1/7/26: Trump Seizes Russian Vessel, China Salivates Over Taiwan, Trump Seizes Millions Of Venezuela Oil Barrels

26:42I'm somebody who largely, I think international law is fake. I think everything is, but that doesn't mean that you should just do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. There's never been a true limiting principle on power. What has always been a check against power? There's other power, right? And so not only that, if you look, let's say, at the most competent realpolitik statesmen, people like Bismarck, people like Eisenhower, the genuine managers of empire. They always recognize checks, balances, vital security interests, the ability to be very cogent and even in terms of potential overextension to never do so and to maintain some sort of balance.

27:23What we're acting like right now is completely drunk with power that we don't have. So that's the final word I want to make here is that during the 12-day war, the United States spent 25 percent of its – 25 percent of that interceptor's entire stockpile was depleted in 12 days in a war that we were not even involved in. Whenever it comes to shells – No offense to Iran, third or fourth rate power. Sixth rate power whenever it comes to something that we're dealing with right here. whenever you know we think about artillery munitions we don't even have enough to supply all of ukraine yeah okay we had we had to overthrow emran khan we literally yeah exactly and more of them and blackmail south korea to send all of their shells we have nothing for an actually prolonged conflict that is why do you think i've been freaking out about ukraine and israel because we are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars let me tell you an inside story about midnight hammer, and I have this confirmed, is that the actual op plan for CENTCOM was a 35-day bombing campaign against Iran.

28:31That's the Israeli attack on Iran. No, no, no. Midnight hammer was our attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. The one that came after Israel. Yes, the op plan for the United States, 35 days of bombing. You know why we couldn't do that? We don't have any munitions. We don't have a 35-day bombing campaign. There is also a story I was told about midnight hammer, where just Midnight Hammer, one B-2 bombing raid, required so much logistical headache and stretched them to the brim that it almost broke the logistical, in terms of having to resupply, having forward deployment, like all of that. Not to mention what just happened here with Maduro.

29:11So can we do extraordinary one-time limited operations? Of course, this is America. We're the best at that. We're like a high-precision, tooled F1 race car. Sprinter. That is not one. That is not what wins wars. What wins wars is, I mean, the Nazis are a good example. They had plenty of it. I mean, they literally had the first jet aircraft in World War II. Doesn't matter because we can just roll B-17s, as many as we possibly want. You want the Ford factory that just cranks out, you know, fine enough stuff compared to this high-precision stuff, which has been nuked currently, the defense industrial complex, because that's what's super expensive.

29:51F-35 is another good example. So put all of that in the context of what we're dealing with. Corilla's air campaign against the Houthis is also a good example. That was supposed to last like three or four months, and it ended up lasting just a couple weeks because they're like, oh, this isn't doing the damage we thought it was, and we're running out of stuff. And we ran out of stockpiles. And that was against the Houthis, a non-state actor. Now we're screwing with Russia with China. We're knocking our planes off our ships. That's right. We lost two separate aircraft in incidents. $75 million each or something.

30:21People look at Midnight Hammer and the Maduro thing, and they're like, oh, America's back. No, it's the opposite, guys. That's all we can do now. That's part of the problem. So long-winded, I apologize. But I mean, I do think this is a very, very, very significant event. And who knows how the Kremlin will react. I'm not predicting war or any of that. But at the very same time, they're trying to do some deal in Ukraine. I mean, why would you make a deal whenever this is the BS that you would have to deal with? So we'll see. All right, let's get on to China. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles.

30:51I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almormata, 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.

31:33This 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. Can you get someone to join your cult?

32:11NLP 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. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

32:55On 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'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, but then I couldn't kind of recover.

33:35And 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. Turning now to China. You know, I do think this is genuinely the most important after effect and question of the post-Maduro world. is how are Russia, China going to react? What will the world take away, let's say from this US action of extraordinarily renditioning Nicolas Maduro? And inside of Venezuela, obviously this is a country, Ryan, maybe you can tell us more, but had deep ties with Cuba, had deep ties with Russia, had deep ties with China.

