1/6/26: DOJ Admits Maduro Cartel Is Fake, Megyn Kelly Rips Fox, Zionist To Profit From Venezuelan Oil

25:24Sagar calls it the Miami occupied government. I think it's a good way to think about it because, you know, we've talked a lot about the Israel lobby. and its influence and how it compels behaviors that are not even in the interest of the empire. And so some of the foolishness of this, you also have to attribute to the fact that you have a political constituency with a lot of money that is very influential in this administration. And, you know, and Donald Trump down in Mar-a-Lago, hearing from them a lot. And so you have to factor in that money in politics piece as well. So you've got that. Then you've got the piece that I just set of, you know, I think he's envious of these Gulf monarchies and wants sort of to set himself up in that space.

26:03And, you know, you put those pieces together along with the fact that you've got all these Wall Streeters, and we covered this yesterday, licking their chops to get in there and do, you know, carve it up and financialize it and buy up the distressed assets and do the thing that Wall Street does, which is not exactly just oil, but is, you know, in some ways, like, more destructive to Venezuela, certainly, but would be profitable for them. And you've got the perfect storm for, you know, for this action, whatever this ends up ultimately being. There's also the possibility, and this is, I know Ryan's been paying attention to it, but you see it becoming a bit amplified on the right that Trump wants to pressure Nicolas Maduro into talking about the 2020 election.

26:46And that sounds ridiculous to many of you, I'm sure, but I would not be surprised. I mean, Sagan Ryan actually reported that one of the ways Rubio World convinced Donald Trump to do this regime change was by saying, you know, Maduro, Venezuela, that's the allegations of 2020 elections that Venezuela had something to do with changing those vote tallies, which obviously there's not evidence to suggest. But that that tells you they are probably right now trying to flip Maduro or convince Maduro to say something along those lines. We don't know that for sure. But I think logic, it stands to reason that Trump's prosecutors in conversations with Maduro and his legal team have floated that.

27:30So, yeah, don't be surprised if you see something like that come down to. Yeah, well, Ed Martin, who is what is he in the Department of Justice, amplified a tweet yesterday suggesting exactly that, suggesting that Maduro could plead to lesser charges by proffering evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. So, I mean, and Maduro, I mean, he doesn't he doesn't give a shit. He'll say whatever. Right. If it helps him get get out of a pickle and get his wife out of a pickle as well, by the way, is also being held and charged in this and injured in the capture and whatever. So, I mean, it sounds insane, but you're right to point that out, too, as a factor in all of this.

28:07You not only have the fact that Trump is obsessed with this, like, Venezuela aspect, and he himself was posting on True Social more like Venezuela election conspiracies just in the past one or two days, also indicating that that is on his mind in all of this. So you have this Venezuela fixation from the election perspective. And then you also have the sense of humiliation, both that they tried to do the coup the first time and they failed with the whole Juan Guaido nonsense and they failed. And then you have Maduro, who was, you know, apparently offending Trump with his dancing. I don't know. I don't really buy that whole thing.

28:43No, I don't. The whole plot was already baked long before the, you know, the offensive dancing was going on. But I think that's probably true that Trump found his behavior because he was effectively, you know, trying to call Trump's bluff. Like, I don't think you're going to do anything. I'm going to be out here singing, don't worry, be happy and dancing like a goofball and showing everybody that I don't care. And I'm unbothered by by your threats and your provocations. So, you know, I think those like personal feelings certainly certainly work into this as well. Did you see Machado last night on Sean Hannity?

29:16Sure did. Sure did. I don't also don't buy that. Like the fact that she got the Nobel Peace Prize is why she's been snubbed in all of this. But it doesn't. But she clearly thinks that may be part of it because she went on with Sean Hannity and was like, I will give you the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. President. It's all yours. You deserve it. And he did come out and say, you know, I don't think she should have gotten it. So it is a it is a, you know, a rub with him for sure. Oh, I'm sure it's not nothing. Yeah. But it's also I mean, that's what we can put the next element up on the screen. That brings us to this point about what's going on here.

29:47This is the drop site post. Some of the new reporting here about, and this is from the Miami Herald, Diosdado Cabello has sent voice messages to loyal military officers and ruling party figures calling for unity reorganization and mass mobilization in defense of the government, saying those responsible for the USA, quote, will regret it for the rest of their lives. He is the interior minister. And this goes to questions about Delce Rodriguez and what might happen in the future. So instead of doing a Juan Guaido and saying, we have Maria Carina Machado ready to go in, we'll just bring her in on the boat and let her step off and this will be her kingdom.

30:25Ride her in on a tank. Yes, yes. They're allowing, obviously, Maduro's second in command interim president, Delce Rodriguez, to maintain control during what they're referring to as a transition period. But Delce Rodriguez, especially I shouldn't say especially, but also from the American left is under a cloud of suspicion for people think there was cooperation and not unreasonably. People think there was potentially cooperation with the CIA in prepping this actual regime change military operation. And I don't know, the more that we're learning, I mean, the death toll you mentioned earlier of the Cuban guards keeps getting higher and higher.

31:07So that suggests maybe there wasn't as much cooperation as people initially thought, as though like Delta Force walked in, plucked Maduro and his wife from their beds and just walked on out and was that easy. But this is a significant political question right now because it gets to how Delce Rodriguez will behave during the quote transition period. Yeah, absolutely. And although, you know, in a sense, I'm not sure how much it matters, whether there was an explicit conversation, because the pressure she's facing externally from the U.S. and internally from, you know, both domestic power players and from the population are kind of the same regardless.

31:46But, you know, in terms of whether this is going to be anything approaching a stable government, I think, you know, the question of whether she directly collaborated and how that will be received, etc., that is where that could be really significant. I mentioned yesterday, you know, we were all watching very closely. There were reports of gunfire. There was significant gunfire around the presidential palace. There was, you know, we saw drones in the air. Everyone's like, oh, my God, maybe a coup is going down. Maybe this guy Cabello is coming in. He's got the military behind him. But it turns out that it was their own drones that were interpreted as being hostile.

