ever show up. In fact, there's now talk of the leader of Mexico, Shinebound, needing to protect herself from American interests. And so now that we're a lawless country and we illegally and unconstitutionally attack countries, I mean, this is obviously a war. We bombed their capital. We kidnap their leader.

And we go, oh, no, it is technically not a war, because that would be illegal under both international and U.S. law, right? Oh, no, this is just, we are allowed to bomb any capital. We are. We're allowed to kidnap any foreign leader. We are? So what do you think foreign leaders are going to do? They're all bunkering down and going, oh, the lunatic in charge of America might come and kidnap us if we hurt his feelings. Or he likes our natural resources and would like to steal it.

Or we had an unkind word to say about Netanyahu. So whatever the insane reason is, we've got to get ready for America to invade and attack us out of the blue. So if you're talking about drugs, come on, man. Like if you're in the right wing and you don't already know the facts about Venezuela and drugs, it's embarrassing. You can go look it up and you can find right wing sources for it. Venezuela has very little drugs compared to nearby countries.

They have almost nothing to do with fentanyl. So if you see Trump talking about that, he is lying. Figure it out. Do your own research. Don't trust me, don't trust Trump. Go and look it up. Is Venezuela the largest trafficker of cocaine? Not within a million miles.

No. Fentil, no, nothing, almost nothing out of Venezuela when it comes to fentanyl. So okay, so he's lying. So what's the real reason? The donors want it, of course. But do the donors want us to attack Columbia and Greenland? I know Greenland has rare earth minerals, so maybe Elon Musk and the tech bros want it. And that's why people are talking about Greenland, because everything comes from some donor.

Nothing comes from the American people. The American people have no power because we haven't given hundreds of millions of dollars and bribes to all the sick corrupt politicians in America. But every donor wants a different invasion these days. So Israel wants Iran. Oil companies kind of largely Wall Street speculators, defense contractors, and partly Israel want Venezuela. The tech bros apparently want Greenland.

We're going to attack Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland. And this is from the, come on, guys, come on. If you're in the right wing or you voted for Trump and you think war is peace, Please read in 1984, okay, George Orwell literally predicted that your leader would say war is peace and that you would believe it. And this guy is starting an unbelievable amount of conflict and you're still don't think he's for war? You think he's a peace president? That's just the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my life. And finally, Jordan, look, he's drunk on power because he thinks, well, I did the Iran bombing that only lasted 12 hours.

their nuclear facility and I got out and that's done. It's not done, it's never done because Israel is Bob, they never leave. And they're not pushing for regime change in a second attack, right? So he thinks Venezuela, I attacked, I got Maduro, I'm done, I'm good. And now I'll just tell them what to do and they'll listen to me, but they're not going to listen to him. And then he's gonna be embarrassed and you can't run Venezuela from the outside, so we're gonna need to go and do a second attack. So once he gets bogged down in Venezuela and 222, hopefully not Iran. But my God, if he does both of them, ain't nobody got time for Colombia and Mexico and Greenland.

What do you think? I mean, we really need to remind ourselves of why they're doing this. Of course, there is the oil lobby, the oil interests in Venezuela. That's part of it. But by doing this, Trump diverts attention away from problems domestically. Of course, the Epstein files were a big personal problem for him and other wealthy elites in this country, but it's not just that. He was plummeting in the polls. People are fed up. Healthcare subsidies just expired. Now people's premiums are going to rise. Discontent

domestically is rising. So what does he do? Hey, everyone, look over here. We're going to maybe bring oil gas prices down by stealing another country's oil? This is classic strongmen behavior. And I don't want to get into the muck of debating Maduro's resume. I think that's a distraction. And I think it helps manufacture consent for what is ultimately an illegal action by this president. But the justification that let's just entertain it temporarily, they always talk about Venezuelan leaders, not just Maduro, but also Chavez. Oh, they're oppressive dictators. They're autocrats. They crack down on the press. They commit human rights violations. There's economic suffering in those countries. Look in Amir. What are you talking about? Look here. Look domestically. We have those same problems here. Does that give another country justification to come in.

and kidnap our president and hold them on trial elsewhere on trumped up drug trafficking charges or corruption charges? I mean, what are we doing? We're in no position to police the globe for bad behavior. Who are we? Yeah. There's one thing I know. This ain't anti-war. And if you're on the same side as Lindsey Graham, by definition, you're on the wrong side. If you thought you were against Lindsey Graham and the neocons, and he's sitting there going, this is the greatest thing and I can't wait to do it to Cuba and Iran too. Be careful what you wish for. All right, before we go, next segment, we're going to get to the MAGA reaction.

It's not great. There's a couple of people saying the right thing and a lot of people not doing that. We'll do that too, but Jordan, you don't know this, but I just want to tell you one thing, brother. Last time we were on, I think it was last time, maybe two times ago, I, at one point I got heated and I got emotional and I said a point you were making was dense. And I'm sorry, brother. I didn't want to, I just wanted to make clear on air. Sorry about that. I shouldn't have said that. I just, you know, you know me. I do get emotional sometimes. We both were, but you kept it in balance. I don't think I did. So that's why I wanted to say it on it.

it's all good apology accepted but I think it shows we can have heated debates here and we can just move on it's not the end of the world and more networks should do it all right I love it and that's one of the reasons that I love having you on all right Jordan thank you brother we appreciate it

we'll come right back and we'll do the MAGA reaction And if you're not angry about that, Michael, and any of you out there, then you're damn wrong, because you should be angry. Young Turks. It was genuine. He was mad. Jake Yugar, known online as one of the Young Turks, isn't afraid to throw some punches.

Three, two, one. Fade up. Jank, the Turk, Yuga. Kind of TV station is, says. The whole point is for me to yell a scream and tell you what I think. It was right out of like Wayne's World. This guy on this little rinky dink website is speaking truth to power. We've been averaging 600,000 views a day.

Beating most of the cable shows in America. We're the largest online news show in the world. We're celebrating our one-billionth view. Tell us, we're coming. Warren, politics ahead with Jank Yugar. He knew that the MSNBC opportunity was an experiment. And Phil and host beat CNN in the headline news combined. At some point, they want to give me a show.

Every single year, that comes out of our show. paycheck. We put it in and you're saying we were suckers. When you as a host tells someone you're interviewing to shut up, that's going to raise a red flag. That guy needed a tall glass of shut up. If President Obama's doing the wrong thing, I'm not going to tell you that he's doing the right thing so I can quote support him. He says to me, you won't believe the meeting that I just have.

The head of MSNBC talked to me. They want him off the air. Jake took an incredible risk. And we're supposed to challenge the government. That's the role of the media. The Democrats and the Republicans are here to screw you. And who on the air is saying it? I wouldn't have done what he did.

That if I'm going to be a talk show host, I should be the biggest talk show host in the country. I don't think anyone else does it better. I don't think anyone's even close. Before you know it, I'll be back on your TV doing a national show. I guarantee it. Magic, it's showtime and say 45 minutes. I'm hosting today.

Now I know what you're thinking, Jay, your face is already perfect, but you know what, I still need to apply some makeup. I went through this process, right? A few years ago, when I realized I was gonna have to make up on the show. I had to go through, like, finding out what my undertones were. You guys know those are?

I got my mad cousins. It says Mubal, SPF-15, Foundation, Broad Spectrum. broad spectrum. But apparently what I have is red undertones and I think pores are not supposed to be seen. I need all these things to be confirmed with me. These sponge things are working for me. You got to use your hands. This idea. That's how the magic really happens. So we're going to go through a tutorial. How to make the magic happen from beautiful to beautiful earth. Let's go. I've already been moisturized. That's the first thing. But most Our visualization already happened.

We go raw, all hands. We go. Couple streaks. This is the guy we're putting on makeup. We got dots. There's some shining points that generally happen. First of all, here we go. You dust here.

