1/5/26: Venezuela Civil War, Wall St Oil Companies Swoop In, Dems Flail, AI Videos Flood Social Media

29:35And the main point that these oil companies were making to the White House is they're like, guys, we have a five-year low. It's like, that's not when you drill, right? That's whenever you're like, okay, we'll sit here. We're trying to manage supply, all of this. We need to recoup a lot of losses and things that we made previously during the great exploration times of 2019. There's not a big desire right now. Another point, as you just said, there's this idea of, well, it will take between 500 to 750 billion of oil infrastructure. That takes years to implement. But another important thing to remember about Venezuela is where the oil is.

30:11I mean, it's remote. Like it's not actually that easy to get to. And then there's the port infrastructure. There is the use of perhaps the necessity of the U.S. Navy in having to protect all of this. Right now, as you and I are speaking, there is a test where some former Maduro tankers are actually leaving Venezuela in a test of the blockade because the Trump administration has said that they're going to continue the current economic blockade. Are they going to be able to go through? There are two Chinese-Venezuelan co-owned super tankers which are waiting off the coast. There are three super tankers which currently ferry Venezuelan oil to China.

30:50This is another thing. China literally had to build new refineries just for this heavy crude that came from Venezuela. Is that going to be permitted? What will the Chinese government say? You know, the Chinese delegation was actually in Venezuela, in Caracas, when all of this went down and met with Maduro the very day that he was actually captured that night. I don't think they're going to take too kindly to that. There's so, so many questions. But the main one is about money. Yeah, I mean, as you said here, I mean, the fundamental question is really like, does more oil colony equal more money for America?

31:24Maybe. But as we all found out, let's say during Ukraine, it was a bonanza for American oil companies because the price of oil went up and especially LNG. We were exporting and we got these great clients in Europe. But also all of our prices went up too because we refused to enforce any of our export laws and made it so that the price in the aggregate rose and we ended up paying more. Remember how much everybody's power bill went up and with all the gas, Conoco, and all of the crises? And I haven't even brought in data centers in the way that we have a completely deregulated energy market. So I just really am skeptical that this is all going to work out extraordinarily well for the average consumer.

32:08I mean, I'd be happy if it did, but I just – I don't – I genuinely do not see how you could really bet as a Wall Street or an oil executive that you will have 10 to 15 years where you'll be able to come in, build the infrastructure, extract the infrastructure, have enough political stability to be able to get the oil, ship the oil, get it to America, refine the oil, profit from all of it. Like there's a reason why they were not really chomping at the bit. I always forget. Whatever. Chomping at the bit. Champing. I think it's chomping. Okay. We'll go with that one. But why they were not like begging the administration to go in.

32:49Like in the 21st century. Like for where we are right now, it's not like a fundamental necessity. And then there's also OPEC. You know, you have to remember that. So even if we do necessarily control a large amount of these reserves, there's this huge global market. We have Russians, you know, the Chinese also have their ability. They have their own deals in place with a number of others. So, look, I don't know yet, but it's one of those where the oil bet seems to me like there was a reason we talked with Ava, why in the 2000s they were obsessed with Venezuela. And now there's this Jack Ryan clip going around about, well, I'm not saying oil's not important, But it is not fundamentally the same story or strategic calculus as it was at that time.

33:34Not saying it won't be a bonanza per se, perhaps if they were able to pull it off. There are so many roadblocks. There are way more roadblocks on the path to success. And the payout from the success does not necessarily seem like it would be all that fantastic or great for the United States. So one thing I will say, I don't know how much stock to put in this. But I did see one analysis that was like, you know, it's not really about the oil. it's more about the petrodollar. And with the idea being that, yeah, I mean, the petrodollar is an important part of maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency, that if American oil companies are the ones who are in control of these oil reserves, then that oil is continuing to be denominated into U.S.

34:15dollars, sort of a blow against the BRICS alliance and any sort of other competing project for countries to band together and move away from that global system of finance. So I did see that just to put that out there, that perhaps that is some of the thinking that's going into this as well. I saw that too. You know, at the same time for China, it's only 5 % of their entire oil supply. Like it's not really like a great big blow necessarily to them. Yeah, but in their fantasy world, you know, they would get Venezuelan oil production back up to the glory days of wherever it used to be. And it would put it in line with like, you know, the eighth largest oil producer in the world or something like that.