34:26Largely with China, it wasn't ideological. China was like, look, we don't care who governs you, we'll take the oil. All right. Like, we'll come in. We'll buy as much as we possibly want. And that's why everybody's eyes kind of went wide here. When Delce Rodriguez, the so-called new pro-American or like, you know, American puppet, I guess, if you want to stay down in Venezuela, at her swearing in, guys, let's go and play this video, just openly starts to embrace the Chinese ambassador, the Russian ambassador, and then following the Iranian ambassador. Sure. And I mean, clearly, I think it was a telegraphed signal from Venezuela, from the Rodriguez regime, I guess we should call it now.

35:07But in and of itself, it does show you the Chinese are not going to take this just lying down. I'm not saying they're going to start a war or anything like that, but they're going to start planning for the future. There was actually a Chinese delegation inside of Venezuela that met with Maduro hours before he was actually kidnapped. And so you put it all together and their takeaway from this geopolitically is going to be the most important one. So Russia's bogged down in Ukraine. They're more of a second rate power. But the first rate power here has to be looking around and just going, OK, what do we do now?

35:40And I mean, I want your analysis, but it will also show everybody inside Beijing. They're having a lot of very interesting debates about what this all means. Yeah, and this goes back to our sanctions policy, which Trump heavily ramped up. He tried to coup Maduro in his first term. Didn't happen, so they deeply ramped up the sanctions, which produced two things. Well, three things, and they led to each other. Misery among the people of Venezuela, which then led to an outflow of migration. That's why we have so many Venezuelans pouring into the country from the time of Trump's sanctions up until fairly recently.

36:21And then it also led to tightening relationships between Venezuela and Russia, Iran, and China, because those countries can then come in and get basically heavily discounted oil, because you're blocked from selling it to lots of other places. So we created all of the conditions that we're now complaining about, both the migration crisis and also the tight relationship between Venezuela and these countries that we consider our adversaries, which we're now saying we're going to go in and solve just with violence. Put up this next element up on the screen because this is what that image that you saw is now in direct conflict with Trump's order to hit to Rodriguez.

37:07He said so this is the Trump administration told Venezuela's interim president. The regime must meet several conditions before being allowed to pump more oil. And the demands are the country must kick out China, Russia, Iran and Cuba and sever economic ties. Venezuela must agree to partner exclusively with the U.S. on oil production and favor America when selling heavy crude oil. And so we can talk about Cuba in a second because that's very that's a Rubio element here. But you'd be like, who cares about Cuba? Oh, Rubio cares about Cuba. And they think that this is the way that they're going to destroy that, destroy that government as well.

37:45But it's like this is and this goes to your point about spheres of influence and everything else. It's like, wait, kick them out. We kick them out. So what if China - We can. To what end? Right. So can China say, all right, you know what? I want the US out of South Korea. Bingo. The Philippines. Japan. Malaysia. Japan. Yeah. Like, get out. You can say that. Yeah, exactly. So this is what I'm trying to say is everyone's like, I got a lot of income in. They're like, this is the world that you want to live in, spheres of influence. And I said, yeah, I believe strongly in spheres of influence. I also believe, though, that other countries have spheres of influence where we also - which should be a check on their own.

38:22Want a lot of influence. And part of the reason why you should tread lightly is to always make sure that, let's say we're acting, you know, people said, you can't allow Chinese and Russian domination of Venezuela. To say that is absurd. Did China and Russia buy oil from Venezuela? Yeah. Was Venezuela a Chinese puppet regime? Preposterous. I literally looked at the amount of oil that they were getting. It's like 5 % total, right? In terms of China's overall – They didn't export any oil at all. It's really not that important to China. I mean, look, 5 % is not nothing, but it's not exactly going to kill you either.