32:21Yeah. And so it was, you know, but it shows you, number one, they're on pins and needles. And number two, you know, if they thought that that was like, you know, another U.S. action, they were ready to defend against it. things can turn very quickly. Yeah. And I think also that's an important point to take away as well. I'm not going to play this, but I'll just mention, you know, Maduro's son also was in the legislature yesterday giving his blessing to, you know, Delce Rodriguez ascending to the being acting president and her brother, you know, is in charge of the legislature. So that was sort of like a show of solidarity there.

32:57So that was significant. And then speaking of repressive regimes. Already some indications here that, you know, there's limited space for speech about this in a similar way. There was limited space for speech around Palestine. This is an extraordinary clip that went viral yesterday of a protester who was doing an interview with local news. And right after the interview ends, while the cameras are still rolling, she's arrested there on the spot for her protest activities. Let's go ahead and take a look at that. You have to apply pressure at all points that we can. This is not just in a foreign issue.

33:34It's our tax dollars are also being used to commit these war crimes. It is also the duty of us, the people, to stand with stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration that are committing crimes both here in the U.S. and against people in Venezuela. Now, in the background of this interview, you could see that police car. And now right here, we're showing you video we have Immediately after the interview finished, Plikta was arrested by two Grand Rapids police officers. You can see it in the video. And an officer tells Plikta that she is being arrested for obstructing a roadway and failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer.

34:11You can see how she's taken away in that car. She was issuing a number of messages about wanting to the U.S. to free Maduro. But again, she was taken away by police officers there. And you can see in this video, officers were closely following this procession in downtown Grand Rapids. So there you go. I don't know. The roadways looked more more blocked by the snow, I feel like, than than any activity that was presently occurring in that video, at least. That looked that made me cold watching that video of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Because of the free speech implications? No, the snow. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

34:48This this particular story, it looks like I mean, I don't know. I genuinely don't know. They did arrest her for disruption, which is a thing when you go out and protest. A lot of people know that. And in fact, it's kind of meant to sometimes say, this is civil disobedience. So I don't totally have a clear idea of what happened. I hope that she wasn't doing nothing and then plucked off the street, but that wouldn't be unprecedented either. And at times of heightened tension over war, of course we see that. And so that's people need to be really aware that if you are someone who was disturbed by free speech questions over the last decade, especially from the right, and you support what the Trump administration did, you may have to challenge yourself to look at potential censorship and suppression coming down the pike because that always happens when there's escalated military action.

35:45So people should 100 % be aware of that. And there were, you know, pretty widespread, like, immediate protests, which was also, to me, very noteworthy. Like, it didn't take any time. You know, we didn't have months and months of, all right, let's plan, and now something really bad has happened. It was, you know, it was instantaneous that day, the very next day, in places like, you know, Grand Rapids, Michigan, not New York, not L.A. So that was that was noteworthy to me as well in terms of the way that the public was responding to this. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba.

36:18It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is out of 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.

37:01It 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? 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.

37:39NLP, 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. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

38:21On 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 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.

39:01And 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. Should we talk about your boss, Megyn Kelly? It's never brought. Let's do it. No, happy to. So she made some really interesting comments yesterday, actually, revealing a bit of the mandate that she was under back when she was at Fox News with regard to covering war. Let's take a listen. I really think this is something we need to consider both sides on.

39:40I really do. I don't think. Let me just tell you something. When I was at Fox News, which was a long time, 14 years, I would have known exactly what to do in the wake of Trump's attack in Venezuela, his retrieval, shall we say, to put it in mild terms of Nicolas Maduro. I would have known that I was supposed to cheerlead it. And I turned on Fox News yesterday and I'm sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda. There was nothing skeptical. It was all rah, rah, cheerleading. Yes, let's go. And that's fine. I love our military as much as anyone. And I believe in President Trump. But there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah, rah train.

40:24All right. I have done that enough times in my career as a Fox News anchor to have been embarrassed enough to know I'm going to stay on the yellow light for this. I'm not in the green light territory. I'm not in the red light territory either, but I am staying in the yellow light territory for now. I see all of the strategic advantages of what he's done. Trust me, I do. I see that other countries like Russia and China and Cuba were all over Venezuela and its oil posing a potential threat to the United States. I get that. That's actually the most persuasive argument and obviously the real one. And none of this bullshit about law enforcement.

41:07But I have seen what happens when you cheerlead unabashedly U.S. intervention in foreign countries thinking it's for our good and for the national, the international good, only to wind up with what we've called quagmire. And what does it mean in terms of boots on the ground. Trump is saying, I'm actually fine with that in Venezuela. Well, whose boots? Because I have a 16 year old boy and I have a 12 year old boy and I have a 14 year old girl. And a lot of my listeners have children, too, who are actually the ones who might have to fill the boots. So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads, for that matter, when I say I'm staying in yellow territory until we know more.

41:46And I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade this time. I think that was a very important moment and revelation and requires some humility to say, because she says, you know, she's embarrassed by the cheerleading that she did at Fox News, because what she's saying here is not just like, this is what we were expected to do. And it's not even, and having worked at one of these cable mats, like, you know, I think Fox News had more of a top down, this is our line and this is our storyline than MSNBC, just because culturally, like they were different spaces. And I was on Megan's show many times, actually, at Fox News.

42:21But in any case, you don't need that direct instruction to know what you're supposed to do and to know what the consequences are if you don't do that. And so she's also admitting here that like, yeah, I knew what the assignment was and I did it. Right. I knew the assignment was whatever the new war is. I'm all in. I'm cheerleading for it. It's great. Look at our brave men and women. This is going to be amazing. go America, go. And I, you know, I was a good little girl and I fell in line and I did that thing and I'm not doing it anymore. Like I'm, I'm not going to participate in that anymore. I will say one like nitpick thing is, you know, she's talking about this.

