Weekly Skews - S6 Ep1: Weekly Skews – A War of Regime No-Change?

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Happy New Year! We’re back, and talking about how you can’t run a pawn shop while investing in horny cowboys anymore, because of woke. Then, the U.S. finally pulls the trigger on Venezuela, after Maduro did TikTok dances and apparently that was the last straw. Trump screwed the opposition, announcing it was purely a war for oil. Plot twist: U.S. companies don’t want the oil, but no one asked them.

what's up everybody welcome back happy skew year that's right not just any skews day the first skews day of the year of our fake lord 2026 January 6th to be exact we're recording this on Monday January 5th at about 1.30 p.m. on the left coast not much going on in the world in 26 promises to be a quiet year I think we can all agree I'm Trey that That's Mark. How's it going, Mark? Yeah, man. We talked about Venezuela, of course, today.

But we also attempt a regime change here in the United States by breaking the windows to J.D. Vance's house with a hammer. Did you see that story? I did. Yeah. Can't believe that didn't work out. No, it's not even clear. Like, the right-wing ecosphere was like it was an assassination attempt or something. But I didn't, like, I haven't seen it reported that he knew whose house the windows were all he was breaking.

Yeah. He could have just been breaking. windows on the house for for your more standard hammer window house reasons you know my total coincidence

that those windows belong to the vice president yeah I met with a buddy of mine from high school was in town a couple days ago his wife was remembering a party we were all out one time where people started headbutting each other

and I guess my buddy John broke my now brother-in-law's nose by headbutting him because he was taller and she was like do guys just headbutt each other and I'm like why not? it's like why wouldn't you hit by it like

it's like anyway yeah breaking windows fucking rocks why wouldn't you break a window like it's like unless you get in trouble which he did so anyway but I like I have my dad's mega second cousin or whatever was going crazy about it being a demoncrack conspiracy because this kid with a rat tail who's obviously just got a drug problem broke a window

so it's like he's probably like a crudal in Antifa by this time tomorrow right as Drew said um so Before we get to the real show, I wanted to mention this. Here's a fun story. I saw this. This is, this is, I got a vote voted on Reddit. This guy said he's pawn shop, grandpa's pawn and gun in large,

Margemont, Colorado, yeah, was going out of business. And he hung his sound in front of his thing and said, forced out of business after 32 years because of politics. I'm like, well, what kind of politics does he mean? What's the real story here? Because it was like going viral. It turns out to be more fun than I could have possibly imagined. What do you say is politics?

It's like they're redesigning some highway interfaces to make some parking lots different. And he apparently thinks it's going to cause traffic problems. So he can't, he's going to force him out of business, he says. But he's blaming it on Joe Biden. Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, you said it was a gun store. And then so when a sign on the front of a gun store says, you know, after 32 years,

I'm out of business because of politics. Immediately you're like, well, that's weird. because I imagine you're pretty okay with the current regime or whatever, but, you know, I guess just any bullshit afflicting this guy, you know, goes back to Joe Biden. It wasn't all that long ago. So it's something part of the city's quiet zone safety improvement program impacting 14 existing railroad crosses across Longmont,

Colorado, sorry, in coordination with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. So they've like, you've got federal, state regulations or whatever, trying to make the road safer. This guy's like, this is obviously because I sell guns. in Longmont, Colorado. Anyway, the real story is even more fun than this. Turns out he lost a quarter million dollars a couple years ago to a scamster by a guy who got sentenced to prison for fraud.

Let me quote you from this story. A superior man has been convicted of securities fraud after convincing the owner of Grandpa's pawn and gun in Longmont to invest $250,000 in a series of books described by one juror in the case as a Western-themed version of 50 shades of gray for outdoorsmen. he lost he lost his life savings on horny cowboy books and he thinks he's being put on a business because of woke to be fair to him to be fair to him I could see how someone

could be led to believe that that's a can't miss opportunity you know what I mean horny cowboy books I mean at least a niche I don't know if that niche amounts to more than $250,000 but I could totally buy that that's a you know, at least a somewhat lucrative niche as far as like erotica goes. You know what I mean? I don't know if we're talking gay cowboys stuff. Probably not for this grandpa. But, you know, you get into the, that's where he messed up, really.

If it had been gay cowboy erotica, I think he might have been all right with that investment. But, you know, he wasn't, you know, if you got to be a monkey, be a gorilla, papal. He didn't take it to that enough. I mean, like we read, uh, here, fortunately for us, they made the jurors, I guess, read the book or let them. I'm not sure which, but this guy, the juror who served in the case, wrote a recap of the trial. And the book, he was called Scoundrel,

was a quote, a banal mix of James Bond, Matthew Quigley, and Jack Reacher, who travels the world and battles a litany of cliche villains and would indiscriminately make love to wanting women along the frontier when he wasn't hunting or fishing. So I've got to say, I'll read it. Yeah. Again, you know, hire Taylor Sheridan

to adapt that to TV or whatever. Yeah, you'll get to put it on Paramount Plus, the papaw's a lineup, dude. I'm saying, in the right hands. I feel like that concept's got legs, but, you know. Get Alan Ritson involved, buddy. Oh, my. I said, come on. All right.