38:59Same with the Russians. I mean, the Kremlin had these quasi-ties to Maduro. They would kind of meet every once in a while. But it was not even close to some sort of puppet regime. It was mostly an alliance of convenience. One of the reasons why that I supported the deal with Maduro is that I was like, hey, the deal on the table is probably better for America because they effectively did it anyway. You keep the security apparatus. You try not to have the country descend into chaos. You let them sell us a ton of oil. And then basically you can allow U.S. companies to go in there and then sell it to the world.

39:30That's what Trump even said. Trump said we're going to sell China a ton of oil. He literally said that. It's just that as long as the U.S. companies are the ones who are going to drill it. I mean, OK, we could have had that deal under Maduro too. So I'm like, I don't really care. But the thing here is if you're China again and you're watching this explicit embrace of spheres of influence, then, yeah, they can say the exact same thing. That's what Sagar's talking about here. Put up this Washington Post and a lot of other news outlets reporting China studying U.S. strike for lessons and opportunities.

40:04And there's a funny pro-American slant to this coverage, which is saying that, you know, the kind of the evil, greedy and self-interested and selfish Chinese who would love to do this sort of thing are now very excited because the U.S. doing it is giving them a green light. What that misses is that we've been doing this kind of thing for 100 plus years. Like this is not new. But for those 100 plus years, 200 years, we have been a shining city on a hill. And we've had these ideals, right? And sometimes. Sometimes. We like to think so. We've stated the ideals. We tell the people that. We tell the people that.

40:52Whereas now we're just raw, like, yeah, we're just taking the oil. And so China's like, but I don't, anyway, go ahead. So how do you think China's responding to this? I think that this is the best. I have always advocated for honesty in international relations. That's why I think sometimes, that's why I mean the whole, the actual neocon dream of like Maria Machado and all that. I'm like, it's ridiculous. If we're going to do anything with Venezuela, it's going to be over oil. And to Trump, at least he said it out loud because at least we can speak honestly about oil, about power projection, about whether this is good idea, bad idea.

41:28That's how I think that everything should really be looked at. Well, with China, what they love more than anything, if you talk to the Chinese or the Russians, but I had this once from a friend who actually negotiated directly with the Chinese and specifically talked with them sometimes about the Taiwan question. And what they would always point to is we would try to lecture them about norms. They're like, oh, norms like Iraq, right? And they would just every time, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. I knew somebody who sat across the table from Kim Jong-un, and I spoke with them a little bit about it. And every single time, denuclearization, he's like, oh, like Gaddafi, right?

42:04I mean, there's nothing that they love more than pointing this out. Putin even famously said that. He was asked by a U.S. journalist about democracy. And he said, do you mean the democracy that you bring into Iraq? He's like, we do not want that here in Russia. You know, can't blame him. It's kind of a good point. And so what I see inside of this is that it has always driven them crazy, is the hypocrisy about norms and respect for international law and all of this, which the Chinese and the Russians, correctly, say is the architecture of the U.S. empire after World War II, which was built to make it flourish.

42:37That's all very true. Even though I do want everything to be dealt with honestly, we should also say nobody cares if China takes over Taiwan because of international law. We care about the chips. That's it. OK, if it was a military dictatorship and it had TSMC, would we really be talking about like, no, I don't. And I'll be honest, too. I don't care if Taiwan is a democracy or not. It has it. It wasn't, you know, when it originally was found. Interesting poll. Yeah, it would be. It's ridiculous. Right. Oh, we have to defend it because it's a democracy. Who cares? Sorry. It's all about whether we get the chips or not.

43:10That's it. Period. Now, the story, though, from Beijing is they're looking at this exact story with Venezuela and they're like, yes, we agree. great powers have interests in their spheres of influence. Taiwan is, this isn't, they don't even talk about it as an external policy. They said, this is the internal policy of China, period. You will not interfere in our country's affairs. They believe in, they always call it mutual respect for each other's, for each country. And what they mean by that is they're like, this is part of our country. And so inside of China, what they're studying, and Hal Brands, who I love, He's a very interesting guy.