34:53I mean, there is a better case for the U.S. colonizing, in my opinion, Taiwan, than there is for Venezuela. Like, that is 10 times more important. I mean, the Chinese might call it already a U.S. colony that they currently have over in Taiwan, part of the reason why they're very upset about the entire current political situation. And may even use the same logic that we just did in enforcing their own spheres of influence doctrine. But nonetheless, that is the theory here about Venezuela. so many roadblocks in the interim. I mean, if you are the current Venezuelan regime, yeah, you just want to give Trump whatever he wants.

35:28Just remember this, even lifting the sanctions a fifth by 50 % of where they currently are would be a massive boon to the Venezuelan economy. Massive. And would enable like some limited investment. Chevron already currently has a deal right now with Venezuela. They could maybe ramp that up and they could call it a win. But is there going to be some, you know, massive Panama Canal-style project down in Venezuela, I don't see it, especially considering the political instability there. And here. Instability here. Yeah. Exactly. It just doesn't seem like a good investment if you were a multi-multi-billion dollar oil company.

36:05But I could be wrong, and maybe they want to explore and all that. So we'll see. Let's get to Dems. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying.

36:451968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

37:28I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:15Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self?

38:54I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We wanted to take a look at the Democratic Party reaction here, which has been somewhat divided. I guess I would characterize it that overwhelmingly there's been opposition, but some much more forceful than others, especially from the leadership of the party, which has been very, like, process-oriented.

39:31like you didn't even ask us or notify us appropriately about your regime change war. Emblematic of that, of course, Chuck Schumer with the lamest possible approach to all of this. Let's go ahead and take a listen. We are saying to the Republicans, this is your responsibility. President Trump is a member of your party. You've gone along with him over and over again. And this is one time you've got to resist him. It's too serious. Are you hearing anything from other Republicans? We are, as I said, we have heard from some Republicans in private conversations, chairs talking to their ranking members, that they have some, they are troubled by this, but not much more than that.

40:13And is that something that could rise to impeachment or what other options are available to you guys? Tyler, I just say it's premature to guess that far into the future. We hope that, as I said, we hope that we can have support from our Republican colleagues to put a break on this long before it gets that far. This is unprecedented as to what he has done and the way he has done it and the secrecy in which he is engaged in it. And we're going to do everything we can. So many strongly worded letters were written, were penned. Hakeem Jeffries also put out an extremely lame letter that, like I said, focused on the process.

40:56You can see Schumer there ruling out any sort of move towards aggressive measures like impeachment, saying, oh, this is really the Republicans' responsibility. We hope they do something. Spoiler alert, they're not going to. Overwhelmingly, they support this with the exception, I think, of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from some anonymous, supposedly like swing district Dems. They are unhappy with the fact that the party has positioned themselves in opposition to the kidnapping of Maduro and the attack on Venezuela. Let me go ahead and read you a little bit of this so you can see just exactly how lame it is.

41:34Some Democrats are grumbling at their party's largely oppositional stance to Trump's raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, saying privately their colleagues should be celebrating why it matters. These lawmakers argue it could be a major political miscalculation if party fails to applaud the downfall of a brutal dictator with sufficient volume. Even given grave concerns about the operation's legality and longer term ramifications, party leaders have raged at Trump for bypassing Congress, leaving them in the dark. So here is some here are some of the quotes. They say one swing district House Democrat told Axios in a text message on Saturday.

42:07Nuance is dead in politics. Maduro is bad. Glad he's gone. You can't have it both ways, the lawmaker said, venting that everything Trump touches must be bad according to the base. So hating their own base. Another vulnerable House Democrat told Axios in a phone interview, as Democrats, we can't just condemn what happened. I wish the Democratic Party would be a little more measured on this. I think it looks weak, a third centrist House Democrat said. If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. So that is what's coming from some of these swing district Dems.

42:39I did want to put this in context with the fact that, you know, before this action occurred, there was polling that was done. I'm pretty sure we covered some of it here. Ask the American people whether or not they would support military action in Venezuela. And it was overwhelmingly unpopular. OK, so I feel like, Sagar, some of these Democrats, I mean, there's a money influence here, like no doubt about it. I think it's ideal. But there's also there's an ideology. There's also like just a legacy thinking of still living in an era where Florida is a swing state and where, you know, the politics of regime change was a lot different and where there was still more of this like Cold War fervor.