I'm putting way too much, but you dust. Oh, get the excess off. You don't want chunky, you powder. There's like a T zone, I think, right? think, right? Mine is a double T zone. Because I went middle and another cross. Make sure nose isn't all at all shiny. People get on you for it. You don't say, it's not a good point you made on there, J.R. Your nose is shiny. You guys are picky like that sometimes. I think that's about it, fellas, and ladies. See you guys next time. Bitsies.

The key for me is to keep expectations low. All right, back on TYT, Jank Uger, Sharon Reid with you guys. How you doing, Sharon? I'm good. How are you? I'm rock and roll, sister. Yeah, I thought about you a lot this weekend. I don't wonder what Jank is saying right now.

I wonder what he's doing. I'm going to start your social media. Mainly pulling my hair out. Oh, well, you have some left. It's fine. Yeah, we're hanging in there. All right, let's do the next story. We have mixed maga jang. After this regime change in Venezuela, I fear that we're going to see jobs just move south because we're already hearing about big corporations lining up their trips to Venezuela

for the next big business opportunity that exists. While Americans sit here with no options that are going to provide them with, good paying jobs and affordable health care. So we now live in a top seat every world where Marjorie Taylor Green is the voice of reason on the right, but she is again in this situation in the attack on Venezuela. There are a couple of others that got this thing figured out and that are actually America first. We're going to show you those.

But we're also going to show you a lot of MAGA influencers who are ecstatic about this. and have totally forgotten that they were supposed to pretend to be anti-war. And they're not great comments, to say the least, are also part of this story. So we'll do all of that, and then we'll talk about who's going to win this portion of the MAGA Civil War after Sharon gives you all the facts. Yeah, so let's fill people in. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green went on the record to oppose President Donald Trump's regime change operation. Many other MAGA figures, they are siding with the Trump administration. So without further ado, let's take a look at who's for, who's against the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro.

We're going to start with Benny Johnson. Ladies and gentlemen, Smartmatic and Dominion voting systems, were the voting systems being used at this time and in these states? and all around the world, they are Venezuelan by design and by systems and storage facilities and through their actual technology. These systems, I have on extremely good authority, can and do rig elections around the world. And Nicholas Maduro might be Trump's final revenge for the election theft of 2020. If he begins to sing like a which he will, they always do, then who will he give up? Soros, China, left-wing NGOs, left-wing billionaires, who was funding his regime, how they stole the election? He'll sing.

He'll tell him everything. They got his wife. This is why they took him alive. You see where this is going, right? Meanwhile, Matt Walsh stated this on X, I'm as reflexively non-interventionalist interventionist as anyone can possibly be. But Venezuela appears to be a resounding victory in one of the most brilliant military operations in American history. Goes on to say, if some, let's get to the punchline, Jank. If some crappy little tin pot third world dictator is harming our country or interfering with our national interest, we should do exactly what Trump did to Maduro. Why not?

International law is fake and gay. The only international law is that big and powerful countries get to do what they want. It has been that way since the dawn of civilization. It will always be that way. All right, let's give you the response here. Segar and Jetty posted the following. I am reflexively anti-intervention because I still. believe the U.S. military is stunningly capable of limited operations, but Washington lacks the

strategic competence to successfully achieve an endgame in a complex faraway land without bad 40th order consequences. How about Tim Poole? His take was a bit mixed. Here's what he wrote. Removing Maduro made infinitely more sense than anything we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. But still, don't lie. This is for oil and the petro dollar. This isn't about. drugs or narco gangs, just be honest. Steve Bannon also called out the messaging from Trump. The administration in an interview with the New York Times, here's what Bannon said. The lack of framing of the message on a potential occupation has the base bewildered,

if not angry. While President Trump makes the case for hemispheric defense, Rubio confuses talk of removing Hamas and Hezbollah. In his daily morning newsletter, Tucker, Carlson offered some mild criticism while simultaneously defending Trump. We love Trump. But what he's describing is a nation building campaign. There's no way around it. President's instincts on foreign entanglement are strong. But the usurpers around Trump disagree and they've mugged him into advancing their agenda in each of his administrations. Dave Smith, while he attacked his fellow conservatives, here's what he wrote. I'm so disappointed in the

the prominent right wingers supporting Trump's attack on Venezuela, including many who should know better. I'm sure in 20 years, they will be making excellent documentaries about how we were right and then mocking us as they support the next terrible thing. Let's end with Jack Posobia, who stated that only time will tell if this operation is successful or not. Listen, I fully support the policy of blackbagging communists and taking them to Guantanamo Bay. And in fact, I have a list, if anyone would like to check it out. But when it comes down to it, it always comes. And if you go back and look at the human events series that we ran last week, regime change, tales of regime change.

We talk about Iraq. We talk about Afghanistan. We talk about Ukraine, 2014. We talk about Syria. The question always comes. What comes next? What did I say here on the show on Saturday? I said, is this a full on regime change?

or are they just taking out one guy? And it appears to be that that's what the president and Marco Rubio said afterwards because the president said we are not installing Machado. He was very clear about that, cold water all over it. And then Rubio coming out and saying that he was having discussions with the vice president of Venezuela, who had been sort of this hench woman for Maduro. But of course, she's off there. It kind of looks like she's going into business for herself as it is.

So again, we will see what comes next. All right, so Jank, is there any chance that this operation, I guess we'll call it, can be successful and is international law fake and gay? Okay, so as I explained earlier in the show, it's about a 10% chance that the CIA are geniuses and they've actually got the vice president Rodriguez already lined up in their back pocket and she's pretending to object but she isn't really objecting. And they've also lined up the defense minister and the head of the militias and the head of any other part of the military that was loyal to Maduro. That's your 10% chance, in which case they slowly do, you know, regime change and we install Machado or her allies in there. And then there are puppets and they do whatever we tell them. That is a very low probability. Much higher probability is they have no idea what they're doing.

and this makes no sense at all. And that is why you're seeing half of those guys waiver. So let's talk about the waiver. Now, a lot of them said they were anti-war. So turning around and saying, God, we love war. Let's go do regime change in Venezuela and Iran and, oh, this is great. It's a pretty sharp turn, right? So they're a little worried about that turn,

and they're a little worried that they already just told their audience for years and years that they were anti-war, and that was the correct position. So they're concerned about that. Now, on the other hand, they see a lot of right wing, and I see it, the actual voters, citizens, et cetera, who are super psyched about this. And honestly, it's a little bit of like, you know, rah-rah, America, bald eagle, American flag, we kill, we kidnap. We're the tough guys, we do whatever we want.

And so there's a little bit of like getting high on that supply at this. point. So that's why they're like, they seem to kind of like it. I think they're gonna hate it later. So I'm not quite sure what I want to do. And that was Pesobiac, you saw it at the end there. And before, just I think last week, I said Pesobiac is kind of the weather vein of the right wing movement. He just wants to go wherever it's popular. He doesn't really care. He doesn't doesn't seem to have many principles. So he's basically going on the one hand, on the other her hand. So, well, you know, that could be worse. It could be the Matt Walsh reaction, right? So I'll go one by one as quickly as I can. Marjorie Taylor Green, I thought was perfect.

Not perfect from a left wing perspective. She said a lot of things in her reaction on TV and on X-Row. I was like, I don't necessarily agree with that, right? But in terms of being anti-interventionist and anti-war, she's being true to the principles that she espoused, Trump is originally a spouse and definitely MAGA and America first espoused. So she is being consistent and principled and I agree with her position overall. Matt Walsh, she's a clown. So let's start with this half a sentence. I'm as reflexively non-intervention as anyone can possibly be. Wrong again, Bob, because the anti-interventionist position here is don't intervene. And you're going, I am maximum anti-interventionist. And that's why I thought it was a great idea to intervene in Venezuela.

Maybe you struggle with the English language, and so that's why you don't understand the meaning of words, but we're definitely intervening here. And he says, well, you know, look, strong countries take over smaller countries and do whatever they want to them. International law is gay and fake. Yeah, but what if the strong country is Germany and they want to do whatever they want to Poland and Austria and France and Belgium and to Jews and the Poles? and et cetera, et cetera. Well, so what? So what? International law is gay.