Well, this is Weekly Skews, the first of the new year producer match back there doing his thing. Before we go on, I want to remind you all, of course. Still got the same announcements. First up, if you want to see me do stand up live and in person, yeah, I'm still doing that. We're getting started in 2026. In Sacramento, California this weekend, I've got a bunch of other dates coming up after that. All of which you can find at Trey Crowder, my name.com. Treycrowder.com for all my upcoming tour dates.

If you would like a little bit of a pallet cleanser, you can also check out producer Matt's audio exclusive. Good skews, good people, doing good things. Put a smile on your face. That's what producer Matt does. Check that out. And if you want to support this show and get some more of it, you can consider signing up on Patreon. Go to weekly skews.com slash more. or just go on go to patreon and type in my name either way it works five dollars a month

get you access to two full length bonus episodes including periodic skew and a's where we answer your burning questions so that's it for the plugs now for the show we're going to be talking about the whole regime lack of change and the invasion and weird stuff and are we at war and what's happening god only knows but we start all that as we always do with the daily dumb ass. My act graphic, please. Today's D.D., who else? Nicholas Maduro for not knowing that doing dances on TikTok would be the final straw.

So you go, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace. Peace, peace. No war. So if you're wondering, this apparently was literally the last straw. This is according to reporting in both in New York Times and Washington Post. Quote, it was one dance move too many for Venezuela's president, Nicholas Maduro. In late December, he rejected an ultimatum from Trump to leave office and go into a gilded exile in Turkey. And this week, he was back on stage, brushing off the latest U.S. escalation, which is a strike a doc the U.S. said was used for drug trafficking.

Balancing to an electric beat on state television was recorded voice, repeated in English, no crazy war. The White House apparently thought this was him mocking them, which he kind of was. I was going to say, did Trump hate this? Because it's like there's only room enough

for one, like, fucking dancing old buffoon on the global geopolitical stage. Because at first I was like, what is this? And then I was like, wait a minute, Trump does that, all the time. I mean, he's not quite as spry, but, you know, we know the double-deck dance moves and stuff, but he dances all the time. Fucking so, um, yeah, he's just jealous, maybe.

Yeah, I didn't thought about that, but yeah, he should have done the YMC day. If you're going to go out, man, go, like you said, you're going to, if you're going to be a, you're going to be a monkey, gorilla, right? So, but, uh, all the, all this talk at the time, you try to figure out foreign policy and geopolitics and all this stuff. And it was always going to be the dumbest shit. There was a reason they were going to move forward with it. It wasn't even like, in the it wasn't even the drug shit. I don't they charge him with drugs, but they haven't brought up drugs

since they did it. So let me quote here for me a few things. After it happened, Trump said, quote, I watched it literally like you were watching a TV show. It was an amazing thing. He got to sit in a situation in a little makeshift situation in Marlago and watch the guns go boom boom.

He was, it brought it up again that he confused political asylum with insane asylum. He still thinks Venezuela's anything out of insane asylum and send him to our border. um i never i did not know that that's where that was i heard like the mental patient thing or whatever like repeatedly but i didn't i never put it together that that the dubious kernel of

truth behind that was that the people come here seeking asylum an asylum is where insane people go so it's like yeah they they're emptying out insane asylums and putting you know sending them to america that's hilarious i can't believe it's come up before but it's been years it's he just keeps confusing and no one will fucking correct him. He just thinks they both words mean the same thing. He, like Maria Corona Machado has like, so today Raywing influences were joking about whether or not

Maduro will plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for attorney state's evidence on the cases about how Venezuela used satellites to hack Dominion voting machines that flip the election for Biden. Trump was reposting true social stuff about that. He's not kidding. He still thinks One of the main reasons he wants to get, he wants to, or imprison slash kill Nicholas Maduro's because he thinks they control the voting machines, this won the election of Biden.

Maria Corinna Machado, who was going to come up again, was affirming his belief that, yes, Venezuela had helped Joe Biden win the election and basically done a coup against Donald Trump. They delay, they delay this whole fucking rate, by the way, because of air strikes. We launched a bunch of Tomahawk missiles at Nigeria on Christmas Day, which, like, we do, we do. We tend to do a lot of horrific shit on Christmas Day, as does Israel, because no one's paying attention, right? See, we had to delay four days. They had to go order earlier, but we were too busy bombing. Nothing in Nigeria.

We just threw a bunch of fucking Tomahawk missiles at dirt. By the way, the loudest countries they're making noise of, getting back to all the stupid reasons this is going on, I keep bringing this up. But Honduras, Venezuela, Greenland, and Nigeria are the four premium targets for Peter Thiel and his network state movement for, like, libertarian sea-setting crypto cities. those all seem to be the main reasons but here's my favorite stupid guess

at a fake bad one if you got this one here's Tucker Carlson from his show I think today or last night democracy as reason for affecting regime change in Venezuela we're not going to kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treated with people

it's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage that is a distinct possibility but no one will say that out loud yeah okay what so i was trying to figure out like i went to look it up maria carina machado is not some gay rights advocate which it would you know it's like a very catholic country and she's pretty right wing it'd be very weird if she was but apparently took across and thinks that donald trump and marco rubio right teamed up with the CIA and overthrowed a good the socialist dictator of venezuelos they could have gay marriage that if like

Kamala had won and then this still somehow happened with you know what feels like that would be weird, but if that combination of things had happened, this is exactly the type of thing that I would expect, Tucker Carlson and his ilk to say, you know, because of how insane it sounds and what they think the left is, but it's like, yeah, we invaded this country because, you know, we're mad at them for not allowing gay marriage. But with Trump and this crew in charge, I mean, it just seems completely insane. Like, gay people don't hit for them, you know. They've made it pretty clear, I feel like. Yeah, I don't know where he's getting this.