43:22And certainly for someone like Chuck Schumer, he's still living in that era. And they don't recognize that, like, it's the easiest political layup just based on where the American people are, you know, Democrats and independents in particular, to oppose this and oppose it more forcefully than the Schumers and Jeffreys of the world certainly have. Yeah, I mean, look, there's snap polls that are coming out right now. People are basically split on it, but the vast majority are especially against occupying or running Venezuela. Venezuela. I mean, it's kind of understandable. Everyone can be impressed with the capability of the U.S.

43:56military and especially the U.S. special operations. And we always have been. That's been like, you know, they make movies about Zero Dark Thirty. I'm sure that there will be one about this one. That is fundamentally separate, though, from the idea of running Venezuela and in particular, the strategic logic of the future of explicit like oil extraction for what exactly. And again, you have to rely on the competence, the follow through of this current administration. I think that that is one where it's pretty simple to speak out against. And on a base level, I mean, whether this was a quote, good idea, bad idea or not, from where a lot of the Democratic base is, I just don't see how there could be any potential upside for being like, oh yeah, it's a good idea.

44:36Unless you're literally in living in a red state where yes. Okay. If you're a Florida Democrat, I definitely see the calculus for you. For everybody else, and especially in the potential primary, I mean, if you're a Democrat and your critique of the Trump foreign policy, you have to get to a point where it is literally like vision-based for a different view. At this point, that is like what Ro Khanna and very few other Democrats are offering. Part of the reason Kamala struggled in the election was, A, she was tied to the Biden administration, but B, is that she could never particularly articulate like a vision or a view of the world.

45:18Now, Trump actually did, didn't stick to basically any of it, but it was a compelling narrative, definitely one that took off with a lot of people. You could have pointed out different stuff during the first Trump administration that was contradictory, but the vision itself was important. Looking explicitly at this, for Venezuela, for Gaza, and for really like a general tariffs, general treatment of the rest of the world, you're like, we are not going to act like this. And I don't see that from Chuck Schumer, from Hakeem Jeffries. They're much more concerned about like, oh, we weren't briefed.

45:55It's like, okay, we were all briefed about Iraq. Like, does that make Iraq a good idea? No, you were all briefed on Libya, okay? I mean, Libya was bad. Like for some reason, they're just obsessed with this like process-oriented brain. And they're not looking at it both in terms of 2028, but also just as like a literal alternative vision of like this is not how we're going to run our country. This is not how we're going to interface with other countries. Period. That's exactly right. The snap poll you referred to, one of them anyway, this is from YouGov on January 3rd. Do you support or oppose the U.S.

46:26running Venezuela following the U.S. military's capture of Nicolas Maduro? support is 34 percent, oppose is 41 percent, net support, GOP plus 44, Dem minus 48, and independent minus 17. So it's popular with MAGA. And I think that's where you've seen the numbers move dramatically, because prior to the action, you even had a significant number of Republicans who were like, no, we don't want to do this. But the moment Daddy Trump does something, then suddenly it's a great idea. But in terms of Democrats and independents, they're still opposed. And let me It's not going to get any more popular than it is right now.

46:59In fact, to me, it's a little bit shocking given the overwhelming force of pro-war propaganda that blankets the airwaves across the board and all the celebration of like, oh my God, the operation was so incredible and it was so great and it was so brave and it was executed so well, blah, blah, blah. it's kind of amazing to me that out of the gates, it's already net negative. It will never be more popular than it is right now. So there is for Democrats politically zero risk in taking an aggressively oppositional view. And so it's crazy to me that you have these, and this is where like the, I don't know, the political calculus has just gone so wonky where the whole thing of being a quote unquote centrist is just to like disagree with wherever the wherever the base of your party is, regardless of whether they're the ones that are actually holding the popular position.

47:54You know, the idea of being a centrist was more to sort of like acknowledge places where the right has like strong grounds here. They're doing something that's popular. That is not the case with yet another regime change war with some like total boondoggle lack of a plan and no idea what's going to happen going forward. So I don't know. It's just pathetic. But you're right that ideologically some of them just agree with it. I mean, some or some of them have come out and Debbie Wasserman Schultz came out and was like mad about Machado being said, why didn't you go further with your regime change?