43:46He wrote this, quote, if you are headed toward a world where great powers can use force and use powers ruthlessly in their own neighborhoods, that precedent is not a bad one from China's perspective. He says it fits exactly with the way Beijing would like to behave in the places like the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. And what they've done inside of China, not only is look at this operation, but what I love too is over there, they're a little bit puzzled. So let's put the next one up there. on the screen, on their social media, there have been wild debates with kind of their version of influencers.

44:22One camp said, we should immediately do this to Taiwan. I mean, anyone can indict anybody, especially in China. Except go further, obviously. But the debate by the smarter Chinese, they go, yeah, there's only one problem. Taiwan is ours, so we wouldn't keep the regime. They're like, in a lot of ways, It's very stupid from the U.S. perspective because they just took away Maduro, but they kept the rest of the apparatus. If we were to do this, we would arrest the Taiwanese president and the entire cabinet and run the security forces and invade or strike some sort of, you know, capitulation deal, which would actually entail Beijing running this entire thing.

45:01So the Chinese are looking at this with both, I wouldn't say awe per se, because everybody knew the U.S. could do this. But the Chinese are looking at this with, oh, OK, so we get to do this type of stuff in our own backyard and you can't say anything about it. But they're also looking at it with the same critical eye that we are, Ryan, of, well, yeah, you might have taken out Maduro, but you still kept the entire apparatus. And a lot of people who are anti-American or pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, they're like, you don't have nearly enough control. If anything, you didn't go far enough. But the precedent at the very least in China, they're loving it.

45:36This is the best possible thing that has happened for them in a long time. I'm not saying it's gonna make Taiwan more likely or not. It makes it, if it happens, that the playbook of the way that they would message it, the way that we deal with the administration, the way they would deal with Europe. And I do, I wanna talk a lot about European hypocrisy too, because they all support this too with Venezuela. It's like, yeah, good luck with that one. I mean, you have Zelensky out there openly celebrating it, saying, oh, the U.S. should go do this to Putin now. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's definitely not going to work against you.

46:08You know, smaller power in the sphere of influence of another greater power, let's say, than you. So the hypocrisy that's been exposed in all of this and also the explicit affirmation of sphere of influence doctrine is one that the Chinese, again, I don't think it'll make it more likely or less whenever it comes to Taiwan. If they're going to do it, they're going to do it. But it makes the eventual way that they do and are able to maintain relations around its own, you know, in Asia and also with Europe, it makes that very, very different, which is much, much to their benefit, I think, as a result of this action.

46:45And the one thing I'd push back on is that I think there's a little bit of projection from these American analysts who are saying that China wants to be a bully like this and is excited about now the possibility that they can do that. I think that's we love to be a bully. But the Chinese approach to these to smaller countries, I don't think they love the way that China deals with them necessarily. It's never fun to deal with a much more powerful partner. But China and the U.S. criticizes China for this. China always respects the sovereignty and the internal politics of the country that they're doing business with.

47:28They don't come in and complain about human rights violations. Like they don't they're not like you need to do this, you need to do that or you need to take this position even when it comes to the United States. They're like, you want to work with the United States, work with the United States. It's we have a deal that we want to do here. We want to help build you some infrastructure. And in exchange for that, we're going to make loans and the loans are going to be repaid in the case of Venezuela in oil. Like that's what they want to do. They don't actually want to come in and arrest people and tell them that they have to live the way that the Chinese think they want to live.

48:02So I think that the U.S. confuses itself a little bit. Because in the case of Taiwan, they literally do. Right. They actually do care whether Taiwan. I mean, that depends a little bit different. Or I would also say Taiwan is part of China. Right. According to the U.S. You're talking about like the outer empire. Let's say if there is such a thing or Africa. But no, but I do think they care about Japan, for example, which I can just go and put this up on the screen. Let's go and put where do I have it here with China? Or at least I did. The Chinese very recently, I think just yesterday, actually did a bunch of export controls against Japan because they said something marginally supportive of Taiwan.