The Nazis should be allowed to do whatever they want. Well, I hope you don't think that. I hope that there's a reason why America was the leading country that set up international law. And we didn't do that just out of the goodness of our heart. We did that because we thought that would be beneficial to us, to democracy, to the world order that we believe in. And by the way, if you're a right winger, you should certainly make up your mind. a couple of things. Are you anti-war or pro war? Okay. So you tell me, and they are telling you right now, you should listen. And the ones that said that this attack on Venezuela was a great

idea, make note of that. By the way, also make note of people like me who say it's a terrible idea. And then come back and see who was right, okay? And see who's wavering and see who's clear in this case. So Matt Walsh is clear, like break the law, rule of law means nothing, anti-war, he was just kidding, pro war, et cetera. So that's Matt Walsh, and he's super clear about it. And he's, when any time he talks about anti-intervention, now understand he's a giant fraud, never meant that the minute that a Republican president does the next attack.

He'll be like, well, normally I'm very anti-interventionist, but I love this intervention, give me more war. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought, Matt. Sager, honestly, that was word salad. I mean, I guess he's saying, oh, yeah, I see all your right-wingerers are in favor of it, but later there'll be consequences. Yeah, that's relatively true, but I would have come out stronger than this. So I'm a little bit disappointed in Saga on that one.

Tim Poole, all right. I mean, at least he's being honest. He's saying, yeah, we're doing it for oil and the petrodot iron. That is true. And it's not about the drug. So give score one for Tim Poole. On honesty, guys, not on agreeing with left or right, on honesty and being principled. Steve Bannon saying, hey, we like war, and so he's pulling the same thing as Pesobiac.

We're pretending to not like war, but when you break things and kill people and kidnap people, we can't help but really kind of instinctually love that. But at the same time, why are we doing this for Israel and Rubio and Huckabee and Netanyahu? We're all talking about, we did this for Israel. We vanquished Hezbollah and Iran in Venezuela? Well, so okay, so he's right for a note of caution there. Obviously, Tucker's being careful because he's seeing the same thing I'm seeing, which is that this, in my opinion, I'm not putting words in his mouth.

The right wing these days, Trump voters, they're a little drunk on how well the mission went. And let me pause there, guys, before I get to the rest. The mission that we just did was tactic, tactics and tactical, right? So we're great at tactics. Nobody's better than us. So can we go capture Saddam? We did. Did we hang him? We hung them. Did we capture Maduro? We captured him.

Did we capture bin Laden? It took a freaking forever, probably because I think we didn't want to capture him. But anyway, we finally did capture him. So we're good at tactics. We're the best in the business. Don't let that distract you from strategy. Strategy is, yes, but how do we get to the end game? What do we do next?

How do we get the Venezuelan leaders who agree with Maduro to comply with us? And if they don't comply with us, what's next? Trump being a great A moron hasn't thought any of that through. And he said that, how can you tell it? Because he goes in a press conference and he goes, now we're gonna, we're running Venezuela. You see him, Rubio in the back going, like, are we? And then he goes on TV, he's like, no, no, no, we're not running it, but we are running it. But I, it is a war, but it's not a war.

Okay, yeah, they have no earthly idea what they're doing. Dave Smith, 100 out of 100. He meant, he said anti-war, he meant anti-war, he meant anti-war. He's, of course, right. And so the reason I want everybody to keep score, Sharon, is because just like in Iraq, later everyone will claim that they were against this war in Venezuela. And everyone will say, well, I mean, I was against, of course, I was anti-war, I was anti-war. No, no, no, when we start a war is when you tell us you're pro or anti-war.

Don't tell me after you supported a war that you change your mind later, but you'd like to have credit for being anti-war. No, no, this is decision time. This is not going to end with one simple bombing and kidnapping. I mean, not that it was simple. It was brilliantly done by our forces, but it doesn't accomplish anything as long as the vice president totally agrees with Maduro, and she's saying she does. So then you've got to go in again and again and again until you have ground troops and a quagmire. And then all these guys, after those series of disasters, we'll turn around and Matt Walsh will tell you, I was always anti-intervention. I'm the most anti-interventionist guy.

That's why I love the Iraq War. That's why I love the Venezuela War. That's why I love every war until it goes south. And then I lied to you and pretend that I was always against it. Yeah, it's interesting. I know that this is a story about Mix Maga and their strife and struggles, internal war, if you will. But I also wonder, I mean, they're so good at being loud and proud, even when they disagree, if the other side, you know, the Democrats, progressives, had they been loud enough in staking their claim on what matters here? Yeah. So, you know, on that, I have a couple of mixed feelings. So first, on the left overall, we should proudly declare what we think. And we're, the left has been anti-war the entire time. for the last 25 years, in fact, back to Vietnam, et cetera.

So we're anti-war and we should stake our claim to that. And we should let people know, left-wing populists are honest. And when we say we're anti-war, we don't get seduced by, oh, did we kill and kidnap so one? Oh, that's so much fun. No, we think things through and realize this has gone poorly every single time since Vietnam. So maybe we shouldn't do it again like a bunch of idiots, right? Sorry, but it's it's the reality. There is no end game here at all.

It's going to end in disaster. I want you to know that I think that on day one, because it's a pure matter of logic. Unless we have them already completely surrendered, this is never going to work. Okay, so in terms of like the rest of them, yeah. Same thing, Sharon, they'll come back and say later, oh, I had a change of heart or whatever the hell. But no, this is, this is not going to end well. No. Let's take a quick social break and we'll be right back.

Gay Nutcracker. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. You know, I'm going to be able to be. All right, here we go. Let's go to our members on t.com.

Rebel Dragon says, I hate to admit it, but good point, March. Cheap labor in Venezuela, we actually have some labor laws here still. I mean, look, I now see a lot of the establishment Democrats going, oh, well, I guess Marge Taylor Green is right about a couple of things. Okay, but you know, to finish the thought for the shine asked me about earlier, a lot of the establishment Democrats are actually on the side of regime change. So they're leaking to the press about how happy they are that Maduro was deposed. They're the worst. Okay.

Tadden and Remnants says, don't you just love how the Republicans declare a victory before the dust even settles and the blowback comes in a little while? We will then blame Democrats for not giving them complete support. Of course, every time. And then of course, Democrats will then scramble and go, no, no, no, we're also in favor of the Venezuelan war. Oh, I meant we're against it. I meant we're against it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just so annoying.

Don't shoot on the goalkeeper, I think makes the best point. This regime's not even bothering to manufacture consent. None of these clowns have ever heard the word consent in their lives. So yeah, in the old days, they used to bother manufacturing consent, even for the Iraq war. And it took them a long time, took them over a year to manufacture consent. Of course, with the great willing help of traditional media, we're like, oh, you want us to lie the American people into war? Oh, we thought you'd never ask, yes, of course.

And they did that for well over a year as they built up that consent. Here, Trump's like, what do I need anybody's consent for? Let's just ignore all international law, let's steal their oil, let's kill their fishermen, let's attack their country and their capital, let's bomb it, and let's kidnap their foreign leader. Who cares? Law doesn't exist. Well, for Trump, the law has never existed, and he's never been held accountable. So it's not surprising. Yeah, IDK Anymore says, Jake, what I respect about you is you, maybe the only CEO I know that apologizes and it shows you clearly respect to people that work for you.

Well, thanks for saying that. Often backfires a lot of times. But anyways, I'll leave that alone. Thank you for saying that. Jenks left tricep, Furosis, says, Jenks showing humility. That's why I love you guys. I appreciate it, guys. But it's not about it to me, it's not a matter of humility or not humility or whatever.

I just felt bad about it because I didn't think it was the right thing to do. I don't know. That shouldn't be extraordinary. So, but I appreciate all of you. Ecclecting miscellaneous says this cuckoo is cuckoo for cocoa pops, yep. Not that Papadopoulos says it's 2003 all over again, but honestly with less effort. They're not even, they're barely trying at this point. NDH 101 on Twitch says thanks again, TYT.