Like, it's just like, he's just trying to find, he's trying to find something to say about it, that the people aren't saying, I guess, is the whole thing. Yeah, well, you go, we're going to have the take. Yeah. So, no one knows what is happening. Like, pretty much nothing happened, but also the world changed. And so it's a fucking weirdest thing.

But, like, here's Trump just winging it on Saturday afternoon, if you got this video on Matt. 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 year. Who's in charge of Venezuela? Right. And transitioning it to who, you know? Yeah. So whoever's going to be in charge of Venezuela, go in and raise your hand, I guess, Donald Trump's asking. Because like, you don't you have to usually defeat an occupied country before

I was not to say, do we have, like, a bunch of troops and stuff there? No, nobody's there. Okay. Yeah. He just went on TV and declared we're doing a provisional authority. That's not how anything works. Like, the government's still there. Like, but also, like, hang over all this.

It's like, cancer research costs too much, but we have the money to run fucking Venezuela at a loss. Yeah. And, like, go back to what you're saying, like, how to make sense about this, because it's this, but the standards of American journalism where you have to be impartial lead to deeply hilarious with all. Let me read this for you from an AP news alert from Caracas on Saturday afternoon. No visible signs yet that U.S. is running Venezuela after Trump claims as country security forces control key sites. They control the whole thing. The only thing they could do to disprove Donald Trump is to have somebody in Caracas go look around and see no Americans.

Right. And like, so we're going to run fucking Venezuela. Who is we? Like, do we don't, do we have troops in Miraflores Palace, which is their, they're, they're, their president of Dallas or anywhere else? No. To the people who are, I don't know, are there proxies there, like for us, like stooges or something, you know, like they're Venezuelan, but they have, you know, bent the need to the U.S. or something, and they're just going to do our bidding or something like that. So it's not totally clear, but also, yes, the vice president, and it's not, like, they kind of, I think they swore her in, but Maduro is not dead. I've missed up some equivalent to the 25th Amendment. So, like, Vice President's named Delci Rodriguez. She's in de facto control, if not control.

And so she's in charge, and she's making noise about, she made some defiant noises at first about we will never be a slave to a doubt outside of forces. You've got to remember to a lot of Latin American governments, especially left-wing ones. The whole reason for their existence is to resist U.S. influence and occupation. So, like, there's no compromise with Trump where they still get to have, like, get to, get be a government. It doesn't make any sort of sense. But before we get to that, I want to like, like the whole, Trump seems to think he has an ideology other than just like, I grab it because I want it. Right. And he learned what the wrong. Someone taught Donald Trump eighth grade

U.S. history over the weekend. It might be the end of the fucking Western Hemisphere if you got this video clip, Matt. All the way back, dated through the Monroe doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal but we've repeated it by a lot by a real lot a real lot with the Donro document

I don't know The Donro document So they apparently got I'll get him on board with this by pointing out the Monroe doctrine could easily be the Donro doctrine like Donald

huh? Right And he's like okay we're invading Venezuela Yeah I've always wanted a doctrine It'd be nice to have my own doctrine Like the fact that 80 some people died in this, and this is the dumbest fucking thing.

It's weird when you can be like basically, well, when Donald Trump does something, it's basically not that bad if only 80 people die. So far, fingers crossed. So what now? Right? Right. You'd think that the administration would have an idea, but they don't seem to. And here's Chuck Schumer trying to make sense of this on ABC Sunday show yesterday.

In your view, who is running Venezuela right now? Nobody knows the problem. All right. The reality is the same people are running Venezuela the day before, except we're pretending not. Right. But Chuck Schumer can just say that. We just kidnapped a guy and we killed some people.

But like the world kept turning. Garbage got picked up in Caracas. It's a way. Like, so the Venezuelan opposition still exists here. The ones who, that the whole reason for doing this, the reason that we can say we can kidnap fucking Niggas Maduro because he's not actually ahead of state

as the illegitimate president because he rigged the election. We left the raid government in charge after using his justification for the fact that they have no authority to be there. So they didn't. I thought that the idea

leading up to this this whole time was that that lady Machado or whatever was supposed to be our that was our gal for this I thought. So if when we did, did this, you just slide her in there. I thought that was like the whole idea with her in the first place. Oh, she played herself, bro. He was asked about her. He was asked who's going to be

president of Venezuela and he said, not Maria Machado. He basically said that because he just doesn't like her. Why? Because she won the peace prize instead of it? She won his peace prize. It was in the Washington Post this morning. Two sources in the White House said that if she had, if she had turned down the peace prize and said she couldn't accept it because it rightfully belonged to Donald Trump, instead of what she did, which is accepted and said, I take this in Donald Trump's name that she had just, if she had done the first thing, she would be the next president of

Venezuela, which would also be bad because she doesn't have public support like that. Anyway, if you wonder if any part of this was like freedom and democracy, here's on Air Force One last night, Donald Trump was asked about the first steps toward any sort of like truth and reconciliation

or like healing between the two sides or whatever, between the two Venezuelan opposition to the government. Here's a, here it. Go ahead. Now, are you going to demand that Delci Rodriguez let opposition figures return or free any political prisoners? We haven't gotten to that yet. Right now, what we want to do is fix up the oil, fix up the country. Okay.