48:44No, they do care, actually, when the people in their backyard have their policy towards the United States and or to Taiwan. But I will say this, and I saw a great piece of analysis. I wish I knew who it was, is that the current way that this is happening is that the Chinese are kind of like the Soviets in the 1950s, where there were tremendous military power in their backyard, as in like they had control of the USSR. They crushed Hungary. They had control there, but they were watching leftist aligned regimes, let's say, in the outer empire, places like in South America or others get Africa, which our guests were going to talk about, get bullied around by the United States.

49:26And what the Soviet Union did is explicitly then made a choice to go all in on militarization because they said we can't allow that. And so that, if anything, is likely to change because the Chinese are going to say, well, we can't win with soft power if the other side is going to be using hard power. And they might just fully embrace a U.S.-style policy and say that this clearly is not working necessarily to our benefit. They kind of have a two-fork-in-the-road way. And I could easily see that, them kind of switching gears. Although a lot of those socialist countries or insurgent movements would complain that actually the Soviet Union did not go all in and they wish they had gone in more.

50:02And China, because China had split with the Soviet Union, then they were actually off and siding with the U.S. or just not involved at all. We'll talk about that in our Angola segment later. But real quickly, speaking of those, let's talk about Cuba for a second. So Rubio thinks that this is his path to regime change in Cuba like that. He's made that quite explicit. it. He even said it out loud. Put up A4 here. So he's going to successfully cut oil off to the island. Now, when it comes to immiserating the population, and so this headline here, China support helping Cuba advance towards energy sovereignty and sustainability.

50:40It's a pro-China publication. So the question here, there are two questions here. Can they cut off energy? Yes, it does seem like they're going to be able to cut off oil going to Cuba. What will that do to daily life in Cuba, but also what will it do when it comes to access to energy? So the problem that Rubio has when it comes to access to energy is that the U.S. has so thoroughly annihilated the island that a significant percentage of the population has no electricity all day long already. And a lot of the island has like two hours of electricity. So they're used to suffering. So they have created so much suffering that they can only marginally increase it, you know, by this tiny bit.

51:24Now, the problem is Cuba was using a lot of the oil that they were getting from Venezuela and then reselling it internationally and then using the currency that they were getting to keep their economy alive amid these sanctions and other blockades and obstacles the U.S. put in front of them. So even though you can barely reduce the amount of power that Cubans have access to, what you can do is strip the island of currency entirely and just like basically shut things down and create almost starvation-like conditions. There are starvation-like conditions actually underway in Cuba now. Those will ramp up.

52:07But to the point of how little there is left to take away, you can put up A5 here. This is a chart from the Financial Times. Venezuela is no longer even the largest supplier of oil to Cuba. That is actually now Mexico. And Mexico has slightly increased its exports to Cuba, which has put it above Venezuela, whose exports have completely collapsed. And that's because of the sanctions, because Venezuela just doesn't have the amount to export anymore. Now, Scheinbaum has said that she's sticking with Cuba. And Trump has been very frustrated at Scheinbaum for this. So this is going to be another serious

52:59moment of confrontation between Mexico and the United States, because Scheinbaum views it as, I think, a matter of principle. And also, she sees the walls closing in, like right-wing governments are taking over all over the entire hemisphere. Also, it's a sovereign country. They're like, look, we're going to sell oil to whoever will sell it. Who are you? They were a buyer. We'll sell it. Right. Who are you? Right. And see, let me, this is a perfect example of why all of these idiots chanting Monroe doctrine or realism or any of that. Why would you base your relations with a nation which controls 40 % of your bilateral trade on an island of Cuba, which is off the coast of Florida for purely ideological purposes.

53:41I said this about India. I was like, okay, so we are going to, you know, subjugate all of our relations with one of the world's largest countries, the largest by population, one of the largest economies in the world based on Russia and on Ukraine. It's like, clearly the bilateralism should be purely on like, okay, like what's good for us, like right here, not what's going on in some tertiary style conflict. That's kind of like neoconservatism or neoliberalism at its height, is that because Rubio's father didn't like Cuba, we're going to subjugate our relations here with Claudia Scheinbaum and with Mexico.