And Nemo AT70 Dragon gifted 10 tier one subs on Twitch. We appreciate that so much. We'll be back. All right. Hi, back on TYJJ and sharing with you guys. Also, S Floyd, 83. Thank you for joining on YouTube by hitting that beautiful join button below. below. Two-bit hooligan, thank you for joining on t-y-t.com. We really appreciate that. And they wrote a New Year's resolution, become a T-YT member. Check. Okay, thank you.

I love that New Year's resolution. I hope many more of you have it. T.y.com slash join. Sharon, what's next? Mamdomni-Mandani critique, Jank. It's still going on. The Times of Israel is once again targeting New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani. This time to neutralize any attempt, to draw a comparison between the capture of Nicholas Maduro versus the refusal of the U.S. to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, who has an international war crimes warrant, of course, hanging over his head. You see the headline from the article. Mom, Donny, for his part, simply condemned the U.S. seizure of Maduro as a violation of international law. He put up something on X from the official account saying that he was briefed and basically saying, you know,

Laterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war, violation of federal and international law. But the times of Israel vehemently, of course, disagreed. They quickly parroted what the Trump administration has been pushing, that the arrest of Maduro was lawful because it was based on U.S. court orders. They then immediately pivoted, defending Netanyahu's right to remain free, claiming the ICC has no jurisdiction in the U.S. and that federal law actually prohibits the imprisonment or obstruction of foreign officials unless apparently they are on the U.S. indictment list. Before we get into the rest, Jenk, I'll ask you for your two cents. Yeah, first of all, I'm not interested in any other country's opinion on our mayors.

What does Portugal think about the mayor of Cleveland? I don't care, is the correct answer. Oh, Israel is chastising the mayor of New York. Well, they can take a long walk off a short dock, not interested in their goddamn opinion. Okay, so that's my first send. My second cent is Momdani is indisputably correct about the law regarding Morduro, which is, yeah, we can't just go and kidnap a foreign leader and attack a country. That's called war, and it is a violation of the law. And it's also the violation of the Constitution where Congress is supposed to declare war. So, but yeah, tell me more about what the irrelevant, they're not irrelevant because they control almost all of our politicians. And that's why Mamdani drives them crazy because they can't

control him, but irrelevant in the case of what American citizens should actually be concerned about. This irrelevant Israel country, tell us what else they are demanding from us. Well, let's get to the backlash, because it was swift on social media. Many folks zeroing in on selective enforcement, as we said, international law applied aggressively to enemies, but dismissed when it implicates allies. You can see some of the post. Adam says this picture should be Netanyahu. And there were a lot of people who used AI to switch Netanyahu out for Maduro in this picture, posting that.

Dili Hussein says Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal of a country whose army has committed genocide. He goes on to say Netanyahu gets a red carpet treatment in the U.S. Maduro was kidnapped, Venezuela gets bombed by the U.S. Many are asking why can't Benjamin Netanyahu be brought to justice as the message is clear. When we want to snatch ahead of state, we find a court to issue the warrant and we act quickly. Then there was the former New York mayor Eric Adams who posted this on X. January 10th, 2025, the Biden Harris administration put a $25 million bounty on Nicholas Maduro for information leading to his arrest or conviction. Public safety is not a political game.

You do not label someone a narco dictator one year and then pretend he's no longer a threat the next, simply because a different president is in office. Honduras comes to mind. That is cynical and irresponsible. Maduro's drugs have killed thousands, he goes on to say, America's safer today because he's no longer in power. Welcome to New York, Nicholas. Okay? And then there was Kamala Harris.

She ignored any comparison to Netanyahu, didn't come up for her in his escaping justice. Instead, she focused on what she called an unlawful act by the Trump administration. She put it clearly. Donald Trump's actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, and more affordable. Bat Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact this action was both unlawful and unwise. We've seen this movie before. Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos. American families pay the price.

So, Jank, I would like to know, you know, anything you want to add, but have you heard any lawmaker, either side of the aisle address the hypocrisy that people are raising when it comes to Netanyahu or any member of the mainstream media? Because I watch the Sunday shows, I watch Stephanopoulos in particular, he had some strong pushback for Rubio. But this other thing doesn't seem to come up. Yeah, of course. That's part of why the Israeli lobbies spent $45 million trying to defeat Mumdani.

Because they have a mortal lock on almost everyone else in American politics. But if they can't shut up the mayor of New York, that's a problem for them. Because he's pointing out the hypocrisy here. One guy violated international law, Net Yahoo. One guy killed 70, oh well over 70,000 people, 20,000 children. And the list goes on and on of all of his war crimes and our Congress gives him standing ovation after standing ovation because they work for him and they're deeply corrupt. So the only other couple of guys that I've seen that are, you know, saying exactly the right

things are, as usual, Bernie Sanders' rogue comment, right? But outside of like the rogue populist left that actually cares about the truth and principles and the things that the actual average American cares about, there's a lot of cowardice. as usual. So a lot of hemming and hauling from Democrats. Establishment Democrats behind the scenes are leaking to the press that they're glad that Maduro was captured. And now Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is going back in a second time. She's a Democrat, but a neocon. And so she loves the wars. And so she's like, oh, I like that we captured Maduro, but we didn't do it quite the right way. That was her first swing. The second time

she comes out and she goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, we need regime change. We're not doing this right. Wait, I thought you were a Democrat. I thought you were opposed to Trump. No, of course, that's Israel First. So they want regime change and they're not going to stop until they get regime change. Israel First is not the only or even the biggest factor here, but they are a factor and they're the ones who are saying not enough, we need regime change along with others. By the way, the last time we did regime change in Iraq, 4,500 Americans died, 32,000.

were wounded and we lost several trillion dollars. And as we were doing that, Sharon, what I heard, and because the Young Turks was on the air at that time, longest running daily show on internet history, first YouTube partner. So we've been here through all the wars, unfortunately. And what people would tell us all the time is, oh, so you're in favor of Saddam? Oh, you don't like the Iraq war? You don't support the troops? Oh, you're big friends with the evil Saddam Hussein.

You know what Saddam Hussein is done? Guys, I've been through this trick already. Yeah, oh, Maduro's a bad guy. And does that mean we need to go and invade and take over his country and steal their oil? So they say, oh, you want to let Maduro go? No, brother, but yeah, I didn't want to kidnap him in the first place. I didn't want to start a war with Venezuela in the first place. Why?

Because that's illegal, it's unconstitutional, they never asked Congress. It's mental, it's going to lead to a quagmire where we're trying to occupy Venezuela, or we have to slink away, embarrassed that they didn't do anything we told them to do. And then we just go, oh, never mind, we forget it, I guess keep doing whatever you were doing. We cannot get them to comply with just threats. In order to give directions on the ground, you have to be on the ground. Otherwise, it's not going to work. So, and the deeper we get, and it all, look, honestly, we don't have a democracy.

The donors are having a conversation about what they want. They get through, the way the system is set up is good cop, bad cop, the Republicans are the bad cop that go, we don't care about law. We're invading Iraq and Halliburton and Exxon Mobil and Israel and everybody's going to be ecstatic. and the voters are going to suffer. The service members and the military are going to suffer. We're going to take trillions from the tax payers. Who cares about them? That's what happened in Iraq.

That's what happens every time. And that's what they're setting up to do in Venezuela. So they can tell me until they're blue in the face. Oh, I don't like Mom Donnie. And I don't care about international law. And as we just reported, Matt Wall says, international law is gay. So we shouldn't follow it. Okay, well, if you want to be dumb, that's not my problem.

That's kind of your problem. No, laws are not gay. And remember, the Republican Party pretended my whole life that they were in favor of the rule of law and our Constitution. And some of their voters actually do. But a lot of their voters and certainly a lot of their media hosts and politicians have to make up their mind. And so do the corporate Democrats. But they're always going to just have a fest of over which donor to pleasure. We got to do a real rebellion in this country, a peaceful, nonviolent one to get rid of all these bombs who are all corrupt and who all work for donors and will drag us into every war.