48:25There's a little bit of that going on with them as well, where they're still critiquing Trump. But honestly, from like a more aggressive, more pro-war stance, you can see Margaret Brennan's interview with Marco Rubio if you want to flavor what that looks like. But I do want to give credit to, you know, a few people who are out there who have done a good job. You know, surprisingly, Kamala's statement was a little bit better than I thought. She did do the process thing, but it had a little more meat to it than I expected. So sign of her positioning herself and trying to figure out where to be for a potential run in 2028.

48:52Ro Khanna, though, I mean, once again, really standing up and showing up in a way that is impressive. And I think understanding the moment much better than maybe any of his colleagues. You can put this up on the screen. He says the silence from many media hype 2028 contenders today is shocking. If you cannot oppose this regime change war for oil, you don't have moral clarity or guts to lead our party or nation. And, you know, at this point, when you put this out, I don't know if they've piped up yet, but Newsom hasn't had anything to say. I think Pete put out a lame statement. Pritzker put out kind of a lame statement.

49:23You know, a lot of the ones who get a lot of love from the media for 2028 have either had very little to say or have been completely silent or it's been the sort of like process thing. And then as a very, you know, sort of aggressively alternative view of what I think the messaging should sound like. Graham Plattner, of course, candidate for Senate in Maine and a former service member himself just came out of the gates swinging very hard and using, you know, very aggressive and unequivocal language of the sort that I think really lands much better than this sort of like nitpicking over process stuff that you get from the leadership.

50:01This is E5. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Graham. This is not foreign policy. This is gangsterism on an international scale. We must not be fooled by the childish lies being used to justify this illegal aggression. Be wary of the establishment voices in media and in politics who over the next few weeks will work tirelessly to manufacture consent, even when they sound like they are opposed. Keep an ear out, for this operation is bad, but. Followed by words about democracy, dictatorship, and international law. If those were justifications for invasion and abduction, we'd have invaded many of our allies a long time ago.

50:52Those voices are doing the work of empire, and we must be vigilant for their duplicitousness. If they are media figures, change the channel. if they are political figures, work tirelessly to remove them from power. And, you know, Sagar, you'll recall there was this war powers resolution vote in the Senate. Marco Rubio went to because it was hanging on a nice edge. Marco Rubio went and said, we're not going to do any sort of military action. If we do, we'll come to you first. We pinky promise that, you know, we don't have any plans in that direction, as they were actively planning exactly what we've seen unfold.

51:32And because of that, guess who decided not to vote for the War Powers Resolution? Waited to the last moment, Susan Collins. So very relevant in that race in Maine. And also, look, I don't know how you, like, if you believed them at that point, like, you're just a fool. And I think many of them probably didn't even believe them. They just wanted an excuse to take the easy route and not take a difficult vote. Well, I think that, I don't know if they, maybe they did believe it because it would just be so unbelievable to literally go an extraordinary rendition Maduro. I mean, you have to admit it's shocking, right?

52:04But even from their perspective, it would be stupid and counterproductive. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand with the Democrats why they just don't take swings. And of course, it's always easier when you're on the outside like Graham or some of these other insurgent candidates. But learn from the lesson of Obama. Like 2002, Obama gave his speech against the Iraq war. It was overwhelmingly unpopular at the time. It's actually way more popular right now to just speak up about Venezuela or any of these things. But you get rewarded for actually not even taking a gamble but having a clear position. Trump did the same thing.

52:38He was the only person on the stage in 2016 to just be like, yep, the Iraq war was a bad idea. Everybody else was trying to say, oh, we didn't do it right. Actually, the initial invasion was correct. Or you literally had Jeb Bush up there defending his brother. It was literally just him being like, it was a complete disaster. Disaster, right? That's what a lot of people want to do, or that's what makes somebody different. That's just purely from the political level. It also happens to align with the base, and ideally what you want is you want base plus country to be able – or try to convince the country that your idea is correct.