54:18I mean, what are our primary problems with Mexico? Let's say drugs, cartels, and trade. That's it. Everything should be completely on that basis. And, you know, on the drug front, she's done okay. I mean, enough, right? Doing what you can. Sent 10 ,000 troops to the border. We are. Didn't complain when the border got completely shut down. I mean, has pretty significantly worked with the administration when it comes to immigration. Maintained her own support as domestically, you know, being seen as somebody who's willing to play ball but also willing to stand up. I mean, what else could you ask for?

54:53Especially for a country who is just south of the most voracious drug users on the planet. We want to get high. really bad and we have a lot of money to do it and and then we complain that people are selling it to us uh yes we actually yes some of much of it is supplied but we can we can save that uh argument i think for another day i think at the very least what we can show everybody here is that with the china situation and uh with with china in particular they are this was more important of a moment than i think i originally thought at the time because at first i said okay we do all this stuff every day, overthrowing countries in Latin America.

55:33If anything, it's an old return to US policy. But in the current environment, I think what I did underestimate from the Chinese perspective was the explicit embrace of sphere of influence doctrine, especially when we're so overextended. I mean, if you look from China's perspective, they see now a boondoggle. Who knows what's going to happen in Venezuela. It could go good. It could go probably bad. I would bet on bad over the long run. You look at Israel. I mean, Israel's asking us to bomb Iran yesterday. They want to go back to where we're going. They want to go back. Yeah, they're literally bombing Lebanon right now.

56:10So something can pop up there. You've got the Houthi situation, the Straits of Hormuz, and now we've got a literal security guarantee for Ukraine. So you look at all of that. You look at the U.S. military overextension. and just like, nobody can pay attention, even one thing here in Washington, let alone four that I just named. And that's, I mean, the meme about Marco Rubio, how much is he supposed to run and to pay attention to? There's literally only so many hours in a day. That embrace and also combined with the fact that China has been studying these Russian sanctions now for four years and has explicitly created all of these alternate financial systems to make sure that they are sanction proof from the US economy.

56:52I've never really thought I've never seen it as more likely that they'll just be able to do whatever. Right. And China is cautious and prefers to work within the status quo. But if the U.S. appears to be erratic and unstable, then they can't bank on the status quo. Like so we're taking away from them their preferred option, which is just to like sit back and wait and continue to grow and amass power and do their thing. and believe that like the next week and the week after that, things are going to be most of the same, except their position will get a little bit better. But if the giant power over there is like, we're going to create Somaliland, we're going to take Venezuela, we're going to war with Iran again, we're going to take Greenland, like then China has to be like, okay, well then we got to make some moves.

57:38That's what I was talking about the Soviet comparison, is that they went from a point of view of like, we have control of our internal policy to we have to be able to project. I mean, it ended up being their downfall with Afghanistan, But, you know, there was a strategic logic behind all of it. I think it's dangerous because that's what led to Afghanistan. It was a disaster for them and for us eventually in terms of the blowback. 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 at a breaking point.

58:11Rioting 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. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

59:00What 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. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

59:36It'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. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations, you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

1:00:19And 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? 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. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01:05Turning now to Venezuela and to oil. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Trump administration now saying, quote, I am pleased to announce the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high-quality sanctioned oil. amongst oil enthusiasts, by the way, that was the most offensive term, was calling Venezuelan oil high quality. This oil will be sold at its market price. That money will be controlled by me as president of the United States to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States. So we now have not only imperial booty, but we also have an imperial fund.