And no matter who you vote for, go ahead, go ahead, vote Democrat or Republican. You know where you're going to get war? You know what you're going to get subsidies for corporations? You're going to get endless funding of Israel. You're always going to get the same results because this is a giant, fraudulent theater that they're playing on all. of us and of course the top actors are the ones on television pretending it's all real. Yeah, that's what I saw. And you know, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but I saw an awful lot of reporting on the gentleman who spoke up during the Maduro President Maduro's

hearing today in front of a judge. And they talked a lot about it. And like you said, no wonder, okay, he's a bad guy, we got it. But that's not the pivot that we're looking for right now. Whether it was legal or not, and I didn't hear much of that from the mainstream media. He was on every channel, this person, it was, it was all orchestrated to remind people that, yeah, it might have been illegal, yeah, but he was a really bad guy, so sometimes you just got to break the rules. Sharon, quick social, yeah. Yeah, sorry, one quick last thing. I saw Aaron Burnett right after this Venezuela attack happened, and she's quoted the vice president of Venezuela saying that,

They're not going to necessarily listen to all of our orders. And she was seemed outraged. She was like, this is their vice president, summing their nose at us. Well, what did you think she was going to do? We just bombed Caracas, their capital. We just kidnapped her boss, the president, and you expect her to just grovel to the people who attacked her country? Is that the expectation of the ludicrous people on cable news? These are the same exact people who lied to you 24-7 and pretended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda at 9-11.

Both of those things were monstrous lies solved to you by the actors on television who are not in the news business at all. And what did you see right after we attacked Venezuela? Every television station was showing celebrating Venezuelans. Now, are there real celebrating Venezuelans? Yes. Are there Venezuela's not happy with what we did? Yes. Does television show that? No, they're like, look, they love us. We're being greeted as liberators. Oh, their leaders are thumbing their nose at us. How dare you not take our invasion politely and do exactly as you're ordered? Oh, I'm an objective news lady. Yeah, sure you are. So don't forget, they're going to

write books. Yeah. They write books too to rewrite history afterwards. They were there the whole time. They have these inside sources. Then they write books as if, you know, it didn't happen that way. But, you know, what do I know? No, no. Shire, that's your 100% right. And that's exactly what's going to happen. Later, Jake Tapper will write a book.

Nobody could have seen that the Venezuela war was going to turn into a quagmire just like Iraq. Nobody could have seen that coming. Jake, we see it coming right now. Okay, let's take a break. We're going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to You know,

and All right, so let's go to our members again on T.y.t.com here. Funkin for fun said, so if I go to court and claim I need follow a law because it's gay. I guess Matt Walsh would say not guilty. Nerd Ferguson says you can't break the law in order to enforce the law. It's a good point. I wish our leaders would listen. Ecclectic, where I said, maybe you've come on actually spoken out about Israel's war

crimes during her campaign. When people still cared what she had to say, she wouldn't be on the sideline sending tweets about Trump's war crimes now. Yeah, well, that's another good point. T01790 says, TYT is the OG of digital media. Thank you brother. Progressive 1776 says, it's anti-semitic to be against the war in Venezuela. And there's a winking emoji. You think they won't say it? You think they won't say it? Okay. In fact, it's already been said to me many times. Oh, you're bringing up the fact. that Netanyahu wanted this war and was ecstatic afterwards. Because you're quoting Netanyahu, you're an anti-Semite.

Literally been sent to me hundreds of times already in the last 24 hours. Lou B. The only word we've gotten on how brilliant that operation was coming from is the US military. With over 30 Cuban security killed, I have trouble believing there were no US casualties. They say a couple of guys got wounded, but the wounds were not that bad. But Lou, I was thinking the same thing you're thinking, there's 80 killed on the ground. including 32 members of the Cuban military and none of our guys got hurt bad. I mean, that's great, that's amazing, and yeah, we're way better than them on tactics

and being able to execute a mission like this, but it's not impossible for them to say, well, did we say no one got hurt, you know, so we'll keep an eye out for that, because there's nothing that Trump wouldn't lie about. I lives in America saying the bombing of the fishing boats was the incompetent administration's version of manufacturing consent. I think that's right. Zelda Symphony says, so we can go into a country and arrest the president of alleged drug trafficking. So can someone arrest Trump for all the illegal goods of the US exports and pours into other countries? For example, the guns smuggled to Mexico. Someone arrest Trump and will the US until we install a new leader.

Oh, don't let Israel do it, but rather Iran than Israel lead us at this point. So look, guys, It's a point that I made actually on OAN this morning or this afternoon, wait, if that's true that hey, I got an arrest warrant, somebody did something illegal in another country. Then what we could do is we could bomb Tel Aviv right now, go get the, or Jerusalem, and go get that Israeli cybersecurity official who was trying to rape a 15 year old in Vegas and bring him back to justice here. So should we bomb Jerusalem, kill 80 Israelis, capture the guy who has an arrest warrant in Vegas, and bring him back?

And of course, all of Israel first will say, how dare you? No, you leave the rapists alone because he's Israeli, and then you attack Venezuela because we told you to. Oh, okay, got you. Anyways, t.y.com, I switch, save some money on your phone bill at least. All right, bye. All right, all right, back on TYT, jing is sharing with you guys, Riot 8245, thank you for gifting your membership. Dana Albrecht wrote in MTG suddenly trying to be a part of the solution is a few years too late.

No, it's never too late. It's okay. Every time somebody comes to the right side, welcome, happy to have you, even if it's issue by issue. That's my opinion. ZMK says, Sharon, you're gold. But the main reason I'm reading all this is because they wrote back in and said, Sharon, marry me. Okay, can I know your credit score first? I don't need any more problems. But you know what, let's just have fun. You ready for the next one, Jay? Yeah, I am. Someone's hit a waltz. So I've decided to step out of this race,

and I'll let others worry about the election while I focus on the work that's in front of me for the next year. I'm passing on this race with zero sadness and zero regret. I did not run for this job to have the job. I ran for the job to do the job. Minnesota faces enormous challenges this year and I refuse to spend a single minute doing anything other than rising to meet this moment. Minnesota has always come first and always will. Yeah, I hate this decision. I don't think that Tim Wall should have ran. I'll tell you why and we'll

tell you who might replace him as a person running for governor for the Democrats and why it's not any better. Sharon, tell us the facts. Yeah, for some, it was a shocking turn of events this morning. Minnesota Governor Tim Wolls announcing he's suspending his reelection campaign for a third term. He pointed directly to the spotlight that's been cast on Minnesota over fraud allegations. He argued that it was just too much. Let's listen to more. For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of this state's generosity And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of a crisis. Make no mistake, we should be concerned about fraud in our state government.

A single taxpayer dollar wasted on fraud should be intolerable. And while there's a role to play for everyone, from the legislature to prosecutors, to insurance companies, to local and county government, the buck does stop with me. My administration has been taking fast decisive action to solve this crisis. We'll win the fight against the fraudsters. But the political gamesmanship we're seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder. We've got Republicans here in the state legislature playing hide-and-seek with potential whistleblowers. We've got conspiracy theorist right-wing YouTubers breaking into our daycares, demanding access to our children. Polls continued, saying he needed to keep his focus on Minnesota instead of a re-election campaign, even though he faced no serious primary threat, was favored to win re-election.

To be clear, when it comes to fraud in Minnesota, let's give you the details. Dozens of suspects were indicted in 2022 during the Biden administration as part of an alleged $250 million fraud scheme with a nonprofit feeding our future. NBC News giving us the details there. State audit report released in 2024 found failures by the state's education department led to the misuse of the COVID-era program. Some of the criminal cases related to the alleged scheme are ongoing. Several of the defendants are of Somali descent, which President Trump latched onto in a slew of verbal attacks on Minnesota-Somali community. I've heard people go one or two ways saying, you know what, Jenke, he's a good guy, he did the right thing. I have other people saying, we're sick and good guys doing the right thing.

