María Corina Machado, Sen. Mark Warner, Director Kevin Hassett

0:00Margaret Brennan:I'm Margaret Brennan in Washington and this week on Face the Nation, breaking overnight mass shootings at Brown University and now at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia. Plus our exclusive interview with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado. Yesterday, the commander-in-chief paid tribute to our nation's finest in that time-honored American tradition of Army-Navy football game.

0:33Margaret Brennan:It is tails. Army won the coin toss, but Navy won the game on what was a sobering Saturday. Earlier President Trump said the U.S. would respond to an ISIS attack in Syria that killed two American soldiers and a civilian interpreter. The U.S. retaliate against ISIS. As the foreign policy challenges continue for Mr. Trump, so do America's concerns about high prices, particularly painful this year as the holiday shopping season peeps. At least 20 million Americans also face skyrocketing health care premiums under Obamacare in the new year. We'll talk with White House Chief Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner.

1:22Margaret Brennan:Plus, in a conversation you'll see only on CBS, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado tells us why she's so committed to democracy in her country despite the risks she faces. It's all just ahead on Face the Nation.

1:55Margaret Brennan:Welcome to Face the Nation. On this first day of Hanukkah, a horrific scene is unfolding nearly 10 ,000 miles away in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, where gunmen attacked a Jewish holiday gathering at the city's Bondi Beach, a popular tourist spot. At least 11 people have been killed and another 29 injured in an attack the Australian Prime minister has called an act of evil anti-Semitism terrorism. Video footage appears to show two gunmen on a bridge, one of them firing his weapon. Another clip shows what appears to be a bystander tackling and disarming one of the gunmen. Police confirmed there were at least two suspects.

2:38Margaret Brennan:One is dead, the other hospitalized following the attack, and they are looking into the possibility of additional suspects. Here in the U.S., Saturday marked what's at least the 39th school shooting on a college campus this year. CBS News correspondent Tom Hansen reports from Providence, Rhode Island, from the Brown University campus where the attack occurred. After a night on lockdown at Brown University. We have detained a person of interest involved in yesterday's shooting. This morning, a brief exhale for a campus still on edge. Seven individuals in stable condition, one in critical but stable condition, and one has been discharged.

3:20It is a confirmed shooting. The first calls came in just after 4 p.m. Saturday. I'm being advised 167 Brooks in the building and the stairway. There's a person shot. The university president says the shooting took place in the middle of a final exam review session at the university's engineering and physics building. There's a huge response immediately. You just look out the window, there's tons of cop cars, tons of fire trucks. It's a lot. As some students evacuated, Brown's campus, normally open and walkable, became a place to hide. The sense of security at this Ivy League institution, now broken.

3:54Margaret Brennan:We have a lot of recovery ahead of us. So my main goal in the coming days and weeks and months, it will take a long time, is to bring people back together and help them feel safe and secure on campus. And there is still no word yet on a motive, but according to one law enforcement source, the person of interest is 24 and did not attend Brown University. Now, meanwhile, all remaining final exams have been postponed as investigators work with prosecutors to collect more evidence and conduct more interviews. Margaret. That's Tom Hansen reporting from Providence, Rhode Island. We turn to our exclusive conversation with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who spoke to us Friday from Oslo, where she just received the Nobel Peace Prize.

4:42Margaret Brennan:To get there, she traveled secretly by land, sea and air as she faces arrest by the Maduro regime. We wanted to hear about that journey, but she refused to talk about it, citing security concerns for those who helped her, although she has previously said she received support from the U.S. government. I am not going to give more information regarding my trip to Norway, but I'm going to say how important it is for the Venezuelan people. This is a recognition to a nation that has fought tirelessly, courageously against a criminal narco-terrorist structure. And I came to receive that prize, that award, and I'm going to bring it back home to the Venezuelan people as soon as possible.

5:33Margaret Brennan:You say you're going back home. I know you sent your own children out of Venezuelan territory in order to protect them, your sons, your daughter. Are they concerned that you plan to return to Venezuela? When are you going? Of course, they are concerned, as any other Venezuelan child that has their parents or relatives back in our country. Because the regime, as I said, has persecuted, tortured, killed, disappeared. thousands of Venezuelans. And recently it has turned even more violent because, you know, when a criminal regime is falling apart and they know their days are numbered, they turn even more aggressive, even more violent.