Get the country back and then have election. He was asked, basically, if Maria Machado... Otherwise, you're just going to have... You're going to have a mess that's so bad. So he said basically asked if he would ask Delci Rodriguez to let Maria Machado come out of hiding. and he's like, no, we're there for the oil. Right. This is all so fucked.

I'm trying to follow this logic, okay? Maduro was an illegitent leader who lost in 2024, which is why we're replacing him with his own vice president instead of the person who won in 2024. We did this to stop fentanyl, which is why he's indicted for cocaine. We're also occupying Venezuela by simply adding their vice president to a White House check and Slack channel.

that's basically what happened here right yeah like yeah well it's just like a shoot first and ask questions later type of uh you know operation from a government that operates that way in most everything they do you know seems like it's not even like shoot first ask questions later it's shoot first and also questions are gay yeah right yeah like they they didn't even they don't we didn't have a plan? They didn't have a plan to make a plan. Right, right. So, like, Saturday afternoon, Trump announced they were going to assemble an interim government, right?

Then, but Saturday night, Rubio was saying that the U.S. won't govern Venezuela, but will press changes to an oil blockade, but basically, they'll use to pressure Delsi Rodriguez to do whatever they want. So if you're keeping score, this is a happen to unfold over about 18 hours. One, we've conquered Venezuela and are installing democracy. Two, we aren't installing democracy, but we're planning a transition government. Three, no, we aren't. Four, it's the same government, but one less guy works there. So, this brings us to Delsey Rodriguez, okay? The plan seems to be for Delci Rodriguez to report to Marco Rubio or Stephen Miller, but no one asked her or did they.

Here's the thing. Let's go back to this letter from article from October in the Miami Herald. Vice President Delcea Rodriguez and her brother Jorge have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a quote, more acceptable alternative to Maduro, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks. Basically, Qatar acts as an intermediary to negotiate between Venezuela and the Trump administration for Delci Rodriguez to become president and Nicolas Maduro to resign and still stay in Venezuela, but out of power.

Now, the second part of that apparently did not hit for Donald Trump. but the first part of it seemed to have been fine. And it's like, as a person who just doesn't want to see chaos and death and destruction of civil war in the world. Like, Venezuela's kind of a powder keg. There's a lot of different factions here. They're two different vice presidents. The more powerful guy is the vice president of the party.

He has more control of the military. So it's not even clear how precarious Delci Rodriguez's position is here. As for the opposition, totally fucked. Maria Machado, like I said, played herself. Let me quote here from The Economist. Venezuelans at celebration parties in Miami could not believe it, insisting that Trump had misspoken. His plan appears to be for Venezuela to remain under the day-to-day rule of a senior chavista, with his democratically elected leaders excluded and its wealth controlled by American corporations.

Wow. Who would have thought? Yeah, right. Yeah, that does sound pretty ideal for us, that last part. Yeah, like, who did you think Donald Trump was? Right. He doesn't care about American fucking democracy. why would he care about Venezuelan

like they're like what if the Venezuela's the people of Venezuela vote to not give the oil to Exxon then what there's a historically there's a reason why we don't fucking we don't let this shit lie so I was like

surfing over the internet and I found this guy a hardcore like Venezuelan opposition guy on Twitter who was live tweeting the home military I stayed up all night like tweeting the military operation the next day's fallout yada yada yada

this happened Friday night right by midday Saturday, he had changed his profile picture to a fell forward again award. Oh. Well, at least he had some self-awareness about it, I guess. Yeah. And I mentioned, so I already mentioned the peace prize thing, but yeah, two people close to the White House said the president's lack of interest in Boosy Machado, despite

her recent efforts to flatter Trump, sent from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and award the president has openly coveted. whatever they're up to here dude and I think all is pretty much on the surface level at this point like all you've got to do is spend 10 minutes like Googling and you'll figure it out they want oil it's not necessarily going to go well but yeah they're walking a dangerous line here

America ran a war game during Trump 1.0 to assess what Maduro's fall might unleash and it found that chaos and violence would likely erupt as military units rival political factions and even jungle-based guerroups jocke for control the border between Venezuela and Colombia is basically controlled by armed cocaine

militias and separatist groups I think that's where you've got to go get the oil from right yeah they got the drugs too yeah it's where the drugs are they control where the drugs come through yeah right yeah so as far as the operation itself I mentioned there 80 people dead

including at least one sleeping old lady we blew up in an apartment building somehow Cuba State News Agency reported late Sunday that 32 Cuban security personnel were killed in direct combat with Delta Force So the whole thing happened under a full moon And like as a like amateur I like to follow the amoral like military blogger guys

About like operational guys I just like proficiency porn stuff And they were utterly shocked That it was happening under a full moon I never thought about moon so much in my life Right Because that's too bright to do that normally? Yeah, one of our big advantages is night vision capabilities.