Stay and fight, stay in the fight. I believe he said you didn't think he should have run in the first place. Yeah, no, no. So look, he's running for a third term. So he's already done two terms. So I don't know that a third term is a good idea in a lot of situations. But he was already running. He was already leading.

Now it looks like he's running out of the, running away from the Republicans and getting out of the race. And I hate that optics. No, look, was there fraud in Minnesota? Definitely. We covered it before. Did they already know it? Yeah, they had already arrested 86 people and convicted 59. So it's not like the YouTuber broke the story. So they're saying, well, it's on a bigger scale than we thought it was. Yeah, maybe. But maybe not. We don't know because we haven't investigated it yet. And so, no, they're gonna replace him with Amy Klobuchar. It's so dumb. Amy Klobuchar is such an establishment Democrat.

So that's better? I don't think that's better. Tim Wall's got a lot of bills passed in Minnesota, good bills. Bills that were popular, not just left wing bills, but popular with everybody in Minnesota, with two thirds of Minnesotans. He looked out for the average guy in Minnesota. He's been smeared from the minute that he, that he was picked as VP, and the Democrats have never let him effectively fight back.

And now he's running from this fight, and I hate it. I think that he should have stayed. He should have defended his record and try to bring things into the light. Because as you're going to tell us, Sharon, turns out one of the guys involved might have had a different agenda. Yeah, about that. Of course, YouTuber Nick Shirley's video, allegedly exposing fraud at child care facilities in the state really popped things off. As you heard, Walls indirectly referenced early in his announcement, press conference, labeling him as a conspiracy theorist. It's true since releasing his viral video, Shirley's credibility has repeatedly been called into question.

I want you to take a look at this intercept piece released over the weekend and see what piqued your interest. Unnamed source in viral Minnesota Somali fraud video is right-wing lobbyists who called Muslims demons. Hmm, there he says it. David Hotch, identified only by first name in Nick Shirley's video got info for his anti-Somali campaign from a GOP state. Hey, literally choking. Okay, I'll take it from here. So, coming to me. Yeah. So that's right. This David Hawkeye apparently hates Muslims. demons or whatever ludicrous thing is. So guys, look, bottom line is, there are a lot of things that are going wrong in the country.

And sometimes some reporter genuinely spots something that people are not paying attention to and the powerful don't want you to pay attention to. Great example is the Epstein case. It was a Miami Herald reporter, Julie Brown, who broke the story when no one wanted it broken. And that was amazing journalism on our part. And sometimes what happens is people have a certain agenda and they see something going wrong and they go, oh, perfect, I'll put a giant spotlight under this one. Oh, there's fraud in New York with Hasidic Jews.

No, no spotlight, no spotlight, right? There's fraud in California with nonprofits and the homeless. No spotlight. That's inconvenient, right? There's this, there's that left wing, right wing, all sorts of different ethnicities. Anna talked about Armenian Medicare fraud, et cetera. No spotlight. Oh, we've got fraud that involves immigrants and Muslims and their Somalis.

Perfect. Giant spotlight. The bad guys. Okay. No, I want the spotlight on real fraud everywhere. I don't care where they're from. I don't care if they're Somali or they're, you know, you know, Norwegian, I want the people doing the crimes arrested, but I don't want demagoguing

outside of that. It's not about all Somalis or all Armenians or all Pacific Jews or all anything, are you crazy? It has nothing to do with our religion or our background or ethnicity. And that applies equality to Jews, Muslims, Christians, et cetera. But this happened to fit in perfectly with an anti-Muslim agenda that some folks wanted to push. So that's your confluence of events that led to this. And I thought that's another reason why I thought Tim Wall should have stayed and fought. It made clear how they have actually addressed fraud and what they're planning to do to address fraud next and how we shouldn't

then lead to other conclusions outside of going to get the specific bad guys who are breaking the law. But we don't have that. Instead, we'll have Klobuchar probably. And I mean, I I don't think it's impossible for them to lose this race now. So congratulations, Democrats. As usual, you've found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I mean, if you couldn't find a way to lose Minnesota, that'll be so democratic establishment. It'll be perfect for democratic leadership. All right.

Yeah. Yeah, Sharon. No, no, no. I agree. It's a democratic stronghold for so long. like Tim Walls is running away because this stereotype that it's the Somalis everywhere and the fraud is real. And that's that's very dangerous. Yeah, 100%. All right, we're way out of time. Sharon, thank you. Everybody check out Sharon on Robles. You and pretty much all of our

channels, indisputable. So she's on everywhere. We appreciate you. All right, we got to take a break here. When we come back, I'm gonna talk to somebody about in the midst of all this, is there any room for optimism. That's a tough challenge today. Let's see if you can meet it when we come back. I'm going to be able to the other I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to

I'm going to I'm so much I'm I'm on the I'm

I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to. We're going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be.

No. No. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Thank you.

All right, welcome back to the TYT, Jake Uger here. All right, we're gonna do a guest here on optimism, God help us, and curious what Zachary thinks about Venezuela as well, is Zachary Carbell, he's known as the EG Optimist on Substack, and he wrote a really good piece the other day about what happened in Indiana. With what's happening in Venezuela, it seems a little overshadow, but we're gonna talk about both of those because I think those are both very important developments, one in a negative direction to other in a positive direction. Zach, welcome back brother. I check. Yeah, so let's see it's big news today. Let's start with Venezuela. A little

tough to be optimistic about that one. Yeah, look, you and I've talked about this and hopefully we will keep talking about this. One thing I try to do in a lot of my writing is to remind people that most of what you think is really ugly about America has been really ugly about America. And maybe that depends on who you are. That's either a recipe for, oh my God, we've always been awful and now we're really awful. Or for me, it's a recipe for stop having the groundhog day of waking up and being astonished that there's gambling in Casablanca and that we're doing the same things that we've been doing over time with. some regularity. Now, it's true that the United States has not staged an extrajudicial,

potentially illegal military intervention in a Western Hemisphere country since 1989. I think that's largely accurate. But we did send tens of thousands of troops to Panama to arrest Maintwell, Noriego. We did send tens of thousands of troops on very questionable grounds to Granada under Ronald Reagan, because we were concerned about whether or not there was a communist government there. And as you know, better than anyone, I think, Chink, that we could spend the next hour talking about all the incidences in Central America from, let's say, the late 1890s or early 1900s to the present. So, like, that's not saying, oh, this is great and fine, but it is a different tenor than, oh, my God, we were, you know, we were so wonderful and law-abiding and

and peace loving, particularly in our hemisphere, and then suddenly Donald Trump gets elected president and we do this outrageous thing. Or I suppose if you're on the right, we do this wonderful thing. Like you listen to Maga Land right now or you listen to Fox and they're all acting like Trump is amazing. No one's ever done this before. Isn't he incredible? Restoring American strength. Like that's just as ridiculous as the we've never done this before. We do this. This is very American. You know, it's as American as apple pie, and apple pie isn't that American. I mean, we apples are not indigenous, but separately from that. All right.

So you get what I'm saying? Like, it's not. I do. I do. And I'm not sitting here going, wow, isn't this cool that we just spend 200 special forces people into Caracas to abduct the, yes, illegitimate leader of a messed up country. But if our new foreign policy is to remove arrest, illegitimate leaders of, messed up countries, we're going to be spending a lot of time and money doing that globally. Yeah. So a fun question for you. Is it fun? We'll find out. So what was, what's in your

opinion better? The old way of doing coups or the new way of doing coups? Because you're unquestionably right. New and approved? Yeah, because there's, of course, there's a reason why the countries are called Banana Republics. It wasn't there. It was us. We were doing the invention on behalf of Dole, a banana company, right? And now we're We're doing it for oil companies and we've done that in the past. So but in the old days we would hide it, right? And we would pretend that there was a real American interest there for the citizens, et cetera. Now we just go, oh, we're taking their oil and we don't like them and we don't care about this thinking law.