1:01:39So we were watching the recreation of the British Empire, the American Venezuelan oil company, kind of like the Dutch East Indies company of the 1600s be created in real time. But Ryan, this is combat. This is at the very same time this is happening. Just to explain, you know, this 30 to 50 million, it is all likely. I was reading some oil analysts this morning. That was the oil stockpiled at the docks. Because we're sanctioning them and not letting them. Because it's not being let out. So it was actually taking up a lot of space. for the it was it was making it unable for them to have more oil come to the docks and it was kind of a gesture that was made here by the united states but combined i think with the demand that you talked about earlier this is kind of an explicit you have to transfer this oil to us now immediately with the combination of you to kick russia out of the country kick china kick iran all of these people have to be kicked out of the country so a complete kind of takeover at least for potentially right now of the oil industry inside of Venezuela.

1:02:44But that's also going to run up against reality. Right. And inside the country could not be this may not go over that well. You know, what's interesting about this, this particular announcement is that typically what the United States does is it claims it is doing a good thing that is for the benefit of everybody. But in fact, the details are a lot grayer and it's really for the benefit of the United States and some oil companies and everybody else is going to get screwed. In this case, they're doing the reverse. He's publicly saying that this is for the benefit of the United States and in particular some oil companies and screw you, we're doing whatever we want.

1:03:24But if you look at the details, it's actually kind of ironically helpful to the Venezuelan government and to PDVSA. So to your point, all this oil, because of our sanctions, and we underline that again, like we created the problem that they now have. So all their storage capacity is mostly full. So they need somewhere to sell this stuff to. Previously, we revoked their license to be able to sell it. The conditions that he's actually allowing this oil to move out under are very similar to the conditions of being licensed to just move it. That's like the percentages that are getting shared in different ways are all similar to what the licensing structure was.

1:04:08The South Florida lobby in Rubio demanded that that license be stripped. So he stripped the license and now he's allowing them to do the thing that he was licensing them to do, but calling it imperialism. It's comical. It's like, what are you, like, it's like he's trying to satisfy the South Florida Gusanos with this bloodlust, but not giving them the actual thing. In reality, it's like, actually, it's not a horrible deal, you know, for the Venezuelans, they're going to do a profit. It's going to be sold at the market price, spot price, right? So you'll be able to actually clear a decent amount of money on it, you know, in terms of the, I mean, And that's another part of the issue is that oil is a literal global market.

1:04:51So the idea that this is just immediately going to flow into U.S. gas pump, not exactly true. As you said, it frees up some of the dock space over there. But what I want to know is your theory on how this holds up in Venezuela. Because if we put the next one on the screen, Ryan, you can break it down. Some of the marches in the streets that are pro-Maduro right now. I mean, what do you think, like for these people, and if they're going to read this headline, They don't know the details of oil like you and I, or I mean, the real industry. We're just reading kind of from them. I mean, it's not exactly something that I think will be a popular move inside of the country.

1:05:27What cuts, what makes it more complicated is that, and we interviewed Carlos Roan, former deputy foreign minister of Venezuela yesterday on our Dropsite show. and you know he was making the point that there's so little um and i don't want to actually let me just say it in my own uh in my own words not put it in in his but there's so little export going on right now that there's very little revenue that's being shared from that export with the venezuelan people like the bolivarian revolution was based on this idea that we're gonna use the proceeds from the our vast oil reserves which at the time you know oil's getting up to a hundred dollars a barrel um and that's a hundred it's a hundred dollars at that that time not not today's money um maybe that's 150 so oil's like three four times as valuable at the time and then he's spreading spreading and shabba's spreading the wealth around by 2012 like it was the norway model that was the dream things were really like like living conditions in say 2012 13 had never been better.

1:06:32And then 2014, the bottom falls out. Chavez dies. And then the bottom falls out on the oil industry. And they hadn't consolidated the economy to a place where it was diversified enough to withstand this collapse in energy prices. And they've been struggling ever since. And you throw the sanctions on top, here we are. So the point would be that Venezuelans may be like, well, there's really no, there's nothing to be upset about in the sense that other than the dignity and the insult to our sovereignty, but we're not getting anything from this oil anyway. The thing is destroyed. It's effectively wrecked.