Right. Better sensors and stuff. So, like, yeah. So, but the opposition was saying it was a negotiated surrender, which I guess it partially was if Delcia is actually a CIA plant. But we still killed a bunch of people, I guess, for secure, for theater, for Trump's TV show. And the Dukesians for a render thing did make sense at first because they took Maduro's wife.

I know she's indicted too, but there's no, there's no geopolitical reason. to, like, kidnap the guy's wife. Right. I was wondering that. Yeah, what, like, what is, I mean, what is, what's that about? Well, you, well, if it's negotiated, it'd be like, we'll live in exile, I'll take my wife with me, right? I mean, so, yeah, so, but apparently, like, if I'm, I don't know who's leaking all this

stuff, but the fact we all know was Delta Force is pretty new, because Delta Force is usually not in the newspaper. Uh-huh. It would usually just say, like, elements of special forces, or something. They don't even knowledge. Right. Black, gosh. Yeah.

They don't acknowledge that Delta Force exists. Right. Now we did. And now we did. And now is that in the newspaper, but this,

there's reporting, they put this in several publications. The CIA followed Maduro for months. They had people on the ground in Caracas since August tracking his movement

so he'd know where he'd be. We wanted to take him. They also said that someone close to Maduro was an informant. They're also hinting that was Delcy Rodriguez. So she's probably not long

for this. world if anybody feels like killing her down there it's also deeply funny because one of the criticisms of Maduro one of the reasons he was authoritarian the people said he was too paranoid for seeing conspiracies all around him and then his vice president snitches on it we kill his human security needs a yeah yeah right yeah but tell yeah uh trump also like the the lights and caracas went out right during the raid and it wasn't clear whether we had a power or whatever, but Trump basically came out and said it was cyber warfare, which is like

no one knew we had the capability to turn the lights off in a four nation's capital city. I would have guessed that. But anyway, we blew the existence of stealth helicopters to capture bin Laden. We blew the existence for like five or six different things. Right. For no one can tell what. Yeah. Right.

And so I don't like, I mean, I like to know about this stuff because I'm interested in it, but if I'm a guy who works at the CIA right now, I'm pulling my fucking hair out. So yeah, our problem is like this operation, as far as anyone knows, it's not a single casualty or loss of equipment.

This is way too easy for them. They seem to be gassed up by the quote unquote success of it, the tactical of success, which is why since it happened, they've also threatened basically due to decapitation strikes against Mexico, Greenland,

Cuba, Iran, and Colombia. Right. Well, that's what I was thinking when you said like, oh, we blew all we, you know, expose the existence of all these top secret things we should have kept in our back pocket or whatever. But with these people in charge

just feels like it's like that their attitude about that would be like, no, but it's fucking super rad and so we should like show it off to everybody. Then once they do it and it's, they don't get ranked too hard for it or whatever and it goes super well and whatnot and then you know they're just going to get all gassed

up and be like, you know, fuck yeah, bro and just keep, you know, keep on trucking with it. It's perfectly in character for them. Whatever CIA assets or green berets were on the grounds of following like Maduro around Caracas, were they even out of the country yet before we revealed they were there?

because if not, the CIA headquarters might be getting some more stars on its wall. So, uh, the only thing I might save us from this is like, I'm utterly shocked that I'm proud of my fellow Americans. This is polling horribly. Yeah. I was surprised by that. Like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like in, I don't know if it's because of how the Iraq war turned out and yada yada or whatever else. But I feel like there was such a huge contingent of people that were like voting for Trump.

the last election who were like part of their stated reason was ostensibly uh because he's the no war guy the isolationist thing and not going to war and shit like that and then they were mad at him with the iran stuff and stuff so it's like i feel like there's been an element of the right that has you know again shifted so far towards isolationism or whatever it is but they're not as hawky as they like used to be or anytime you know we fire up the war machine people start waving the flags fuck yeah hurrah feels like they've backed off of that and of course not all of them but like a contingent of them have chilled with that in favor of like no fuck the rest of the world america only what you know

don't spend our money on this shit kind of thing for sure but like but but like we i know they like people get things confused but like when trump was not actually saying we shouldn't have foreign wars trump was saying we should bomb steal stuff and get out right right he was saying we shouldn't go to war for something is nefarious and soft-headed and and you know and liberal and queer is democracy, we should take the oil out of Iraq and fucking left, right? Which, so that's essentially what he's done in Venezuela. And so, like, but I thought just the raid itself

on just the dude's rock level was pretty, I mean, like, I can't even think of something like, like, comparative. It's like we combined the Mogadisha raid, the Black Hawk Down raid, where nothing went wrong combined with, like, the first night of, like, a dowed-down version of, like,

shock and all strikes on the invasion, when we started the invasion of Iraq or something. It was pretty like, the fact that was pulled off and everybody got out on Skate, I mean, Americans got out on skate, was pretty, just on, again, it's pretty ninja, to quote, Al-Azada Scar's Garden, Generation Kill.