53:08So it's just very clear to me that the current democratic establishment doesn't have it whenever it comes to any of this. The question will be how they respond to these primaries if they even really materialize and are successful. and then what does that 2026 dynamic look like in a new congress right because schumer he may not be long for this world from a leader perspective although if i had to bet put a bet down i still think he would win unfortunately uh just yeah i'm saying win with the with the race because i mean i've been asking around oh i think if aoc ran against him he would oh no no i'm saying if he wins re-election and if he gets reelected if he becomes if he wins re-election and he's still in the Senate, whether he will become the leader.

53:51I think there will definitely be some protest votes, but considering that the way that the caucus is, there's too many safe seats. I asked a friend of mine to do the general math on whether any consensus candidate could actually reemerge. And they're like, well, in general, he's done enough of a job to keep some people happy. But it's certainly possible that if he does win re-election, that he could lose the eventual leader race. Again, I'm not entirely sure, but it just comes down to like vision and being able to present a real opportunity. And then the biggest question is about these insurgents is how are they going to act when they come into Congress?

54:27Because he had the AOC squad. I mean, you know, it hasn't really worked out all that well. So the question is like, you know, are they going to keep that energy? What's that going to look like? Are you going to form a similar Freedom Caucus thing? Are you going to use media as a pressure force, you know, on your party, the way that the original Freedom Caucus was able to do that, to the current Republican establishment whenever they were in power. So I don't know. These are all like the more interesting questions. Absolutely. And that's, I mean, we're going to get a lot of answers this year in 2026.

54:57Especially with primaries. What happens in these primaries? Obviously, what happens in the general election? Are we going to have Graham Platt or in the Senate? Because that in and of itself will be significant. And, you know, so I think Schumer's fate as leader does hang in the balance of what direction the Democratic Party decides to go. And I'm not talking about the Democratic Party elite. I'm talking about the base. And that's what I think is different now and why you may end up with a different result than, you know, the tactical, sort of like, I guess, tactical retreat that the squad decided to pursue and really never acted as a cohesive entity.

55:36I don't think ever really saw themselves as a cohesive entity, you know, according to Ryan's reporting. But you've got a base that wants to hear them aggressively opposing this war, aggressively opposing the genocide in Gaza, aggressively pursuing Medicare for all. That is different. And who is very disgusted and disappointed with the leadership of the party. So that does put things in a very different place. But, you know, we've got a number of these issues that are rising to the surface that are really separating the factions of the Democratic Party and helping to make it clear, like, sure, you can be a Gavin Newsom and you can go out and you can post, you know, and go out against Trump with your posting in your memes.

56:18And people appreciate that. There's no doubt about it. but are voters going to be sophisticated enough to make the distinction between someone who postures in this way and someone who is genuinely going to offer a different vision and is not going to be beholden to capital and is going to be willing to confront capital and take some of these difficult stances. So that's some of the flavor of what we're going to start to learn in 2026, which I'm excited to see. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated.

56:53And Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

57:34And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

58:16Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar.

58:57The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter is incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank, I hit a bad note, then I couldn't recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity.

59:35I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am so disturbed and disgusted by the number not only of fake videos that have been put out and spread around to manufacture consent for this kidnapping and attack on Venezuela, But even after people get called out, there's no shame anymore. They don't take them down. They just leave them up. And then added to that mix. So when we first started covering the Ukraine war, we had to contend with a lot of fake videos.

1:00:17Gaza, we had to contend with a lot of fake videos. We tried to be really careful. And I don't think we've had any significant failure on our part of putting something up that turned out to be fake or misrepresented. So now, though, you have to add into it AI. and AI being good enough now that apparently people, especially people who want to fall for it, will just completely fall for this bullshit and share it widely. So the specific flavor of video that was being shared everywhere were these like, oh my God, the Venezuelans in Venezuela are so happy that Trump came in and kidnapped the leader of their country.

1:00:52And one of them that was shared the most widely is just, it's AI. It's all invented. and if you have at all a discerning eye, you can see that this is fake. Like if you look at this carefully, you can tell that it's fake. Let's put this up on the screen and you guys can see for yourself. So it's supposedly all these Venezuelans take to the streets to celebrate Maduro's downfall and you have this old lady in the front who's crying with joy. Okay, this fricking AI post, which is still up even with the community note in here that says it's AI generated, This has 39 ,000 retweets. It has over 5 million views.