43:00Like I, she's like, I think the real reason is that it's Russia and China buying the oil. And I don't, this is so silly to me because like the reason that it was our own choice to not buy the Venezuelan oil. it's not like they wouldn't sell it to us. It's that we had decided to sanction them and block them from exporting oil to us. So like, that was all that was available to us. It's just sort of like crazy to me the way this is framed. Like, well, they were selling to our adversaries. It's like, yeah, because you wouldn't buy from them. So in any case. Well, we didn't like that they said we couldn't do it on our terms.

43:32Like that's basically what Chavez expropriated it. And Chavez, yes. But I'm talking about in the present with Maduro. He was like, take the oil. Like, yes, I will do the deals. Like, it's all there for you. I'm cool. It's fine. Let's do a deal, Donald Trump, you know? And there's this amazing Chomsky clip that, in front of the show, Glenn Greenwald references a lot. And Ryan and I actually asked Don Lemon about it one time, which was incredibly funny. I think we asked Brian Stelter about it too, but Chomsky is - I remember when you asked. Yeah, it was funny. He wasn't familiar with it, right? He was not familiar with it, but it's this moment where Chomsky is sitting across him.

44:05I want to say it's a BBC guy. And but the point is, the guy is like, we aren't getting do you really think that we're getting talking points essentially to like manufacture consent? And Trump's like, no, no, no. The thing is, if you weren't ideologically on board with everything that your corporate bosses are, you wouldn't be sitting here. Like the point is, they don't need to tell you what to say. And I actually thought that was pretty interesting from Megan because it wasn't just about this idea, this conspiratorial idea that's easy to believe if you haven't seen how the sausage is made inside of these networks, that there are like talking points handed out at the beginning of every day.

44:43There are editorial meetings where, you know, you I'm sure get a pretty good sense of what the network's line is. And they say these are the topics that are hot right now. This is what the audience is loving and all of that. But the point is they hire people who are ideologically in agreement on this big foreign policy question, which is imperialism and U.S. intervention. And that's I think that's actually genuinely very interesting to see an ideological break from a lot of people. Now, this is a Trump quote. We can put B2 up on the screen. This is Trump saying MAGA loves it, referring to this regime change operation.

45:19MAGA loves what I'm doing. MAGA loves everything I do. So MAGA is me. Is this a poem? MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too. This is like, what do you tell a seven-year-old to write a poem? I mean, this is cartoonish. This is an incredible Trump quote. This is truly an incredible Trump quote. It's Pete Trump. Yeah, that's... MAGA is me. MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too. MAGA is me. All right. Self-reflection there. But, yeah, I mean, listen, like, I think most people, And we have a kind of compilation of reactions to share with everyone. But there's a division on the right.

45:57Yes. But the division isn't necessarily between oppose and support. It's a lot of people who fall into the Megan camp, which is the she described it as yellow light, not green or red. Yeah. Not opposed to green or red necessarily. And I think it's remarkable that she had on Aaron Maté yesterday to talk right away. that was obviously, I don't have any insider knowledge of it, but I think intentional to start that show with Mate. And then she had Walter Kern on to give the pro case, which was super interesting. But that's where I think a lot of people are. Like Tucker on his show last night, dropped last night, Tucker Carlson was talking about how he's kind of uncomfortable with it.

46:34But if it's a precise thing that works out, which he sounded pretty skeptical that it will, maybe it'll be a good thing. But you just see like hesitance among a chunk of MAGA. You don't see total outright opposition from many people. I think there are a lot of people who I know we pulled this Matt Walsh reaction. What did you make of this, Crystal? Not not entirely surprising. So Walsh rebutting and J.D. Vance did something similar, rebutting allegations that it's a war for oil. He seems like he's on board with this one. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so you can see, first of all, the war lasted like 90 minutes.

47:17I mean, it's just so. That's from Walsh. Yeah, this is Matt Walsh. Second, going to war to secure vital resources for your own people is totally legitimate. I mean, this is the sort of thing we used to have some shame about. We used to feel the need to cloak it in democracy or human rights. So now it's just, no, we're going to steal the resources. Why should we allow some third world communist shithole to control trillions of dollars worth of oil? So then just like, oh, OK, people aren't allowed to. And listen, Maduro's last election, I think, pretty widely viewed as illegitimate. But in general, like, OK, there's lots of countries around the world with leaders we don't like.

47:50Right. We're just going to depose them all. And many of them we work with. Right. The many like illegitimate authoritarian leaders that are direct allies. But in any case, I mean, just completely embracing the most brazen, overt, like villainous, truly language about resource extraction. now because Daddy Trump does it and, you know, I'm going to position this as like the cool and based position. We can put B5B up on the screen, you know, from him previously. I've noticed a stark uptick in anonymous accounts of no followers claiming they've unfollowed me and that my employer should cut ties because I'm opposed to regime change wars, a stance I've held consistently and vocally for my entire adult life up until Trump did something different.

48:33And now here we are. so and there's a lot of this I mean you know uh Fuentes we can put him up on the screen he's actually taking some I don't know how significant it is from his followers he was cheerleading this Venezuela regime change leading up to it um making comments in favor of it etc it's a buying into the like Monroe doctor and all that sort of stuff after it happens immediately he just posts this like USA with a flag and then after Trump comes down it's like we're going to run the country and we're going to rebuild their infrastructure. He says, well, initially it seemed like a solid operation to cleanly, bloodlessly and quickly remove Maduro from power last night.

