Maduro & Wife Plead Not Guilty

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0:38No artificial flavors, sweeteners, or colors. 75 % less sugar and all the electrolytes of regular Gatorade. Now available nationwide. Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melber. Wishing you a happy new year as we look at the current state of play. We begin with the ousted Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro. He was in a federal courtroom in Manhattan today, the product of this controversial Trump administration foreign policy action. And we're going to report on all of that, the facts, the law, such as it is and where we go from here tonight. There is, at minimum, major confusion, if not outright revulsion, at what the Trump administration has done in the name of the American people, without their input or consent through Congress or any other way.

1:24And there are questions now about the president's motives and plans across the board, even as many people look at the extraction effort and say, okay, the military did its job. They understood the assignment. They completed the objective. But what is the purpose of all this? Well, we begin with what's happening today, of course. This morning, Maduro and his wife were in federal court in the United States after that extraction that made so much, so much controversial waves and attention across this weekend. Surely you watch the news, you've heard about it. So you're looking at the courtroom sketches that would be like any other case, except this is not like any other's case.

2:04We can tell you Maduro and his wife pled not guilty to a set of charges that have basically been developed over the years in the United States under multiple justice departments, and that includes narco terror and drug trafficking. Maduro used his appearance in American court today, which is effectively the first time he's really had a platform to say anything after this unusual foreign policy attack and use of warlike United States power, to say, quote, I have been kidnapped since Saturday. I was captured at my home in Caracas. A helicopter transported Maduro and his wife from where they were being held in federal custody in a Brooklyn jail this morning.

2:44You can see that transfer there. The armored van then drove them to the federal courthouse. Maduro also asserted what is under at least international law and territorial jurisdiction a fact as best we understood it, including according to the interim leadership of his country since he was extracted. He said, and I read this quote simply, I am still president of my country. Now, as mentioned in Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, who was basically their version of his vice president, was also, as a practical matter, sworn in as the interim president with Maduro being held under his resistance inside the United States.

3:22Secretary of State Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth, and other Trump officials are doing now what they refuse to do in advance or even in the hours after this operation became public, which is, after this delay, briefing top lawmakers in both parties. There will be questions about what they are doing, what the plans are, and why, from the beginning of this operation, so many of the war powers that the Trump administration insists on wielding are done directly without any consultation or discussion, let alone formal authorization or vote, from the United States Congress. You don't have to be a history buff to remember how much Donald Trump, the candidate, criticized the Republican Bush administration for the Iraq war.

4:07Trump, like many others, deemed it a failure, costly, external regime change, etc. But even that war, however unpopular it proved to be, was of course authorized by Congress. That is the way the Constitution and the War Powers Act envisions the use of these kind of war powers, period. Now this issue is, as the Washington Post puts it, clouded in confusion what the Trump administration is literally doing. Are we going to try to run this country, which is all about double the population of Iraq. If you would have asked any American going into, say, the Christmas break, which countries should we be at war with?

4:45Or is there a country that we want to run? Almost no one would say, let's go spend time, treasure and risk on Venezuela for whatever reasons. And Trump and Rubio are, even as they oversee this project, essentially contradicting each other. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. Don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial. What does that mean? We're in charge. Are you running Venezuela right now? Yeah, I mean, I keep people fixating on that.

5:32It's not running. It's running policy. The policy with regards to this. The president, we're running it and in charge. His chief diplomat, national security advisor, who was involved in all this, says, no, not that. That's the first clue that something has already gone off the rails. Whatever one thinks about Maduro and the many terrible autocrats around the world, the fact that the president and his chief diplomat can't keep their story straight in the opening days of this action. The president also didn't do what you would expect any president to do, and even one like him, mindful of public relations, what they usually do is give a presentation to the country or an Oval Office address.

6:12President Trump recently did that for a small, more minor item, quite frankly, his sort of update on the country and the economy, but didn't bother that here, or the congressional authorization or consultation, as I mentioned. So if you want to know why we are down there and whether we are running the place or not, you can't get a straight answer as we start the week on Monday after the weekend operation. Now, there is a problem with drug trafficking in the region. That's well known. But Trump has started talking a lot about oil and claiming that this is a kind of a long-term capitalist plan to help nationalist U.S.

6:50oil companies that he tipped off businesses that might do more oil production, potentially, by the way, that's a long-term project with a lot of complexity, but businesses tied to the United States economy that might do more of that, and he says he tipped them off before even Congress.