6:17Margaret Brennan:Can you help us understand what is going on? Because we are seeing here in the U.S. an increase in the pressure campaign, more sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and vessels. We saw an armed seizure of a vessel carrying oil out of Venezuela. Selling oil on the black market is really important money for the Maduro regime. Do you endorse this idea of more seizures and possibly even a blockade? Look, I absolutely support President Trump's strategy. And we the Venezuelan people are very grateful to him and to his administration because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere. And that's why, and I say this from Oslo right now, I have dedicated this award to him because I think that he finally has put Venezuela in where it should be in terms of a priority for the United States national security.

7:20And we do support these actions because, Margaret, we are facing not a conventional dictatorship. This is a very complex criminal structure that has turned Venezuela into the safe haven of international crime and terrorist activities, starting with Russia, Iran, Cuba, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels operating freely and directed in partnership with Maduro and his regime. And as every criminal structure suffers is when the inflows from their criminal activities are cut. And these in the case of the Maduro regime comes from the oil black market to drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arms smuggling, even human smuggling and trafficking.

8:11Margaret Brennan:It sounds like you support more sanctions and possibly more seizures of oil. But isn't there a risk that cutting off money will further hurt the already impoverished people of Venezuela? Isn't that a risk? Of course, what we're doing is for the well-being of the Venezuelan people. What we want to do is to save lives. But Maduro was the one who declared a war on the Venezuelan people. A war we didn't want. A war we are suffering. with hundreds of thousands of killings and forced executions in the last years. And right now, I want to be very clear with the international community. The resources Maduro gets are not going to schools or hospitals.

9:04In Venezuela, a teacher earns$1 a day. Pensions are less than$1 a month. Our children go twice a week to school. The sources, the cash the regime gets from these illegal activities goes to buy arms, to pay gang members, to spy and infiltrate, and to even further increase their illegal narcotics activities and so on. So these resources are not going towards the people. They're going for corruption and crime.

9:41Margaret Brennan:So it sounds like you want even more seizures and a blockade. Is that correct? We want every legal action through law enforcement approach, not only from the United States, also from other Caribbean, Latin American and European countries that further block the legal activities of the regime. Why? Because we need to increase the cost of staying in power by force. Once you arrive to that point in which this cost of standing power is higher than the cost of living power, the regime will fall apart. And it's the moment where we, you know, advance into a negotiated transition, which is what in the beginning we offered Maduro when we won the presidential election by landslide last year.

10:35But he not only refused that option, but he, as you know, unleashed the worst, most brutal repression wave we've seen in our history.

10:46Margaret Brennan:And eight million Venezuelans have fled since he came to power during that time. But in terms of the diplomacy, President Trump spoke with Maduro himself last month. We haven't seen any evidence, though, that diplomacy, a negotiated exit, like you mentioned, is happening. Are you seeing diplomatic success? Well, in the last years, Venezuela has seen 17 dialogue initiatives, not once, not twice, 17. Every single time, the opposition or our allies or the United States have complied with every single thing we offered. The regime and the country has violated every single thing they offered on their own part.

11:37What did they get? They got time. They got legitimacy. They got money. And that's precisely what they think they can get again, once again. But certainly things have changed very much in the last months. Venezuela is a totally different country. I mean, Maduro is weaker than ever. The armed forces, police are certainly divided and fractured. And our country is united, cohesive. And we finally have the administration, in this case President Trump, with a clear strategy that truly represents a credible threat for the regime. So if we had ever had a chance to finally move ahead into towards democracy in our countries today.

12:21Margaret Brennan:What evidence do you have that the military is weaker than ever? Was your escape proof of that? We've seen more and more members of the military finding ways to connect with us, to send messages, to show that they're feeling the same of what the rest of the country is feeling. When these military go back home, they find their children, their mother, their partners saying that they are hungry, that they are persecuted, that their families have been divided. They are scared. Yes, they are scared because repression and persecution in the military is even tougher than on civilians. So President Trump said that land strikes to stop drug trafficking specifically will start soon.

13:09Margaret Brennan:He has been saying that for weeks. Do you know what he is talking about? Has he promised you anything? No, I don't know. And well, if I knew, I wouldn't say it, of course. but it's not the case. We are not involved and we will not get involved into another nation's policy for their own national security. But would you welcome U.S. military action? I will welcome more and more pressure so that Maduro understands that he has to go, that his time is over. And I will insist something that I've said several times before. This is not conventional regime change. This cannot be compared to other cases like countries in the Middle East.