But, like, so I was, I was shocked that, like, I mean, the point out I'm referring to I saw earlier, it was 42% approve, 42% disapprove, 21% approve, 29% not sure. not sure it's eight points ahead of approved so like just like killing some foreign to capture a drug dealer

which's the official story you'd think that'd be yeah at least above water right no yeah anyway that might be the only thing to say was is that people fucking hate that shit so thank God people hate it but they didn't have fun play acting

as like commanders of the world if you're deep in like the lore everybody remembers that the White House correspondent's dinner was the night before it was the same night the bin Laden raid the day before he announced he was killed where president Obama roasted the shit out of Donald

Trump and then the next guy got the White House situation room photos where he was watching the bin Laden raid and basically showed his second term election everyone thought it was super cool so yeah I remembered all that except for the correspondence dinner but when you said earlier that Donald Trump said I watched it all like you watch a TV show like I immediately thought of that picture

of Obama yeah during the during the bin Laden raid or whatever but I didn't know that it was his clear cut as all that. I'd completely forgotten that it was, that was the infamous night, you know, when he spurned Trump. So. Yeah.

So he tried his stage, he staged the same photo with his makeshift situation room of Mora Lago where the Wi-Fi has already been hacked by every intelligence agency on the planet. And anyway, here's a picture. You went to all it here, Matt, the first one.

So that's HXF, Rubio. On the background, that's Twitter. Oh. They got Twitter. There is. Yeah, they got Twitter up with doing these search to Venezuela and looking for people's live tweets of reactions. If you're wondering this has the practical purpose other than seeing if people are cheering for Donald Trump, no. There are people monitoring social media for like open source intelligence reasons.

Like you don't need to, the president is not to see, need to see live, like numbers on, you know, mission progress. And you'd be like, sir, the mega altus has replied to cat tur, but the pig pooping on balls emoji and bragy's pervert is siding with cat turd. sir, over it out. Like, basically, right. Given what this sort of looks like now were some part of the Venezuelan government with cooperativeness, although I don't think Maduro was, if Trump had framed this from the beginning

as elements of Venezuela's regime acted with their assistance to remove Reduro as a roadblock to resolving the crisis, the whole thing could have come across is a decent size win without the baggage of kidnapping and just running crazy and bombing a fucking civilian population. But instead, Trump wanted a zero dark

30 moments they had to make the action sequence for him for the TV show, right? He also, if you're trying to, like, rebuild relations with the country, moving forward, he did this while a Chinese delegation was in Caracas to show support for the government, and they bombed

Hugo Chavez's mausoleum for no reason. Right. Chavez. Just to dunk on that comedy shit, right? Right. Right. Yeah. And, like, you I can give communism they all suck it in the form of a bunker buster.

If you're wondering, there's no strategic value to Hugo Chavez's mausoleum. And this is so funny. While we're pretending there are laws and we still have a constitution, hopefully when Randy returned to, Senator Mike Lee of Utah on Saturday morning was like doing this whole constitution sort of thing. It was like, I'd like to see what the president's constitutional justification is for acting without Congress. And then it took him like two hours later to completely be. He said, quote, this action likely falls within the president's inherent authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.

To protect U.S. personnel from an imminent attack. So the legal justification the White House is giving for invading Venezuela is that it was necessary to protect troops that are in harm's way who are in harm's way because they were being shot at while invading Venezuela. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Still being shot at, Mark. know yeah it is true there probably be a shot at uh so yes it just i don't know man open up your handles and turn to catch 22 so trouble course is saying this is about oil and i mean like just openly saying this is all about oil every question he gets asked turns

back to oil so if you got this video matt large united states oil companies the biggest anywhere in the world go in billions of dollars fix the badly broken infrastructure the oil infrastructure and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so so we don't go so well are you got back so critics travel back with me for a little bit critics used to denounce u.s. wars as imperial of schemes to seize foreign oil while the president would insist they were attempt to spread democracy. Yeah, right. Now, critics denounce such wars as attempts to spread democracy while the president insists

they are really imperialist schemes to seize foreign oil. Yeah, it's kind of perfect. I thought that earlier when he showed that one clip of him, he mentioned the oil or whatever, and I was like, that's what I thought. I was like, man, this used to be, but there's so many examples of that where it's like just the whole idea they used to have the, so much of it is not really changed. for that they used to have the decency to like try to lie about it you know and now they've just totally cast that aside and uh you know just where you know say the quiet part out loud

with their chest puffed out and filled with pride like all the time and it's pretty wild it's like don't you realize that that's fucked up and they're you know but they don't get penalized for it uh from their uh supporters or anything like that they just get further emboldened so fucking why not, I guess. Bro, I I'm not his advisor, but I do a point out there's a reason

politicians lead with the freedom and God-given right to control your own destiny kind of stuff is because it's moving. Making 20 more bucks for a billionaire guy who owns a fucking oil company is not really that moving

for the troops. If you listen to like a football half-time speech or a post-game speech, it's always like fight for the man. next to you football is a game of inches. It's not, guys, if we win tonight, we might get free shoes. It's like, it's, it's, oh, God.

So, like, this is another example, all example, like, we talk about our gerontocracy. It's not just like, it's everybody, all our politicians' brains are stuck in the 1980s, whether it's Joe Biden thinking he couldn't, like, have a political career without Israel, or Trump thinking that we need to grab oil. The same day this raid was happening, China, the Chinese auto company rolled out of a new EV, a luxury SUV electric vehicle with a brand new next generation battery for $9,000.