7:11I bet. I have. I have. Which ones? All of them, basically. They want to go in so badly. Yes. Before and after. Well, we're going to run everything. We're going to run it, fix it. We'll have elections at the right time. But the main thing you have to fix is a broken country. There is so much in those couple statements. I'm just going to walk you through them because this is important. Number one, Donald Trump is claiming that these business and oil interests came before you, American public, as represented by your Congress, as we go to war. And however this operation went, they didn't know in advance.

8:00So you usually want your Congress involved. What if more troops were pulled into it? What if more American soldiers were at risk or killed? That's why we have Congress involved in war powers. But he says he went to the businesses first. Second, as with so many other claims by this administration, the question also immediately becomes, because of their lack of credibility, is that even true? Did he go to those other oil companies before Congress? Several U.S. oil companies, which of course are governed by all kinds of laws and SEC regulations and energy laws, are saying they have boards, they have stockholders that, quote, the Trump administration has not consulted them, according to oil executives.

8:41The Times reports Maduro's regular public dancing and other displays of, quote, nonchalance were actually part of what persuaded some on the Trump team that the president was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff. That is reporting on a very different motive, one of a more perhaps personal or vindictive nature. And Trump's anger, the Post reports about the opposition leader Machado winning the Nobel Prize, something that he has openly pined for has also reportedly affected his view of trying to pick winners and losers in that country's independent autonomous project, call it political leadership because they don't have a traditionally healthy democracy right now, but his jealousy of her has potentially distorted his ability to work with her as the Nobel winning opposition leader.

9:31One insider at the White House saying if she'd turned it down and said, I can't accept it because it's Trump's, she'd be the president of Venezuela today. And so those are just some of the top line questions about what we're doing down there and why we're down there. Then you have the entire war of it all, because either this is one of the most costly legal operations in American history, because the administration has claimed they view this as law enforcement. Of course, we don't usually have 30 people killed around the world in order to extract or arrest one suspect. So either it's a highly costly failed law enforcement operation, or it's war.

10:15And if it's war, it's an illegal war. And if you watch this program, you know that when there are three or four sides to something or it's murky, we will report that out. But the fact that we're broadcasting inside the United States does not prevent us from identifying when the United States is breaking the UN Charter and International Law. Experts point out that unlike those boat strikes, which, however controversial, were conducted in international waters, this new operation, striking Venezuela and abducting its president clearly violates Article 2 of the UN Charter that deals with the use of force coming out of World War II and everything that the powers that be in the West were supposed to have learned.

10:56Again, reading from this, it says that prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy. The consequences of flouting this rule so brazenly are likely to extend well beyond the case of Maduro's forcible ouster. I quote that at length because it is a fair and clear reading of what this is. War powers, regime change, something that the United States has repeatedly regretted in large-scale efforts like changing the regime of Vietnam or Iraq, and in smaller arenas, Somalia, Libya. In fact, if you follow American history, foreign policy, and the ensuing politics at all, and admittedly, sometimes the politics lag by years, that was the case in Vietnam and Iraq.

11:44But if you follow it at all, you know how often we have come to regret being rushed into aggressive wars, regime change, meaning that we're not defending ourselves or even our interests, but just going out and saying, well, there's 183 countries and we're going to pick who we want to be in charge. And we're going to expect that because we do have a mighty military, there won't be blowback. And yet the entire post-World War II order, the United Nations, the Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Security Council, all of these things that were built directly with the involvement of the great powers, including, of course, the United States, were to avoid exactly these kind of sugar-high, quick-hit regime change quagmires that are at risk, and that has nothing to do with anyone's political opinions of Donald Trump.

12:31It just has to do with whether you know anything about our lived, learned lessons in history. That is just some of what's on our minds, but we are grateful to have two esteemed experts who can further edify us tonight. Ambassador James Story was the ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023 and an analyst we've relied on for many difficult foreign policy stories. General Barry McCaffrey, retired four-star Army general. I can mention they're both MSNOW analysts. General, your thoughts tonight. Well, Ari, there's an element of fantasy to all this. I've spent a lot of time in Latin America since I was in my 20s.

13:13I know a great deal about Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela. it's an astonishing situation. We should take note, it was a remarkable military operation, audacious, complex, the chief surprised. They got two targets out of the country without getting them killed. At the end of the day, it wasn't just electronic warfare and coordination of 150 aircraft. It was Army Delta operators on the ground who the Cubans say killed 30 of their security agents who helped prop up the Maduro regime. Now, having said that, we have never seen in American history a president who would threaten Colombia, you're next, you'd better watch your ass.