13:51We had an election. Regime change was already mandated by over 70 percent of the population. And what we need is support to enforce that decision.

14:02Margaret Brennan:How do you square military action with receiving a peace prize? Are we at the point it's necessary? What we're fighting for is precisely freedom in order to have democracy and democracy in order to have peace. And in order to maintain freedom and to achieve freedom, you do need strength. The contrary would be the peace of the dead in which you have a country under absolute oppression and simply given in. And that's not the case. It's absolutely absurd that you see a regime, a criminal regime like Maduro, that gets support from Russia or from Iran, and then as a benefit to an armed people not to ask support from democratic countries and democratic leaders.

14:51That's absolute absurd. We do not have arms. We have our will. We have the power of organization and the power of love, which at the end, I have to say that peace is ultimately an act of love.

15:05Margaret Brennan:The Maduro regime maintains it won the last election and considers Machado a fugitive. The regime also refers to U.S. actions as illegal and brutal interventionism. In our next half hour, we'll speak with Machado about what's ahead in a potential post-Maduro era in Venezuela. And we'll be back in one minute. So stay with us. And we're now joined by the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia. Senator, were you persuaded there by Maria Karina Machado's argument that military action pressure is virtuous and necessary? Well, first of all, let me at the top of the show, we've got this tragic shooting at Brown University.

15:46And then this obviously political strike against the Jewish community in Australia, both horrible and particularly on the first day of Hanukkah, which is a celebration of light over darkness. And boy, we could use a little more light these days. Ms. Machado is a hero. She deserves to win the Nobel Prize. And one of the mistakes the Biden administration made last year when the opposition candidates won overwhelmingly was not put more pressure on Maduro then to leave. But the action now that Trump has chosen Maduro, who is a bad guy, and saying, and I'm not sure what his policy is, but at the very same time is pardoning, for example, a Honduran former president who was convicted in America of drug running, the president who has not been willing to stand up strong against Putin, who is probably the most brutal authoritarian leader in the world as we go on and off with Ukraine.

16:48I think it's, yes, it'd be great to get rid of Maduro. But in terms of the question, Donald Trump has not come to the American people and said, here are our goals in Venezuela. We've got troops potentially in harm's way. We've got boat actions, for example, where we're blowing up boats where we can obviously interdict, as we saw with the oil tanker. I think the president needs to make the case if he's going to try to put boots on the ground in Venezuela.

17:13Margaret Brennan:Well, at this point, all they've, as I understand it, asked for and justified to Congress were these strikes on the alleged drug boats. Nothing with sovereign territory yet. But that gets to your argument about what is the end goal? Um, unlike other Democrats, when it comes to the drug boats, uh, you've said you're not ready to call them war crimes, particularly what happened on the September 2nd double tap strike. You've questioned Admiral Bradley. Um, I know you want the video released to the public. What do you think that's going to show to the public? What will that change? I think the video is chilling, disturbing, whatever term you want to use because the idea of these two survivors hanging on to remnants of a boat, and then America taking a series of additional strikes.

18:01The Congress needs to see it at the very minimum. I think the American public needs to see it.

18:05Margaret Brennan:You've seen it. I've seen it. Only a limited number have. It is extraordinarily chilling. What I'm saying is once you make the accusation of war crime, you can't take that back. Right. And so what I've said. So many of your Democrat colleagues have. And I know that. That's why I've said to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I want to see the written execution order. I want to see the legal opinion that was about this specific strike. I want to know whether the overarching policy memorandum, which was not finished until September 5th, three days after the strike was a change. I saw you said this.

18:37Margaret Brennan:That's not typical, is it? Don't you normally come up with the legal justification before you take the action rather than three days after it? This is where I have a question. The justification was made in late July. They didn't write it down until September 5th. Why? I don't have an answer. I also want to see the after action report. I want to give the military every opportunity to make their case, because once again, once you make that claim, what it would do to how we view our military morale, how we're viewed in the world. It's so important. But this president has not. And frankly, Pete Hegs have even worse.

19:12Here's the guy who goes out and brags about the strikes until there's controversy. and then he kind of runs for the hills.