We're just going to violate it and just take it, right, under the flimsyest of excuses. So I can make a case for either one of them being better, right? But I look, I prefer the naked and explicit to the opaque and covert. You know, and it's it's way easier to be hypocritical when you're pretending not to do something you're doing than what you're doing being evident in the light of day for everyone to see. I mean, we can't, you know, we can't pretend we didn't do this. And we're not even attempting to pretend we didn't do this. And then we will indeed bear the consequences of having done it if those consequences are a thousand flowers.

of democracy blooming in Venezuela and Caracas once again becoming, you know, this incredibly enticing, flourishing port on the Caribbean, then I suppose we will receive some credit for our albeit odd way of going about it. I think that's unlikely. By the way, even the seizing the oil thing doesn't make a lot of sense. Venezuela, which I think Trump alluded to, has let its oil industry essentially fall apart in a sclerotic mess of cronyism. and so they haven't invested in refining they haven't invested in production their oil production has gone down and down and down year by year and it's a very heavy viscous crude oil that requires a lot of energy and a lot of refining to make it usable so it's not like the most attractive oil

in the world and we would have to spend a lot of money in order to actually make any money on that oil and we being i don't know who chevron the u.s government and there's no evidence yet or there's no indication yet that we're about to do any of that although actually funny enough right before you came on, Zach, the statement out of the White House is that we might have to pay the oil companies to go and do that exploring of the- Right, like we already did a coup for you guys. Now we've got to pay for it on top. But anyway, I think we've stumbled on to a very unique debate here. I actually don't agree with you, Zach. I think that it was better when we were hiding that we were breaking the law. And the reason for that is because it

At least it allowed the law to exist, right? And it allowed people to believe that there was an ideal that we could strive towards. Now we kind of have chaos because now when if China goes to take Taiwan, they're gonna be like, what international law are you? Who are you guys kidding, right? So now it risks chaos even more, even though I like that it's more honest. Yeah, you know, it's hard to argue with more straightforward. But in this case, it does a lot of destruction of international law in the process.

So this is like a debate that's going to go on for the next decade plus, which is were the latter years of the United States being the self-appointed and many ways group acknowledged leader of an international order that was set up in 1945, had the time passed in which that was actually better for the world net net, even if the United States was hypocrites. critical on its enforcement. And you will certainly hear people around the world saying we recognize that the United States repeatedly from 1945 violated its own principles, but at least it upheld collective principles in a way that we all benefited from. And like, no one benefited more than those rules than China, right? It benefited from breaking them, but it also benefited from a framework in which it could emerge somewhat peaceably into them. Whether or not, let's say, circa 2010, Like sometimes some mix between the global financial crisis and the Iraq war and the whole domestic maelstrom that surrounds the dual elections of Donald Trump. And I think anyone would agree with that, whether you're a Donald Trump supporter or not.

The degree to which the United States could still be seen as a leader of a system, at least by example, clearly had broken down. And whether or not we really were leading that system or whether or not multiple countries because of their own hours. affluence and self-interest had started to step up, at least regionally. I'm really at the camp that has said that there's a world out there that is more orderly and will in fact be more rules-based because it's in the interest of a lot of states and middle class who have become more affluent over the past few decades to have that be the case than needing one hegemon who is slyty and inconsistent and hypocritical, albeit was committed in the United States.

Yeah, I think that it's a super rare case where I go with, let's go with a little bit of obfuscation so we could have international law and order. Sure. But okay, one last thing about this, you know, you consistently make the argument and I generally join you that things over the long arc of history get better, right? And there's a lot of ups and downs, and so it doesn't mean things are going to get better in the short term. It means they get better generally in the long term. But in this case, here we are back in the 1950s, right? And we're doing coups in Latin America and South America.

So arguably we're back to the 1980s, but let's, I take the point that we're back to something other than the present. Yeah. And so were you hopeful at all that we were going to get better? And are you hopeful in the future that we might get better or no, whether we're lying or honest, we're going to keep doing this for the rest of time. So, you know, if we had had this conversation when I was, you know, younger and more starry-eyed, at least about the world, I would have assumed in the 1990s that the arc of history was toward more peace, more international concord as manifested by the European Union, states coming together, laying down their arms, working together for a more prosperous future. And from that vision to the

present, things are clearly quite worse. What I would not have expected was kind of the dual effects of technology, whether that's the web or increasingly the ability of hypercharged technology to unlock material and scientific discoveries. I would not have expected the degree to which the world had become so affluent. And by affluent, I simply mean compared to what it was for all of human history until the present in terms of far more people having more access to medicine, food, shelter, longer lives, better education, more literacy. I even think declining birth rates recently is a manifest good for most women in the world. I mean, the rights of women in general, the rights of, you know, alternate populations like gay people.

I mean, the fact is I would not have expected so many people on the planet to be doing so well at a kind of an individual material level, even as I think things have gotten worse at a collective level. And that duality, would I rather live in a world where everything was firing in all cylinders and doing better? Sure, I would. I think we all would. But I think that duality is important in that most people live their lives as their lives. They don't live like global tectonic trends that even so are not even evident while we're living them, right? We're all making snap judgments in the present about what we think this all means.

And it's all too messy and too noisy for any of us really to know conclusively or for any degree of certainty what all this augurs for the future. I don't know if this is the beginning of the end of the United States as a global leader or a blip along the way, and no one else does either. But I do know that those trends are really powerful, and those aren't going away, right? I mean, there's still a global middle class that is emerging palpably. Why is Maduro illegitimate in Venezuela? He's illegitimate in Venezuela because a lot of 28 million Venezuelans, at least from everything we know in that last election, the majority of whom did not vote for Maduro and did not vote for Chavez policies. and voted for something else like that's kind of a positive sign even if it's a negative outcome

same thing about what's going on Iran yeah um i hope we get to a day where america stops doing coups and decides hey you know what why don't we just buy the bananas for a couple of cents more true right why don't we just buy the oil from Venezuela instead of just taking it so i know revolutionary thought okay but i want to go to local issues as well because you wrote this really interesting piece about Indiana that you cleverly called Indie pendants, local power, local long traditions, and the limits of Trumpism. So tell us what happened to Indiana and why gave you some cause for optimism. After a full court press by the Trump administration to do what Texas had already done in redrawing the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm

elections, the Republican-controlled government of Indiana by a considerable margin and the Republicans in the Indiana State Senate by a considerable margin voted not to do that and voted that they were going to keep the maps as was, that doing this in an off year was not the way to go, and that doing this under the kind of virulent pressure from the Trump administration and or internet troll, lackey, botland that was, you know, flaming. There was one Republican state senator had been in office since the late 1980s woman who's a grandmother. She said her grandson was starting to get flamed on his own cell phone about how, you know, all the insults about his grandmother not going along with this redistricting plan calling her un-American doxing.

And a lot of these Indiana Republicans said this is just not the way. A, we do things here and B, that we should be doing things as, as patriotic Americans. And they roundly refused to go along with this plan and voted down the redistricting plan, again, by a considerable margin. And what was astonishing about it was the degree to which they said over and over, we're not going to be bullied. This is not the way to go about this. This is wrong.

And it really gives the lie to the popular narrative. And it is a narrative that I feel is constantly reinforced by both elements of the left and certainly elements of the right that Trump is all powerful, that there is no opposition, that he owns everything, that he just says boo and everybody jumps or he says jump and everybody says how high. And this was a real example of these people saying, no, we are not going to do this. This is not up to the president. This is not up to Washington. This is a domestic, i.e., this is a state of Indiana decision. And we're going to make the decision as we think we should in accord with the laws of Indiana. And look, a lot of these senators, the Republican senators who voted against this, would I am sure if an election were held tomorrow and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are once again on the ballot, even with this happening, I think a lot of them would vote for Trump, not because they would want to vote for Trump, but because they would want to vote and would vote and probably will vote Republican.