1:01:34It has 118 ,000 likes. And it was shared by none other than the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk. So now we have to add to just the general propaganda, the fact that people can put out completely fabricated videos and pass them off as if they are reality to create a portrait that Venezuelans across the board inside of Venezuela are celebrating these actions. Let's go ahead and put the next one up on the screen. We can go through some of these. So Glenn was really doing the Lord's work here, going through and flagging a bunch of these fake or misrepresented videos. So this one is from Alex Jones.

1:02:17He posts this video and he says, millions of Venezuelans flooded the streets of Caracas and other major cities in celebration of the ouster of communist dictator, Nicolas Maduro. In reality, the video shows anti-Maduro protests from last year following the disputed presidential election, or I guess now two years ago, now that we're in 2026, not celebrations of his recent capture by U.S. forces. And Glenn says, yet another mega viral video from Trump supporters that is falsely described. This is not a video from today. It's an old video long before that. There also aren't close to millions here.

1:02:49But again, who cares? These claims make people feel good. That's what counts. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. We've got here, oh, Nick Shirley of the vaunted Minnesota fraud video that has now been used by the Trump administration to shut down daycare payments for all states in the entire country. He's got a fake video here. The video actually depicts Venezuelan exiles in Miami, not inside of Venezuela, celebrating. Nick Shirley tweeted, wait a minute, the MSM media lied to us again. The people of Venezuela actually didn't like being ruled by a narco-terrorist. World Cup-style celebrations are erupting all across Venezuela at the moment.

1:03:29And Glenn says, this is Miami, not Venezuela, but who cares? Just keep retweeting it. It feels good and that matters most. And again, last I checked, had not taken this down, even though it is not true the way he's representing it. Let's go ahead and put the next one up on the screen. We've got, I'm not familiar with this guy, Jorge Macri. He says the city of Buenos Aires has always been, is, and will always be on the side of freedom. Marks a historic day. Margaret Kimberly says this video is for Buenos Aires. I guess he changed it. But oh, it's a 2021 celebration of their, I think of like a World Cup win or something.

1:04:02So yeah, it has nothing to do with Maduro. It's an old video from 2021 celebrating a soccer victory. There you go. And yeah, I mean, these people are dishonest. Like they know that what they posted is wrong. They may have known it when they posted it and intentionally posted just flagrant lies to back up the Trump administration and to push a narrative about what is actually happening here. And even after they get called out, they just leave it up. So to me, it's very dystopian, the invention of reality to match the narrative that they want to push. I've never been, I also, I've never been more disturbed because, and you know what the reason why?

1:04:42It's not just that we care about accuracy. I always operate on a theory. If you get stuff factually incorrect and don't, you know, apologize for it, then people will leave you. I don't think it's true anymore. Some people apparently want to be lied to. No, I don't know if that's necessarily it. I think they just don't care. I don't think they want to be lied to per se, maybe like structurally. I don't know. But as long as it goes along with the narrative, like they'll just, you know, continue to say, oh, well, they meant well or something like that. And I'm like, it really makes me question, you know, my entire career and just every single time, even on Venezuela.

1:05:21How I, you know, hours on the phone, talking to people, verifying details, making sure that everything I say is generally backed up by like what I know, what I confirm. I have a roster of things that I've been told but don't, can't confirm. So I don't say them on the air. Yeah. It's like, what's the point? You know, I'm being serious. What is the point of, what is the point? I'm not just being like, oh, here's what I heard from so-and-so. Who cares about looking like an idiot? You know, these guys are, you know, look at their views, their retweets, all of this. I mean, that's just business. I mean, but generally, like, look at their, they pay no price.

1:06:00They seem to sleep well at night. I don't know. I mean, I was talking to Kyle about this. He made one statement on his show when it was slightly misrepresented in something, and he realized it after the fact. He was like, I could not sleep at night because I was, like, thinking about it. Like, I was so bothered by the fact that I stated this thing incorrectly. And I relate to that. Like I cannot imagine just putting out something that is blatantly false, getting called on it by like literally thousands of people and just leaving it out there. Just leaving it out there and like, yeah, I don't care.