19:18Margaret Brennan:Well, the president said again this week, and I'll just read it to you, that land strikes on Venezuela are being considered. Land strikes on horrible people that are bringing in drugs and killing our people. It doesn't necessarily have to be in Venezuela. It's people that are bringing in drugs to our country as targets. Have you seen any legal justification to hit these people now designated as terrorists on sovereign territory, whether it's Mexico or Colombia or Venezuela. The vast majority of the drug, particularly this is all cocaine. This is not fentanyl. In terms of the drug boats. The vast majority is actually in the eastern Pacific, yet most of the strikes have been in the Caribbean.

19:58Right. And does this mean that suddenly you're going to be open warfare with all of American military against any and all drug dealers? Again, the drug dealers are awful. We need to do all we can to stop them. But the president, when he puts American forces potentially in harm's way, needs to come and explain to American people what the goal is here.

20:18Margaret Brennan:OK. Particularly when he's then, at the same breath, pardoning the former president of Honduras, who was a convicted drug dealer. In terms of designated terrorists, ISIS is a designated terrorist group. We just saw the first combat deaths, essentially, of the Trump administration yesterday. day. Three Americans killed, three injured in Syria. In this apparent ambush, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center said it was an insider attack. Are you supportive of keeping the nearly 1 ,000 U.S. troops in Syria? Do you have concerns that the Syrian government isn't able to keep these infiltrators?

20:56First of all, condolences to the three Americans, families, armed forces members, one and interpreter. I think our troops have played an important role. We are working closely with, for example, the Kurds. We have literally tens of thousands of ISIS family members in certain prisons in that area. But you want that to continue. But the president, I think pulling out without a plan would be a mistake. But the president, again, has sent mixed signals. I mean, months ago, he said he's thinking about taking all those American soldiers out without articulating a strategy. I mean, the president, if he wants to make the case to the American people of when our soldiers are in harm's way, or particularly when we're talking about the Caribbean and now potential Venezuela, you know, this has not been an overnight.

21:42This buildup of force has been months. He owes it to all of us to come in and explain what his goal is.

21:49Margaret Brennan:Domestically, we have Senator Cassidy on the program. We taped to them earlier. He says he's looking for fellow Democrats to join him in a health care deal by March to make these health savings accounts. accounts. And he said he'll offer to extend the existing subsidies. Well, first of all, would you be on board with that? We've got a crisis that hits as of Monday, tomorrow, because that's when people have to sign up. He says retroactively you can do it. Well, listen, it's a mess. Once you've signed up or you've dropped out of the system, you know, the idea that you're retroactively going to fix it, fix it now so people don't go into Christmas thinking they're going to not know if they'll be able to afford health care.

22:25But the notion that what Bill Cassidy is a good guy, I've worked with him in a lot of different efforts. But the idea that a one time fifteen hundred dollar payment into your pocket is going to suddenly make up. I had a person on the other day, her her current insurance is five forty four a month. It'll go up to over fifteen hundred a month. A one time fifteen hundred dollar payment is not going to meet her needs. And particularly if that would mean that things like pre-existing condition protections would disappear.

22:56Margaret Brennan:That sounds like you're not on board in these remaining days of 2025. Senator, I have to fix the crisis right now. Extend the subsidies and then let's debate how we fix it. We have to leave it there. Thank you, Senator. We'll be right back.

23:14Margaret Brennan:Welcome back to Face the Nation. We're joined now by the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett. Good to have you back. It's great to be back. So people are holiday shopping. They're aware of prices. The president said this week, prices are coming down tremendously. The latest data, though, from the Consumer Price Index is up 3 % year over year. Personal Consumption Index is up 2.8 % year over year. What data is he looking at? What's your benchmark? Right. Well, one of the things that if you saw his presentation in Pennsylvania, as he put up a bunch of charts, which he loves to do, where he went through the individual items that we've already sort of made a bunch of progress on.

23:53And so, for example, under Joe Biden, prescription drugs were up 9%. So far this year, they're down six-tenths of a percent. Gasoline is way down. It was like the highest ever under Biden. Egg. He was talking about eggs. Yeah, he was talking about eggs. And so I think the way to think about inflation, of course, is that there are micro effects, like the time that we had the avian flu affecting drug prices, and then macro effects, which is runaway spending, big deficits, and then an accommodative Fed policy.