1:07:09So if they can actually start exporting some of this and start hiring people and building the industry back up, and if Rodriguez can message it, which she seems to be effectively doing, saying like, okay, this is what Trump is saying, but look, we're still in control. It's still our oil. Then I think that the Fed is well and people would be actually okay with it. Because what they want is living conditions to improve. Obviously, right. And what they don't want, though, is Maria Machado, who is currently still making a bid for the leadership. Who supposedly won with her proxy, won with 80 % of the vote like a year and a half ago, and now has no support in the country, according to Trump.

1:07:57Do you actually think she won? No. I mean, I mean, this is one of those where it's when when somebody is like the legitimate leader, I'm like, maybe, you know, it's what I think I've done a lot of. I think Maduro did some serious fraud in that. Obviously. Yeah. Yes. I'm not discounting that. Right. I'm saying, though, when the West is like constantly like the legit. Like, did she win? Did her guy win with 70, 80 percent of the vote? No way. Get out of here. Like and where did my suspicions? Where did that go? Where'd the 78 percent go? Good point. Yeah, good point. If she's Nelson Mandela, people would be in the streets demanding that she return.

1:08:29Right. So maybe she did lie, actually. Or maybe the West lied to us about what happened here. Wouldn't be the first time. But by the way, in her current bid for power, she is now offering to share her Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump. Reportedly, he was very upset that she got the Nobel and he didn't. Let's take a listen. Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I had read that somewhere. I wasn't sure if it was true. Well, it hasn't happened yet, but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe the Venezuelan people, because this is a surprise of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him and share it with him.

1:09:12What he has done, as I said, is historic. It's a huge step towards a democratic transition. We want to share the U.S. Why don't they just send in the Delta Force and take it from her? Yeah, they could, dude. It's certainly good. Ryan, you don't even need that, dude. She's in Russia. She's in Europe. She's not even in Venezuela. And she said that she's going to return. I mean, I wonder about that, right? Because, I mean, they don't want her over there. At the same time, they can't do anything to her, or at least they shouldn't, because that means that the U.S., South Florida people would go absolutely crazy.

1:09:48By the way, Lindsey Graham said yesterday that we will eventually at some at at such time it is appropriate. There will be a democratic transition in. We'll get to just like we heard about Iraq. Yeah, yeah, exactly. People will be holding up their fingers with the thing on it again. We'll all celebrate. I'm sure it'll just be totally fine above board. Yeah. I just love the idea. So Trump was asked about this, actually. They said, like, are you upset with her? Did you not make her president, not as if he could make her president, but did that have something to do with you not backing her because you didn't think she deserved the Nobel Peace Prize?

1:10:28Yeah. And you're upset that you didn't get it. And Trump said, well, I don't think she deserved it. So he admitted. He's like, but no, of course not. That isn't why. That wouldn't be. That wouldn't be why. The truth. She did dedicate it to him at the ceremony. But that wasn't enough. Like she should have just said no. Yes. How dare you? The true man of peace. Right. Is President Donald Trump. And everything Trump has done since that day has proven that he is a true man of peace. The recipient of the FIFA. A true man of peace, yes. Okay. Finally, though, confirming some reporting, we'll end this block.

1:11:02Trump basically admitting Maduro's dancing did send him over the edge. Let's take a listen. And, you know, he's a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he's a violent guy. He imitates, I don't know if it was your dance. You know, you got to say, Maduro, he wasn't a horrible dancer. He's got his own dance. Actually, he was good. I thought he was good. You know, I've had people in Venezuela sending me stuff now for months since we started covering this story. His Imagine rendition, it's not horrible. In Spanish? Yeah, it's really not that bad. And especially while wearing this sombrero.

1:11:41Somebody sent me that literally the day before he was taken out. He had this hilarious New Year's message where he was just driving around and talking about all of the various streets of Washington, D.C. He's a Constitution Avenue. Amazing. It's a Bolivar. Yeah, Bolivar. He's right there. Yeah. So because he drove, apparently, while he was here.

1:12:171969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a 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.

1:13:13Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know. 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. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming.

1:13:52Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.