1:06:27If I found out that I said something 100, I'm not talking about an opinion, okay, like a bad opinion. That's, I mean, even that I may feel bad about. But it's like one of those where if you say something wrong, like actually 100 % wrong, and especially if it was really important to the point that you were trying to make. Yeah. Oh, my God. I think in the limited times that that has happened, I mean, I've gone in and done comments on our own videos just to be like, hey, this is me. I got it wrong. Or I'll say it here on the show. I don't know. I mean, I guess other people don't care. Apparently, the audience doesn't care.

1:07:03These guys are doing great. So that's the world we live in. It's wild. And look, I don't purport to represent or know the ins and outs of how every Venezuelan in Venezuela is thinking about this. Nor would I. ever. Who has the audacity to say that? Exactly. But I will say, I mean, I genuinely went out and looked for any of the inside of Venezuela celebration videos to be accurate. None of them. I have not found, you guys can, genuinely, if you have seen some that you think are accurate, please send it because I have not seen one. And you know what? It works. The tactic works because if your feed is flooded with these things and you don't bother to go in and check it, you just assume like, oh, some of them must be real.

1:07:44Like there must be some of that going on. And we also have to remember like this is a repressive regime. I'm sure the opposition is very afraid right now of what consequences could come to them or potential collaborators or whatever. So it wouldn't be a surprise if there were no celebrations, even as you do have plenty of people in Venezuela who are not happy living under Maduro and whatever. So what we do have, I mean, the legitimate videos I have seen are people who are upset about the leader of their country being kidnapped. I don't think anyone should be surprised that that is a significant sentiment within Venezuela.

1:08:18You can imagine if this was done to us, how people would react here, including some people who were not big fans of Donald Trump. So you can put F3 up on the screen. You had a number of news organizations who were there on the ground. These are some of the pro-Maduro, don't kidnap our leader protests that were ongoing. Sky News was there on the ground talking to people. You had, I think this is Middle East. I was on the ground. This is a major march in Caracas. And I thought this one was really significant. He says, how do I feel? I feel scared. And that was some of the coverage I saw on the ground too, is people are just like, what the hell does this mean?

1:08:58Like there were huge lines at pharmacies and at grocery stores, people like stockpiling the way that they do before a natural disaster because their country continues to be threatened by our maniac president who says, hey, I'll go in, I'll go in even harder, says that we may put boots on the ground, say this may last for years, and says we run their country. So I think a lot of the, you know, from what I can tell from the news reporting, a lot of the sentiment is just fear about what is going to happen going forward. It would make sense that there's no celebration because the current regime is still in power.

1:09:30They will kill you maybe if you go out and you celebrate Like openly an operation inside your country. Also, I know it's very reductive, but as many people have pointed out, if a foreign country came in and deposed a political leader like Trump, then there would be millions of Democrats perhaps here or around the world who would celebrate. And by the way, vice versa, if it were a Republican or sorry, if it were a Democrat and there were Republicans who might celebrate, that is not proof positive that it is necessarily like the entire nation. Let's think about this. How many Americans live in the UK?

1:10:06I'm going to guess hundreds of thousands. I don't know the exact number. Are they representative of all of us? Right. That would be insane. Yeah. What is the country with the most amount of Americans? Biggest expat, probably Israel. All right. Okay. Let's guess. Does the vision of all or the view of all Americans who reside in Israel, are they totally representative of all of us? I've been all over the world. In my experience, the Americans living abroad and often are the least representative of the average Joe in the U.S. So the number one American expat community is Mexico. Oh, Mexico. Followed by Canada.

1:10:49Of course. I apologize. Yeah. So in any case, and then the UK, Germany, Puerto Rico, both as far as. Okay, but even Mexico. If you live in Mexico, do you really know much about us? I can say this too. My parents are Indian. My parents' views on India are like miles apart from the people who actually live in India. That's the funniest part. Just because you were from there doesn't mean you know anything. Also, if you hated Maduro, you probably left. Well, that's the thing. There's an ideological distinction between people who are still in Venezuela and people who left or fled fearing political persecution or fearing that their capital was going to be taken by the revolutionary government or whatever.