And that is a severe problem of our two-party system where you're given, you know, at the end of the day, for presidency at least, you're given two choices and you either hold your nose and vote for one or you hold your nose and vote for the other. But I do think it's shattered, if not a myth, than a narrative of an all-powerful Donald Trump kind of owning the Republicans lockstep, which may be true for the House Republicans in Congress, but it is clearly not true for the entire country. Zach, my sense of it is that there's a difference on whether the dam is breaking or not, right? So in his first term, when he could single someone out, like Mark Sanford in South Carolina, and say, okay, you said something I didn't like, that's it, I want you eliminate it. And I'm running this guy in a primary against you. And he did it two or three times. Then it's manageable.

You could exert, you know, all your pressure in one direction. And then when you do eliminate them, people get scared, and then they march and locks them, right? But it feels like in the second term, the mistake that Trump is making is he's taking out too many fights at once. So he's telling people, okay, I'm going to knock out that guy and that guy, and he's starting to lose track. Then he's talking about knocking out almost all the Republicans in Indiana. Well, that's just too big, you know, to tackle. So it feels like it's not that the strategy is wrong that it's just that he's applying it wrong because he's drunk on power and he thinks he could intimidate anyone.

But if the walls are breached and you're not that popular and you're trying to do it to dozens of people, then I think it becomes ineffective. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. And you're certainly seeing at least some evidence of that. Maybe tea leaves, it may be actual evidence between Marjorie Taylor Green, who admittedly resigned, probably because she had to or felt she had to. You have the kind of continued Don Bacon and Thomas Massey,

who are a bit of outliers on certain issues. But then you have Lauren Bobart in Colorado, who I don't think anyone would describe as anything other than a staunch mega Republican, coming out pretty strongly when Trump vetoes this Colorado water bill, just because he doesn't like Jared Polis. And she was not, you know, it was not a polite response on her part. She basically said, this is wrong, you shouldn't do this, and I'm going to stand up for the voters of Colorado, i.e. for a very Republican rural Colorado district. And you know, you start to get enough of these and you start to get the midterms coming along and people feeling like there's a negative co-tail effect of Trump.

And there's going to be a bunch of special elections between now and then. And, you know, you do have this effect. And then you've got the hysteria of, oh, my God, he's going to subvert the elections. He's going to call off the presidential election. He's going to send in the troops. He's going to declare the Intersection Act. he's going to do this, he's going to do that. You know, the Atlantic magazine did a big cover story sort of spinning the nightmare scenarios.

I feel like the nightmare scenarios like we do in foreign policy, like nuclear winter nightmare scenarios were all possible, right? There are all things that could happen. There are nightmare scenarios that could happen. But I think we also have to honor what is happening more than we honor what we fear is going to happen. And I mean, I was roundly criticized in some newer public article for being an anti-Cassandra, meaning I was somebody who has never adequately pounded the table for just what an existential threat to freedom and democracy Trump is. And I think, and you and I've had these conversations, one of the reasons for that is look at the threat that's happening, not the threat that's not the threat that's might. Look at reality now

and not potential then. And I, you know, it is only in historical hindsight that you know these things with clarity. And I think people should be a little more cautious about assuming that just because this could happen, that it will. Yeah, I like this anti-Kasandra title you were given. Maybe we could do a coalition of two on that. And so it's, guys, look, in this happened when Trump first took office. It's not that he wasn't going to do outrageous things. We all voted against and fought against them because we thought he was going to do outrageous things, right? And he did. And like the ice thing is outrageous. I can name you. In fact, we talk about it all the time, dozens of things he does. Yeah. But that also, but that doesn't mean he's going to take Greenland

next. And it doesn't mean that we, you know, we're going to have these parade of horribles, et cetera, because there are other factors involved. We're not expecting the kindness of Donald Trump's heart. That's not the issue, right? Correct. The issue is yes, but like as I got in a debate, Zachary was someone else on the left right near the beginning, and she was convinced that he was going to set up concentration camps for Chinese Americans. It's like if we got there, a lot of things happened beforehand, right? Like that's, no, no, no, just there's so many things Trump is going to do wrong that you don't have to get the concentration camps for the Chinese.

Like, let's focus on what's happening now, right? And, and there is this huge difference, again. I will acknowledge, I mean, I think anybody should acknowledge that there's a lot that Trump wants to do that would lead us down really, really ugly problematic paths much more than we've already been led down. And I think, you know, maybe the only surprise of the past year, if you look at this nearly 12 months of the second term or the second season of the Trump show, what is probably most surprising about it is just how many people have been assembled in the administration who kind of echo him in sensibility. in tone. You know, it's, it's a little like the island of lost toys, but in a malignant fashion. And I'm surprised there are that many people, you know, who were like bullied in high school. But other than that, you know, much of this remains awarded ambition and not realized ambition. I mean, I know they, I know the Trumpies all think they've realized all their ambitions.

And I know a lot of the left and a lot of the country believes they have realized all their ambitions. I'm much more struck by how few of those ambitions other than theatrical they've achieved, right? Deportations, way lower than it would be if they had done this less brutally and in a more coherent fashion, way lower than it was under Obama, way lower than it was under parts of George W. Bush. It's like, you know, they're not even that good at deporting people. They're just good at doing selfies and TikToks of deporting people. Yeah, we just remove Maduro. Are we going to govern Venezuela? I mean, let's get back to that in a few months.

I think the answer on that one is probably no. So, you know, there's a lot they want to do that they seem to be incapable of doing. And I, look, I don't know if it's optimistic, but I certainly take a lot of comfort from the fact that they seem at present point, either incapable of doing it or halted by the courts and doing a lot of what they otherwise would have wanted to do. Yeah, totally. Look, last thing.

On the courts, I couldn't agree more. they've generally held yeah they did a bunch of rulings we don't agree with but but they have not allowed them to break the law or violate the constitution in a big way so I'm kind of I'm pretty relatively satisfied with how much they've kept within the law especially a supreme court that decided citizens united and other outrageous cases right then you know Epstein files was an excellent demonstration of the limits of his power he did the bullying trick or that's it if you're you know, want the files released, you're now a rhino and a Democrat and a traitor and stuff. And still the great majority of Republican voters, his own voters were like,

no, no, we're not any of those things. It's not true. And that's where the wall broke. That's where the dam broke. I've seen files. And so what I meant by last thing is, so Zachary, I think Venezuela might be the second time the dam breaks. Not now, now they're on a high. oh my god we killed and captured and all that stuff and bombed and look cool and bald eagle and machine guns right but but what if we try to occupy this thing's going to turn into a nightmare real quick and then i think that's his waterloo and he loses all power and they can't do those other things that were enlisted in the parade of harms yeah i mean i think you know if you're going to prognosticate for the short term seems more likely that there will be an attempt to do a second

Second coup, you know, if the successor government, which is right, the same government without Maduro, proves last plant, you know, whether or not the United States attempts to say, well, we don't like the next person, so we'll just try to find another person before you actually have troops there. Because, you know, it's interesting. Trump has had this kind of spidey sense of you can get away with a lot as long as Americans don't die. And, you know, he seems to get that intuitively because nothing that he's done in either his terms have very jeopardized American soldiers, which is telling, right? Now, never say never and you can get drunk on power and he kind of goes, we can do anything. And you're right, that'll be the, that'll be the Waterloo, right? For getting his own thoroughly digested lesson. But to date, that's a lesson or that's almost a mantra, whether it's explicit or not,

that he's lived by. Yep. And he has gotten a little bit lucky that nobody got hurt in Iran and Venezuela and all the bombings, right? Right. But you can't control Venezuela from the outside. So either he's going to get embarrassed and I'm going to have to, you know, basically run away or he's going to get involved in an occupation that's going to be his waterloo. So I don't think that there's a lot of good options out there for him now that he started this mess. But we'll see. All right. Zachary Carabel, edgy optimist on substack. Make sure you're checking it out. Zach, we appreciate your brother. Thank you. All right. All right, guys, I will do a bonus episode for you all. I'll do an interesting one about how the difference between covering the Iraq war before it began and as it began,

versus covering this war in Venezuela. I'll tell you all about that. If you remember, hit the join button below on YouTube or t.com slash join, and I'll see you guys in a minute. I'm going to be. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to Thank you.