14:02And I quote, a ground operation in Colombia would be something I'd consider. And in the context, he said this about Greenland, Panama, Mexico, annexing Canada. And throughout all this, the only important thing is under Article I of the Constitution, Congress has been supine, uninvolved. So we're being governed by whim and by decree. Mr. Trump doesn't have a clue what he's doing on page two in Venezuela. No good will come to this the way it's been conducted. Ambassador. Well, as always, General McCaffrey makes a ton of good points. It's good to see you again, sir. Last time was in Afghanistan 15, 20 years ago.

14:54Now, 15 years ago. You know, there was a tremendous amount of planning that went into the operation itself, a tremendous success. and it appears that the question, and then what, failed to be answered. There are repercussions to these actions. And the idea that there's kind of the contours of a concept of a plan moving forward, they used earlier, Ari, the term regime change. This is the same regime with different leadership. There's no change here. I know Delce Rodriguez, and we left behind, I know her well, she and her brother, and we left behind Dios de Cabello, who's a very bad actor, frankly.

15:32And then you have Vladimir Pugino-Lopez, who's been in charge of the military since the crustacean period, right? He's been there forever. So you've got a group of people there. You have these different power bases there. And if the idea is that somehow we're in charge, I would just merely suggest that, well, there are 900 political prisoners still in the country. There are wrongfully detained Americans still being detained, I don't see us being in charge. And if the idea, I don't know what the objective is. For me, the objective is restoration of democracy. There was an election last year that was won by Edmundo Gonzalez.

16:06It has been very destabilizing what Maduro has wrought to the region. But if the idea is that this is somehow going to become an economic play, I don't see, as you rightly pointed out earlier, boardrooms saying, yeah, we're going to put more money into Venezuela when it's the same exact regime in charge. No independent judiciary, no sanctity of contract. I wonder how we're going to reach the objective, if that's the objective. Yeah. And Ambassador, I'll read from what you wrote. Without significant security forces on the ground, which again goes to what we've learned from past follies, it's hard to see how a failed state, riddled with illegal armed groups and foreign terror organizations, will somehow remain stable merely by removing a deeply unpopular dictator, ambassador?

16:51Without a doubt. Right now, we're going to be asking Delce Rodriguez to do things that at some point are going to come up against the hard wall of reality of what Díaz de Cabello doesn't want to have happen. I'll give you a vignette. In 2018, a member of Congress visited Venezuela while I was there, met with Maduro, and someone I knew, a local councilman, Fernando Alban, was thrown off the 10th floor of the Helicuede, which is the torture center that was run by Dios de la Cabello. Clearly doing that to tell Maduro, don't negotiate with the gringos without me. This is the kind of person this is.

17:29So if you imagine at any point in time, Delcio Rodriguez gets out of line, he can play spoiler because he controls the security services in the country as well as the criminal network and gangs that run and threaten and intimidate political opposition actors. Yeah. General McCaffrey, this is one of those shockwave events that even though there was a buildup both in the region, as the ambassador was discussing, and around the world in the United States, people are still coming out of this weekend going, whoa, I guess this is what we're doing now. And so it would seem that in the days ahead, it's going to be very important for Americans to learn and understand what's being done in their name and whether they want more of this or not.

18:12And we have an election this year. The Wall Street Journal, which is the print outlet sister of Fox News, says in returning to this form of, quote, gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela, Trump has spurned the usual veneer of armed interventions, acting without an Oval Office speech justifying the attack, congressional authorization, a promise of elections in a foreign land, or even, as you both noted tonight, a detailed plan for its future. And so, General, what happens in the days ahead? Okay, a congressional briefing here or there, but Trump is openly threatening multiple other countries. It would seem that there's a breaking point somewhere.

18:50If we have warlike powers being exercised against multiple countries, do we still have a constitutional limit here? Well, by the way, something has to be said to add to the ambassador's terrific comments on Venezuela. The Trump administration action against that country, there's an element of goofy to it. I mean, from the start, I said it was about oil. It was about Maduro a hard out, Shell a hard in. That's what they're up to. They think they're going to get 300 billion barrels of oil reserves, drop the price of energy. It'll be positive impact on the United States economy. They didn't take into account over 2 ,000 admirals and generals in the Venezuelan armed forces who have two sources of income, drug transit money and oil being sold to China.