1:11:32I mean, there's very clear ideological divide, just like with the Cubans, Cuban community. Let's put F4 up on the screen just to try to attach some data to this. Drop site shared this polling, trying to get a hold. This was before the kidnapping of Maduro. But as would be predicted, there's a huge divide between Venezuelans in Venezuela, of whom a majority, 55 percent, were opposed, 23 percent supported some sort of foreign military intervention, and 22 percent unsure, and the Venezuelan expat community. So in this other poll, we don't have the screen for it, but an Atlas Intel poll from October that was published by Bloomberg, and it's a Brazil-based polling firm.

1:12:16So 64 % support for U.S. military intervention among Venezuelans abroad, so like the Venezuelans in Miami who were celebrating, whereas only 34 % among Venezuelans living in the country. So significant political divide between the people who are there in the country and the people who have left for any number of reasons. And it's also just worth remembering, look, when we had our mission accomplished moment in Iraq, there were people who were genuinely celebrating. I mean, there were, you know. Not just people. Thousands of Iraqis, millions of Iraqis were like, wow, this is great. They even were, I forget the exact phrase in Arabic, that people chanted in the streets of Baghdad.

1:12:57And then what happened? I mean, even in Afghanistan, yeah, there are a lot of people who didn't want to be ruled by the Taliban. That didn't, they also had their own problems. That's the, just the reductive nature, which we talk about this, it is amazing to me. And that is why we were talking about the journalism thing. It's the same on foreign policy. I mean, I truly realized this under Afghanistan when all of MAGA was like, oh, we should have stayed for, I was like, oh my God. I mean, it's all bullshit. It's just fake in terms of like a lot of the ways that people will approach their overall commentary.

1:13:28But I see it here now too. Oh yeah. I'm like the triumphalism. I mean, nothing has changed. And what's even crazier to someone like me is to roll the clock to read the quotes at the time of the Spanish American War, of the Philippines, and like the, you know, rah-rah nature that went in. And then those were disasters for America. Dan Carlin, you probably have to pay for it at this point. He has an amazing four-hour episode on just like the history of the U.S. Imperial kind of project back at that time. Go listen to it, seriously. I mean, nothing has changed. It's amazing. And I guess we're just doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over and over again.

1:14:12But yeah, some of these people have no principles. They believe in nothing. They will flip their positions on a dime and have absolutely no shame about it. Five seconds ago, we're like, no. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard, right? I know she's in the administration, but she was explicitly against regime change in Venezuela. And now nothing, nothing. And so many of these right-wing influencers were no more forever wars, no more regime change wars, no foreign interventions, put America first. And then the minute this happens, they flip on a dime and it's like, let's go. we love this. This is great. This is based, et cetera.

1:14:44Just zero principles. I think it's bad. I mean, I mean, I'm not so sure, you know, if the other side were in power, that things would be all that different. But I mean, I think that's part of the issue, right? I don't know. All right. Whatever. I mean, Biden didn't kidnap Maduro. I mean, Biden actually tried to do some deals with him in fairness. Yeah, but he kept the$25 million bounty, never, you know, kept the indictment. Yeah, there was not a full back, full rollback of the sanctions. but we also didn't have, you know, did not have a kidnapping and direct attacks on the country. Okay. Poured USAID dollars, encouraged millions of Venezuelans to come here, you know, caused a massive migration crisis, probably most responsible for Trump's victory.

1:15:23Like it's not, you know, his hands are not clean, you know, sure. It didn't kidnap him. Okay. I'm not saying they're the same, but I'm not saying they're flameless, but like, let's be real. This is of a different nature. Like brazenly being like, we're taking the oil, We're kidnapping their leader. We're coming for Cuba. We're coming for Colombia. We're coming for Greenland. We're coming for Mexico. That is different. Oh, I didn't say that at all. I was more talking about like left-wing Democratic Party influencers, like whenever a Democrat is in power. I don't think they're necessarily like so principled.

1:15:54Oh, yeah. Or whatever. I'm not saying that. Yeah. Okay. So we agree. All right. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Terry Sisson will be backing whatever Democrats do. That's what I mean. No matter what. I may not be on the show tomorrow. My kid got very sick, so we might have to do a follow-up with the doctor. Emily may be in place for me, but if she is, then I'll swap with her on Wednesday. So regardless, someone will see you tomorrow and they'll see you then.

1:16:37make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know.

1:16:581969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These Students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

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