49:10But this new policy of running Venezuela with U.S. soldiers sounds like a massive overcommitment. I have zero confidence in nation building. Big mistake. And I sort of feel like, well, what did you think regime change was going to be? Vibes? How did you think this was going to go, like, you don't just depose the leader, decapitate the regime, and then it's like, oh, done with that, moving along, you know, and expect that, you know, all the resources are going to flow to you. No, I mean, this is going to be much more complicated, much more fraught, much more chaotic. And with Trump, you know, overtly say, hey, we might do boots on the ground, we may do years of, we may take out other countries, like it's all on the table, seems to be pretty diametrically opposed to all of the assertions previously when they thought it was politically beneficial and Trump was positioning himself as the peace president and the anti-regime change war president and the anti-forever war president.

50:05You know, there was a lot of a different tone being struck then. But leading up to this, Emily, I mean, we talked about it. I talked about it with Sagar. There was not the same level of resistance from MAGA on this as there was with Iran. No. With Iran, it was there was much more direct opposition. Yeah. There was much more, you know, expressed concern building up to it here because I don't know, you've got a confluence of you've got the Latin American neocons. You've got the, you know, the oh, it's just based to come in and take the oil vibe. Socialism. The drug trafficker thing. Yeah. You've got the communism angle.

50:39You know, there was enough there that basically all the factions of MAGA were kind of on board with it or actively cheerleading it. And I think that is that is another piece of why I'm not saying this the whole reason, but I do think that's another piece of why this went forward at this time, because Trump, I mean, he's looking around. All these people hate each other's guts and are fighting with each other. And this whole coalition is splintering. And Marjorie Taylor Green is out of Congress actually now, or I think yesterday was her last day. And she's taken shots at him. Thomas Massey's taken shots in his approvals in the toilet.

51:10And I think he also sort of felt like, okay, this is a way for me to gather up all the pieces and get everybody back singing the same tune on something that, you know, a regime change operation that we're all going to get behind. Well, and it's obviously there are significant differences between Iran and Venezuela. And as a conservative, I'm sympathetic to some of the arguments about like hemispheric stability and, you know, undermining Chinese influence among potential allies, what I disagree with is that this is a constructive way to deal with either of those problems. Given the last 50 plus years of history in Latin America, U.S.

51:50history in Latin America, I'm looking at Alex Jones' post right here that says America must protect its own hemisphere. Mike Cernovich on that Tucker Carlson episode that dropped last night I referenced was basically debating the wisdom of this with Tucker. And Cernovich made a valid point. I think we would all agree with the point that not every war is Iraq and that there are grades of Iraq-style conflicts and that there are some military... Being opposed to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan does not mean you're opposed to all use of military force. And at the same time, again, there's this Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich.

52:30I find this actually genuinely interesting. I think you can tell that Tucker was sort of torn by it idea that there is a kind of ideological global globalist slash communist uh what's the right word like plot to consolidate world power and part of that that's so ridiculous but part of that what's what's what's interesting is that part of this is this idea that the global elites are communists right the idea that they want you to live in the pod. Right, which is so preposterous. Like the global elites are the people who are doing this regime change war to carve up Venezuela into pieces and profit off of it.

53:08Yeah, they're definitely not Marxist. And they may have like some cultural progressive leanings. But that's where I think this is your point about how there's a thought that this could bring together disparate factions. The Alex Jones reaction, I think, is genuinely pretty interesting. I'm not saying it's like politically significant, but I think it's genuinely interesting because it's this, what's the right word for it? It's testing what MAGA actually is. Is MAGA this like kind of interesting, I mean, it's obviously going to be interesting no matter what. It's MAGA and MAGA is me, as we know, according to Donald Trump.

53:46MAGA is everyone. MAGA is everywhere. But like, what is it? Because here's Lindsey Graham. We would be remiss if we didn't play this clip of Lindsey Graham. One of the things that Tucker was debating with Cernovich is that he thinks the problem is that this is creating a playbook that Trump is going to rinse and repeat elsewhere. So let's roll. The happiest man in America. The happiest man for now. B7. I pray and hope that 2026 will be

54:17the year that we make Iran great again. You just put a make Iran great again hat on on cable news. And I think he had Trump sign one of these as well. So yeah. And I, you guys probably saw the clip. So we may have played one of them yesterday. I don't remember of Lindsey Graham on Air Force One with Trump. And just, I mean, I have never seen anyone. I mean, like, you know, like a kid on Christmas, just absolutely ecstatic. So, you know, ask yourself if you want to be on board with the things that make Lindsey Graham happy in terms of foreign policy. That's one of things Megan mentioned when she was talking to Mate.

54:51She was like, she was like, anytime Lindsey Graham is happy, I'm uncomfortable. That's a good barometer. It's a great barometer. It's a great barometer. His track record is not stellar. And I think Thomas Massie, didn't Thomas Massie or was it maybe Rand Paul? I think it was Rand Paul said something like he should be banned from going to the White House. He said there should be a law. There should be a law that Lindsey Graham can't go to the White House like more than once a week. Yeah. Like that. That's the and that seems really generous. Once a week is way too many. Yeah. You know what will be poetic justice is not justice.

55:23Justice is definitely the wrong word for that, but will be poetic is if Trump pardons Maduro for giving some type of like, I don't know, fake election information. If Trump pardons Maduro, Lindsey Graham goes from being the happiest man in America to the saddest man. I don't know. Does he, though? I don't know if he can't like once he's gone and like if they're getting what they want out of Venezuela. I don't know. I don't know that he really cares about like deeply about specifically the fate of Maduro and whether he like rots in prison for the rest of his life or shipped to Turkey was I think or Russia was something that was floated.

55:56But I feel like Lindsey Graham is one of the few remaining like genuine neoconservatives, not neoconservatives, and that he's like a former Trotsky guy, but like actual imperialist, ideologically believes in spreading democracy. He's one of those like real true believers. So he may he may genuinely want Yeah. And they're out of right in jail. We'll see. But anyway, I mean, I think for right now, MAGA, I think Trump is right. MAGA is on board. The polling reflects that. It looks like it. You know, there are some warning signs. They're worried about, OK, well, do we get too involved? But I think they also have shown the capacity to, like, when you ask them in advance whether they support this, that was a different story.