Right. We're invading Venezuela to get oil. Right. Yeah. Here's Bloomberg News Report from the same day. Wall Street's biggest banks made more money financing green projects than they did from working with fossil fuel companies for a fourth straight year. Okay, then what is going on here then?

I don't get that. Because my whole life, has been built around just, well, it's all about the money at the end of the day in this country. And as long as the fat cats get fatter and all that, then that's all it really comes down to in the end. But if they're now making more money from hippie shit, where, why still the opposition to hippie shit, you know, like. Inertia? Right. Like, it's just like, it's just like the oil industry is so entrenched in our national security infrastructure and our government that, like, they're going to, like, they're going to,

to make sure that they make every last dime off every drop of fossil fuel that's in the ground before they allow the rest of us to move on in any way, shape, or form. And it's destructive. Exxon owns wind farms. They could just pivot. I understand, like, I'm not naive.

I understand that we still need fossil fuels to a certain degree, but we should be trying to do something besides invading Venezuela for oil. But here's the real punch sign to this. Like, nobody wants Venezuela's oil. I didn't realize that. Trump's like, he's probably purely on a fantasy level. He's like, they, uh, the one guy who does win out of this is Trump has a huge campaign donor,

but they have a Paul Singer who won a lawsuit, but kind of lost because he was forced to take like a controlling interest in Sitco, which is the oil company that does, handles most of Venezuela's oil reserves, and now that will be paid off by 10fold. So congrats to Paul Singer. But the rest of oil companies are like, we don't want Venezuela's oil. Let me read here. Administrative, administration officials have told oil executives, they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in their reviving its shattered petroleum industry.

But people in the industry said the administration's message has left him still leery about the difficulty of rebuilding decayed oil fields in a country where it's not even clear who will lead the country for the foreseeable future. The country has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, but its petroleum infrastructure has decayed amid years of mismanagement and meager investment. None of the companies want this job, basically. it's not just because the infrastructure sucks and the political situation is unstable. Venezuelan oil, I'm not to, you probably get more factual information

about watching landmen than you'll get from me on this, but like oil comes in different kinds, like whether it's light or heavy and sweet or sour. Venezuela oil is like one of the hardest types to refine, I guess, and it costs more,

and it would take like some like $100 billion in 20 years to be able to like get oil pumping again out of Venezuela at the refined level would be useful to the rest of the world. Also, another thing that changed during the bomb administration, it hasn't really processed in the conservative mind. America's now a net exporter of oil. Yeah, right.

I mean, I've heard that before, too. Like, whenever the argument comes up about oil and wars and stuff like that, and people point out that what you just said, which I also didn't realize. And I feel like most people don't, I don't think. Right. Realize that. Yeah. The shale oil in the Permian Basin is apparently way easier to get out of the ground than Venezuela's oil.

So there's also. part of this, I didn't realize this, like, we all got taken, we all got fooled by Hugo Chavez a little bit. It's not that Venezuela doesn't have oil, but the whole thing that's often repeated about Venezuela having more oil than Saudi Arabia, which I've repeated on this show, is based upon an OPEC report that is sourced to the Venezuelan government, back when Hugo Chavez's government was saying they discovered all these oil reserves to solicit outside investment. So I'm not saying it's totally untrue. I'm saying it's a sales job. So I got taken by it. Trump got taken by it.

Apparently, Nichols Maduro lost his freedom over it. But yeah, right now the U.S. produces about 13 million barrels of oil per day, and Venezuela produces less than one million barrels per day. And right now, U.S. oil prices are at $57 a barrel, which is the lowest since the end of the pandemic. There's a global oil glut with lower prices, which is bad for U.S. producers who need higher prices to break even.

So basically, we just started a war for oil. We stayed as a war for oil when oil futures are traded at Texans, sitting at the garage in the garage with the car running levels. They do not want more oil. They want the price to go back up. They're stopping pumping it out of the ground until there's more value in it.

This is stupid. Yeah. Yeah. It's like shitty infrastructure to obtain a resource in a declining industry positioned in a country

that's falling apart because of us and as an uncertain at best future. So, like, if you're a, you know, an oil guy for one of these companies, like, no one's lining up for that job, you know, that position, having to go there and figure all that out. When there's nowhere to put it or nothing to do with it anyway, because we have too much as it stands. I swear to God, Trump's going to binge watch Landman and try to draft the Landman to go to Venezuela. Yeah. And so he's going to be like, sir, it's not exactly a real job like that.

So, let's talk about the indictments for a second, because remember, if we travel time for out, we back a week, the whole point of this was Nicholas Maduro is a huge drug cartel leader. So we charged him with narco-terrorism conspiracy, which whoever invented the world, narco-terrorism can burn hell. Narcroterrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and instructed devices against the United States. No Fenthal was mentioned in the indictment, obviously. Yeah. How is it illegal for Nicholas Maduro to have a machine gun in Venezuela? I was just about to say, like, because that's, I was doing a Patreon thing before we got on here, and I was reading a, I was reading an article about the charges in court, and I read those exact charges you just read.