56:32And then once Trump does it, then they're on board. So if we get more involved in Venezuela, they're going to probably be on board with that as well. So I don't think there's the same coalitional risks here that there were with Epstein, that there were with Iran, with Israel. I don't think you have the same sort of fraught landscape for him. But, I mean, I could be wrong. If it goes, like, really catastrophically, then maybe that calculus changes. But for now, people are pretty much more or less on board. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

57:05have 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. 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.

57:48And 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.

58:30Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its 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.

59:11The 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've 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. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away.

59:53Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of laws that need to be passed, seriously, the fact that this insider trading on Polymarket is just going on. And things you can bet on on these, you know, websites is just insane. The level of corruption and, you know, corrupt dealings and the way that our whole not even economy, like our whole world is turning into a casino. In any case, let's actually start with C2. This is the Wall Street Journal's write up of this polymarket mystery trader who made four hundred thousand dollars betting on Maduro's downfall.

1:00:34They say less than five hours before nighttime explosions rocked the Venezuelan capital. Caracas, an unknown trader, doubled down on bets specifically that Nicolas Maduro would soon be out as the country's leader. The wagers on Polymarket had a 12-fold return on investment and fueled suspicions that someone used inside knowledge of the closely held U.S. operation to make a quick profit. And they track here, you know, this person placed some initial bets in December. And then they end up, you know, just placing a massive amount of their bets just hours before this occurs. And at the time, there was only an 8 % probability, according to the overall market, that Maduro would lose power that month.

1:01:23Because while, you know, while we all knew that something was brewing, something might happen, etc. Like the specifics of it, that it was going to happen now and that it would be this kidnapping operation. Like, you know, the public did not have knowledge of that. So in any case, you know, the it looks very much it has all the hallmarks of some sort of insider who had, you know, once they got the information, went all in on this bet and netted themselves four hundred thousand dollars because of it. I mean, it's almost and we can put see one up on the screen now too. There's people who have done some digging on this wallet.

1:01:59And if you dig deep enough, there is a potential connection to Steve Wyckoff. Now, of course, with these wallets, that's very, very difficult to verify. And we don't know. I mean, that's, I don't want to spread this as though it's definitive or anything like that. But if you're interested, I encourage you to go look at the wallet digging that some folks have done. I did reach out to the White House to ask whether they were investigating this yesterday, especially actually given that semaphore reported. The New York Times, it was at the Washington Post also, were tipped off about the operation and refrained from posting it for the protection of troops.

1:02:39That's what the White House, I mean, that's an order that the White House or a request that the White House makes of outlets in similar situations historically, but they decided to comply and they didn't run their stories. But I asked the White House, are you investigating this, given that maybe journalists could have been people that were making these bets? Now, to me, I look at the wallet investigation, I find it to be fairly compelling, Crystal. And it seems like it was a very small circle of Trump officials who were even in a position to alert the media. So the odds of this being someone at a very high level are significant.

1:03:17And it's something the White absolutely should be investigating. But we've seen from crypto, and we're going to talk about that in just one moment, but from crypto to these types of betting markets, Polymarket, Calci, this administration is pretty comfortable with this type of financial activity. And it may seem like nothing. And I know people who use Polymarket and Calci and bet on these things think that it's, you know, you can make the argument sometimes that it's good to have insiders involved from their perspective. They'll make that argument and say, it, you know, gives a, this is not an argument I agree with, but it's democratizing in the way that smart traders can follow, can try to follow these wallets and see what they're doing and capitalize on it.

1:04:07But on the other hand, you have the deeply corrupting, deeply corrupting influence of people who are making these bets and public life getting super rich off of it, first of all, it's wrong. And second of all, it can start to influence their decisions. Yeah, it's obvious. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's it is I think it is obvious. I don't think it requires explanation. I think most people look at this and are disgusted by it, you know, that you use your position of power to personally profit and that, you know, it's impossible even for that individual to really know whether that's influencing the advice they're giving to the president of the United States and whatever policies are under their direct purview that they can affect and they can also bet on and make tons and tons of money on.

1:04:47So it's deeply, deeply corrosive and frankly disgusting. So, you know, I don't think there's any doubt. Like there's very little doubt that there was some insider here who was trading who it is is more of a question mark. The wallet investigation points to just my understanding is that one of the wallets was affiliated with or connected to a wallet that had the name Stephen Charles. Witkoff's name is Stephen Charles Witkoff. So that's the connection that they're making there. Again, this is not at all definitive or proven, but these are the sort of breadcrumbs that have to be tracked down to get any sense of what is actually going on here.

1:05:24Let's go ahead and talk about... By the way, we should mention Donald Trump Jr. is involved with Kalshi. He's on the board or he's like an advisor. And also for Polymarket, at least he was as of August, he was an advisor to Polymarket. Oh, he was involved with them too? I didn't even know that. That was wild. In any case, let's go ahead and talk about this other person in the Trump orbit who stands to directly benefit from the regime operation and war on Venezuela. can put this up on the screen, C3, this was a very good article from Popular Info, where they, Judd Lagoon writes down here that Venezuela raid enriches mega-billionaire, the ouster of majora, the financial windfall for a prominent Trump-supporting billionaire investor, Paul Singer.

1:06:09Okay, Singer gives millions of dollars to Republicans, Trump included, and he recently purchased Citgo through his investment vehicles, okay? Citgo, bear with me here for a moment, used to be owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, okay? It had debt. I'm not even going to get into the technical legal specifics, but basically we took it in the, you know, under the, like, sanctions era against Maduro. We basically took it and sold it off. And, you know, now it has ended up in the hands of Paul Singer. So Sitco has, you guys are probably somewhat familiar with them. They have, of course, gas stations across the country.