And I was like, it's a hell of, it feels very American to, like, charge the leader of another country with the crime of possessing machine guns and destructive devices when it's like, don't they all have those? Like any leader of just about any country? that's like part of the job description I feel like if you're going to be the leader of a country somewhere around there's going to be some machine guns that you at least indirectly own you know and also destructive devices you know it's like you need those things if you're going to do leading a country stuff but it's funny to be like yeah but yeah but you can't do it against us or if we just say you can't which I guess is how we kind of operate with everything it's only okay if we say you can do it otherwise we'll bomb you and shit

So, like, a federal appeals court basically just canceled all of California's, like, anti-open carry laws because everybody in America has a constitutional right to carry a gun into an elementary school, I guess, if they want. But the Venezuelan Army has no Second Amendment rights. Right. So I just feel like the whole thing, one of the main reasons I think this is polling so unpopular is, like, we weren't even properly lied to about the purposes of this war. like they didn't even lubes up for the generationally fucked us right

with the Iraq and I know this isn't on the level of Iraq you know yet at least but like that was like

weeks and months I feel like in my memory of you know of it being pitched to us the American people until like you know

talking about it and the idea of them having WMDs and all that stuff and the reasons we have to do it and all that

I remember having debates about it in my high school classrooms and shit um but with this all I've heard about it is come from you on this show in various forms over the week

weeks leading up to it weeks leading up to it and it's you know and usually when you talk about it it's in the context of like I don't know what the fuck's going on here and so you know I don't know what the pitch is even supposed to be but we've got this come up before but like if you follow the stupidest

conservative influencers you have your finger more on the pulse of what the Trump administration is going to do than if you follow, like, the New York Times, right? So, like, that's why the weeks leading up to January 6th, you and I were like, this is going to be crazy. Is anybody going to fucking do anything? And then the FBI was like, wait, what's going on on the day?

It's like, you guys are getting your news from the wrong places. So, like, here's a, like, the only people, like, while they're going on TV and saying we're taking the oil, we're going to pretend that Nicholas Wenduro is a drug trafficker to invade. Like, it's like, let me just watch this clip from Seth Moulton, Congressman Seth Moulton here. We had briefings on Venezuela. We asked, are you going to invade the country?

We were told no. Do you plan to put troops on the ground in Venezuela? We were told no. You intend regime change in Venezuela. We were told no. So they told the oil companies ahead of time to get their ducks in a row to be ready to go get the oil.

They told Wall Street on time because stocks moved. There were people betting on pie market on the invasion. so that that leaked they told us we're taking the oil the only people they lied to

about this were fucking Congress that's not how this is supposed to work they're supposed to get honest with Congress and a lot of the rest of us the world the reaction from other global leaders has been less than inspiring

basically the UK government it just kissed Trump's ass even though they have territories in the Caribbean and they need to stabilization they would fuck them too. There was a chat show clip

I watched her this morning where somebody worked for the Stormer administration, they'll call administration there. Works for 10 downing or whatever. You want to put it. He was asked about, because Trump's still threatening to invade Greenland, he's ramped that up. And the woman asked

the guy if he would denounce it. And he says, well, we're not going to mount hypotheticals. Like, why would you speak out against? And he's like, oh, well, he did a meal him out there. They won't clearly state. The United States should not seize Greenland, which is a position. which is part of Denmark, who's a NATO ally. Technically speaking, if we seize Greenland,

that should cause war to break out between us and NATO, even though we're in NATO. Yeah. Right. Well, I think, I don't know. They are just like cowards, but I feel like it's also a specific type of cowardice where it's like, they're like,

well, if I say, no, they can't do that, then he'll get all fired up and pissy and want to do it even more. So if I just like, we'll just all keep telling ourselves he won't do these crazy things and just hope that it doesn't happen. And then when the crazy things do happen there,

he's like, oh, shit. That's crazy. They should move, I mean, like I saw some European leaders saying they should act quickly to build a military base on Greenland. So at least there'll be like a deterrent there. Like the, you can't say

we're not defending Greenland enough when you got trips there. of course we have troops there anyway it doesn't matter all right so let me test them a fire alarm today we're trying to squeeze this in whether we're on a lunch break but this is just a apartment living so I'll have to wrap this up quickly but I just want to say the fact

the Marine Le Pen the French fascist the leader of the French fascist party for like a way to put it was the only person to put out the strongest statement here because she's a nationalist and be like you shouldn't be fucking with other countries is depressing because there are other principles here outside of this Naia Buckeli president of El Salvador

quote tweeted Chris Van Holland Center for Maryland who was complaining about this being like oh so you just want to defend thugs and I want to say Bucheli think for a second if President Chris Van Holland orders Delta Force to seize you in six years what would you like the rules to be

because I personally have no moral objection to Delta Force taking Naia Buckelly all right we will we'll shut it down now since that stuff so yeah just so you all know Mark told us they're doing maintenance on his fire alarms

smoke alarms we tried to fit it in while they were on their lunch break and we almost got there we got to like 51 minutes but they've we've been uh headed off at the past by the maintenance people over there but you know they were did good before smoke started coming out of mark's ears anyway and then that would cause the whole system to go haywire am i right hey all right thanks i'm here all week okay go to traycrouter dot com and check up coming tour dates uh listen to matt's good skews support the show on patreon uh weekly skews dot com slash more just go on patreon in search for my name

and search for my name either way it works but yeah thanks for watching this slightly abbreviated first episode of 2026 onward thanks for being here

see you next time love you bye bye yep