1:06:52They also own refineries. And those refineries are specifically outfitted to process Venezuelan crude. And the fact that they are not no longer able to get that crude from Venezuela because of the current, you know, sanctions regime and hostile relations with Venezuela has made Sitco much less profitable and much less of a highly valued asset. So the estimate is that Singer got this for basically like bargain basement prices because of that reality of, you know, their refineries not being, not operating at optimal capacity because they don't have access to this crude. Well, So he stands to benefit and his companies stand to benefit directly if that situation changes.

1:07:38So, you know, I think that's important to understand that this Trump donor and we talked earlier about how, you know, you've got this a lot of powerful, wealthy influences, both for ideological and financial reasons, who wanted to see, you know, this outcome in Venezuela that pushes Trump in this direction. And Paul Singer, I think, is an important part of understanding that. And then the last thing we have here from C4 is, I mentioned this earlier, but, you know, Trump met with the oil executives before the action. He's at new meetings with oil companies now after the action to, you know, make a deal with them.

1:08:17They'll benefit from a little bit of U.S. government socialism, helping to prop them up in Venezuela so Trump can get what he wants out of this transaction, action, try to push them in that direction over what appears to be some reluctance to, you know, to re-engage or engage for the first time in Venezuela in certain situations. But in any case, that gives you some sense of what's going on here. Yeah. The Politico did a story trying to reach out to some of these oil companies before the operation and found that nobody was interested. It was crickets when they reached out being like, hey, anyone want to get back into Venezuela?

1:08:52And people were pretty hesitant about it. One thing we should also mention is that, lest you think that popular information story is just from lefties, the Wall Street Journal has an article, Citgo is a crown jewel of Venezuela's oil industry. Elliott, that's Paul Singer's hedge fund, is set to reap the benefits. And if we go further down, this deal actually has to be approved by the Treasury Department. So it's not done yet. It's not done yet. Who's in charge of the Treasury Department. Oh, a man named Scott Besant, who loves deals like this. And so that's now in front of the Trump administration again.

1:09:30So we'll see, Crystal, but it reminds me of the story that Ken Vogel did just yesterday in the New York Times. I think it was yesterday. I'm sorry, it was actually earlier, but January 2nd, the headline, Trump's super PAC raised more than $100 million in recent months. The single biggest donor was$12.5 million each. These are the single biggest donors from Greg Brockman, who's co-founder of OpenAI and his wife. So we're talking, this is from crypto.com. This is contributions from the parent company of crypto.com,$20 million. And so this is an administration that is openly transactional. I don't even need to tell people that everyone kind of understands that's how it works at this point.

1:10:18The administration is relatively transparent about that being how it works at this point. But if you think that played no factor in this geopolitical military intervention, I don't know what to tell you. I think it's fairly obvious. And the stakes of that, when you have Lindsey Graham putting his make a Ron great again hat on during Fox News hits, the stakes of that, lest you think Venezuela is no big deal, which obviously you and I don't agree with, Crystal, but let's say that's your position. This can accelerate around the world in ways that I think would make people genuinely nervous about who's deciding American foreign policy at the end of the day and why.

1:11:01Yeah. Well, I think people are already pretty concerned about that. At least I am. And I think many others are also because they can see what's happening. I mean, it's not even, And it doesn't require us to explain. Like, it's all out in the open. You know, Trump says it outright. So it kind of makes our job easy because he's like, yeah, we want to plunder. That's what we're there for. Yeah, and as Vogel writes, some of these guys were invited to that big dinner for Mohammed bin Salman. So the crypto guys. And so, yeah, this is it's bought and paid for. I guess maybe it's slightly better that we can kind of see what's happening.

1:11:36But it's also even more nakedly transactional. Yeah. Yeah, I see. I don't I understand that instinct and I feel it in a certain sense as well. But I think shame is actually a good thing. Oh, I don't disagree. Yeah, because it does create some limits on what can be done. I mean, as bad as the, you know, democracy regime change, like, oh, we're doing this for human rights, whatever. It meant that the fact they had to code it in some sort of like legitimate aspirational goal gave a political weapon to oppose it with, you know, when it's just like, no. I mean, and I keep bringing up Gaza. I mean, I think Gaza was an important test case for them of like, oh, we can do a genocide in plain view.

1:12:21Everyone can see it. We can starve an entire trapped population, turn the whole place to rubble, and we can just do it. And no one's going to stop us. And, you know, that puts everything on the table. It puts everything on the table. It just means if we have the force and the weaponry, we can do it. Now, it doesn't consider any second order consequences, let alone any third, fourth, fifth, 40th order consequences. But in terms of the initial shock and awe, might makes right, it puts everything on the table. And that's the world we live in now. Well, this is a great point to turn now to Yohan Grillo and to bring him into the conversation because he's been on the ground in Colombia, where Donald Trump is also now flirting with potential regime change efforts against Gustavo Petro.

1:13:04So let's get to Yohan. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is out of 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.

1:13:46The 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? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

1:14:27Can 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.

1:15:11Hey, 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 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?

1:15:51I 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're joined now, actually, from the border, Colombian border with Venezuela by journalist Yohan Grillo, truly one of the very best out there. Please go subscribe to his sub stack over at crashoutmedia.com is one of, I think, the most invaluable places to get reporting from Latin America.

1:16:29Yohan is based in Mexico. Yohan, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, great to be here. Hope all is well there. Now, you've been embedded, actually, with Colombian law enforcement as the chaos in Venezuela ensues. Can you just give us a sense of what you—people should absolutely, by the way, go over to your sub-stack and read your piece about this. We can put D1 up on the screen. This is Yohan's reporting from the ground in Colombia. But if you could just give us a sense of what it's been like on the ground in Colombia, where Donald Trump has threatened Gustavo Petro since this Venezuela operation was completed.

1:17:08What's going on down there right now? Yeah, sure. So I'm in Cucuta, which is the biggest border city between Colombia and Venezuela and one of the biggest communities of Venezuelans outside of the country. and you've got the situation around the border post with a lot of Venezuelans who come over to work and a lot of refugees as well in neighbourhoods here but also one with the military outside of the city now one of the things that happened is that immediately when the attack happened on Saturday at 2am Venezuela time on Saturday the colonel was saying he was woken up then they had immediately had a meeting with President Petro with the Ministry of Defence to say we have to react to this, and they sent 30 ,000 troops to the border.

1:18:00Now, part of this was just because of the threat or what they saw as a threat of any US aggression that could spill over, the same as if in the United States you had suddenly an attack from China on Canada. I'm sure they would immediately send troops to the Canadian border just as a kind of response. But also there's a guerrilla group called the ELN, the Ejército Nacional de Liberación, National Liberation Army, which is a guerrilla group also incited in the indictments against Maduro, which crosses both sides of the border. It's about 5 ,000 people. And immediately following the attacks, they noted a lot of these guerrillas moving right over back into Colombia, you know, responding.

1:18:42But since then, the guerrilla group has now issued a statement saying, you know, we need to respond to gringo aggression. So you see these things and the army were looking at this. Also, you had in December, the same guerrilla group carried out a wave of attacks and bombs and all these kind of things as well. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What is your sense of why they were moving into Colombia, what they may do going forward and how significant they are to the future in Venezuela? So I think that there is immediate response. I mean, they move back and forth over the border. And so they're very present in both countries and they can move very easily.

1:19:19And immediately when they saw the attacks, it was kind of an immediate retreating movement. They saw large people like, you know, are we going to be attacked ourselves? You know, could their camps have been targeted? You know, were there CIA locations in some of their camps since they move into Colombian territory? But seeing that it was a more limited attack, I think one of the big situations happening right now, and there's news this morning about this, there's apparently a kidnapping of a bunch of police officers by the guerrillas. And there's a lot of reports that are quite hard to confirm.

1:19:55But from Venezuela, since this U.S. Special Forces abduction or apprehension of Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, you've got a lot of these armed groups emerging and coming out more. So the guerrillas, the ELN, in a lot of this part of Venezuela, they move their people. So they're very, very openly present there. And they're working with Venezuelan authorities. You have this group called, people say, called the Colectivos, which are basically pro-government or pro-Chavista, Chavista being the socialist ideology, named after Hugo Chavez, the founder. These are armed groups which are very, very present in the neighborhood, and we've seen them come out a lot more.

1:20:40So people are telling me that, like in the areas now, they're seeing these militias out, just talking to a colleague in Caracas, a Venezuelan colleague in Caracas, who's sending me information there. From there, there was a big march on Sunday following the apprehension of Maduro, where a lot of these colectivos came out openly holding guns, openly carrying Klasnikovs. So there's a kind of worry about with a certain vacuum of power, with the Venezuelan government being weakened from above by the United States, then from below these kind of armed groups taking more power. And one of the things my colleague in Caracas was saying is there's a worry this could become a bit more like a Lebanonization of the streets with these different armed groups, ELN, collectivos and different groups openly kind of controlling the neighborhoods if there's not a clear authority asserted.

1:21:41Well, let's play here Donald Trump talking about Gustavo Petro. This is going to be D2.

1:22:08And we can go ahead and put this next element up on the screen as well. This is Gustavo Petro a couple of times, actually, in recent days, basically saying, come get me. Not dissimilar entirely from what we saw from Nicolas Maduro, obviously, before Trump came and got him. Yo, and just wanted to ask how this back and forth is affecting the, basically, the reality on the ground in Colombia. That's kind of what we've been talking about the entire time. But how fragile is or is not? How fragile is Petro right now? What is the what is the sense on the ground? So I think Petro is a very, very different thing from Maduro and a very different situation.

1:22:50I mean, Maduro was indicted twice, was indicted in 2020 and again this year on on narco terrorism conspiracy, cocaine trafficking. we don't know about any indictments of Gustavo Petro, if there's any there at all. The other thing is that whereas with Maduro, there's a pretty credible claims that Maduro stole the election in 2024. And though Trump hasn't really talked about this much, it's being much the reasons, the political reasons, it's more about crime or oil. there's you know Marco Rubio emphasizes that and he was you know Venezuela was quite a kind of rogue regime in some senses around the region that's not true there's no real serious claims that Gustavo Petro stole the election when he was elected and he actually will leave power this year now Gustavo Petro is very big on social media and talks you know very kind of in anti-imperialist talks a very kind of hard rhetoric but it's quite hard to see if that would be kind of be backed um you know with the military i was with the military in colombia and my sense is the military uh in colombia are actually quite right wing you know for they've fought for years against the farc the left wing was the farc and now fighting the eln i think they're quite anti-leftist uh very different than venezuelan military which is run by Chavistas.

1:24:21And so I don't think this kind of situation or an armed confrontation, I don't think it's on the cards. However, I just always give a caveat here. Now, because, you know, Trump, you have to take him seriously. You know, he can say this stuff and you think, oh, it's not serious. And then, you know, now he's shown with this, you know, a very brazen, high-risk operation to take out Maduro. You have to take this stuff seriously. So we don't know. But I don't think war will go to Colombia at this point. But, you know, we'll have to see. What was Petro's relationship with Maduro like? And how many Venezuelans are actually in Colombia now?

1:24:58Yeah, so that's another interesting thing about Petro is whereas he had left wing and he was himself as a history with guerrilla movements, he actually ended up having a bit more of a combative relationship with Maduro. It was, you know, it was a bit rocky up and down. And so he's kind of trying now to to kind of bring in certain Chavista stuff, certain Chavista stuff. But his relationship was not great. And also he's in conflict now with this ELN guerrilla group. And the ELN guerrilla group is very openly pro-Chavista, very openly, you know, ideologically very, very left wing, very anti-imperialist, very anti-American.

1:25:40although they're also involved in cocaine trafficking and justify that as a way to sell cocaine to the gringos, to the United States. Now, the actual Venezuelan population here, it's estimated at 2.8 million Venezuelans in Colombia. So there was about 8 million, close to 8 million Venezuelans left the country since 2014. Maduro took power in 2013. And whereas the economy, there was actually growth under Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez took power in 1999, so he was in power for 14 years. And he did have a period of growth. And the first time I went to Venezuela was 2012. And things were quite good then.

1:26:22There was still quite a lot of sympathy for Chavez. Then you saw things go down drastically in the country. So like 2015, 2016, these things absolutely collapsed. I mean, you saw the economy go down by 80%. And what that meant on the ground was real devastation and malnutrition. So when you see 8 million people walking out of the country in a decade. And so there's a lot of people, you know, we're talking to people, the Venezuelans at the bridge here, people coming over for the day. They're generally, you know, very anti-government in this particular part. Now, there's also our pro-government people still marching in Caracas and in various places.

1:27:01A lot of them are very much against this government. But also, with kind of a lot of caution about this, I mean, one thing is they took out Maduro. So for a second, you thought, okay, this is a big change. The revolution's happened. And within a few hours, you realize, actually, the regime is still in power. So the rest of the people are still in power. So, and again, to understand the situation on the ground and what this really looks like, people, they can't go out and start celebrating on the streets in Venezuela. they've got these pro-government militias in their neighborhoods, and they're going to know who you are if you go out and they can target you.

1:27:39You've got a political police known as Sabine. You've got the guerrillas around there working with the government. So you have got a lot of this apparatus there. And then they realize, okay, it's still there. But one guy was saying to me, because, well, we're patient. We've seen, you know, over a lot of years. But then it's very unclear. You had then, you know, the Trump turning against Maria Corina Machado of the opposition. Now, I talked to a lot of people about that. And in some way, it's kind of interesting because a lot of the kind of left wing commentators would say, oh, Maria Corina Machado was a CIA asset.

1:28:16But according to some of the evidence that's coming out now, it seems that the CIA was saying from their intelligence reports, he doesn't actually have that much support in the country on the ground. I think that might be fairly true. Talk to people, it's not like there's a real big support. There's still quite big... Which is what happened with Guaido, right, Ewan? Yeah, exactly. And one of the problems, I think, for the Venezuelan opposition is the Venezuelan opposition often are from quite an elite, upper class Venezuelan background. And most Venezuelan people are poor, working class and poor.

1:28:51And so there's quite a big gap sometimes of how they relate to people. Whereas the Chavistas did genuinely build this kind of working class base in these communities, which also I think is very repressive. So it's a complex situation. But like the, you know, so they kind of concluded, but they're right now leaving Nancy Rodriguez, who's been part of the regime. You talk to people, they say, well, she's just part of the same thing. They've got Díaz Dado Caballo, who's right there in power. He's indicted, but he's still in power. And they say, well, these are still the same regime. Now, we have to see how things play out.

1:29:30but you know one of the worst situations would be or what's happening right now is you have you know the trump government saying we know we say we're running venezuela saying that we're meaning we're running it with warships in the caribbean telling them what they have to do we're going to bomb you again rather than you know an iraq occupation and but then running a an authoritarian government as long as they give the united states what it wants but keeping that same authoritarian government in power in the worst of all worlds? Or is it going to be actually overseeing a transition and they see it has to be slow, you know, move slowly?

1:30:06That might be the case. But things just seem very unstable. Another thing is that, like, so for us journalists, most of us who came down here hope to go into Venezuela after the thing, nobody's been able to get in. A lot of journalists who've tried to go in, they've detained them, deleted all their material and thrown them back. There's a lot of news about journalists inside Venezuela being detained. Now, you know, people are trying to apply for visa journalists to go in then. I mean, it's the same. The United States says you have to have a visa journalist to go in the report. But nobody's really getting them.

1:30:41So it's hard to get the information there. But the immediate atmosphere is the government continues to be repressive or even more repressive in reaction to this, what's happening right now. My last question for you, John, is my understanding is Petro was not that popular. Has his popularity in the country improved vis-a-vis his sort of like aggressive stance in defense of Colombia and against Trump? Or is that not really made a difference? I don't think so. That's not my impression. And it's hard to see what to see kind of new opinion polls. But I think generally in Colombia, there's quite a lot of disillusionment with Petro in power, even among some people that are kind of sympathetic to him.

1:31:28And whereas in contrast with Mexico, where I'm normally based, I do think Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico is still generally popular overall and has been quite an effective president in some ways. I don't think that's true of Gustavo Pedro. And there's a base and there's quite a enthusiastic or dedicated base. and there's dedicated people who really, really believe in Petro and the kind of left-wing project and the kind of first time you've had it in Colombia. In Colombia for a long time, political left was kind of not being very active because the guerrillas, you know, they said left-wing basically meant you were a guerrilla, meant you were the FARC, meant you were the ELF.

1:32:16But this time experiment of left-wing government in Colombia I don't think has been very popular, But we'll see there's a new election coming up in on 31st of May. And Petro, the party has a candidate and is a right wing candidate competing there as well. Well, from the outside, I will say I have enjoyed his content creation quite a bit. So there at least there's that. We'll have to have you back to talk about Mexico, which is a whole other can of worms. But thank you so much for breaking down what you're seeing there on the ground. So, so helpful. We really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

1:32:49Great to be here. All the best there.

1:33:041969, 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. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook.

1:33:51Let 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. 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. I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of 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.

1:34:33Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.