19:45Probably 80 percent of it going out to this ghostly. They're not going to let go of the golden goose here. There was no plan. Hopefully, the CIA, by the way, at this time is in talking to the security services and trying to convince them to let a legitimate government back into power. But I don't think we have a clue what's going to happen in Venezuela, except it's unlikely we're going to run it. And it's even more unlikely that Shell Oil is going to put$10 billion and five to 10 years of effort in reviving the oil fields, which are under control of the generals. There's just no sense to all of it.

20:28Never mind these threats to Colombia. You're next. What kind of talk is that of the president of the United States? Ambassador, what should Americans learn or keep in mind about this complicated region with a lot of problems across civil military relations, corruption, but quite frankly, a lot of failed U.S. interventions when they're done on the cheap or on a short-term mindset? that. Well, it seems like we had an interregnum of 35 years from Operation Just Cause till today where we weren't intervening in the affairs of others. And maybe we're going back to this, how we used to operate. You mentioned earlier, Ari, the kind of the post-World War II order.

21:11Now we're talking spheres of influence. I think we need to remember a couple of things. As General McCaffrey pointed out, the Article I power of the Congress, Congress is back in session today. I know there are a number of people going to be looking hard at this. And we also work better. We work with our international partners. We have a great relationship. I've had historically great relationship with Colombia. Petro is an interesting character. I'll not throw any ad hominid attacks out there against him. He's not my cup of tea. But having said that, the country has been extraordinarily important to us in the fight against counter-narcotics and also some of these foreign terrorist organizations, such as the FARC and ELN, these transnational criminal organizations are fundamentally undermining democracies across the region.

21:58They can get to a guy like Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, and turn him into a drug trafficker, even though he was recently granted a pardon. His brother's still in jail for drug trafficking, for instance. So we have to work as partners in the region. You cannot operate unilaterally, especially against transnational criminal organizations that operate transnationally. Definitionally, you have to work with others. Again, if I were in a position to be briefing the president and briefing the secretary of state, I'd lay out, hey, we got to quickly have a plan here. You should have had a plan before, I think, when Maduro was captured.

22:36And again, I'm actually of the opinion that having Maduro out of Venezuela is a net positive. But what comes after is the most important piece of it. And you have to have kind of laid out, and we did this in March of 2020, we had a framework for democratic transition. Dust it off, update it, and lay out how this is going to look, and let's get to elections as quickly as possible. I'd love to see Maria Corina Machado back in Venezuela. If we're running the place, she should be able to come back, right? These are things that the people of Venezuela spoke. Seventy percent of the people voted Maduro out of power.

23:09And I'd like to see I'd like to see democracy take hold there again. Right. Well, again, I think it's very useful. We appreciate you being on tonight and people who can listen to both you understand the depth of experience you have both in the region and with the complexity of this kind of international policy planning. And in sometimes diplomatic terms, which makes sense, Ambassador, what you do. In diplomatic terms, you've suggested that the administration in serious ways does not know what it's doing and hasn't planned for a serious situation. We could wish them the best, but we also have to be clear eyed.

23:43My thanks to both of you. We have a 90 second break. And then when we return, we look at the rise of Trump imperialism. That's next.

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25:26We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country. We have peace. It's our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done, and other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it. I didn't. I didn't lose sight. But it really is its least on earth. Donald Trump making his case. He has, of course, captured Maduro. Experts are concerned on a number of fronts, as we've been reporting. The references to history and restoring it are a double-edged sword. When you think about, say, America's shift on civil rights or the treatment of detainees, going back far isn't usually a good thing in foreign policy.

26:11For example, before the World War II order or back when chemical weapons were more regularly used. And yet the president admits that he wants the oil. He sees this as a kind of a throwback old school 19th century doctrine when the U.S. did rule as might makes right. Again, that type of leadership, regardless of the system of government was widely seen as contributing to the imbalance of powers and the cycle of wars, that after two of them, two world wars, we moved on from that. Trump wants to go back. He admits it. In the days after this operation, there has also been an unseemly set of taunts.

26:54Here we have to bleep some of them, but this is, I want to be clear, quoting the official White House accounts, what they post on behalf of the Trump White House online, as well as what some officials have said. So using the F word after the extraction, they said, as a kind of a taunt to Venezuela and other countries, F around and find out. Also, in a kind of an unserious mode of hip-hop quoting, I can tell you that the Trump administration quoted a famous line from Biggie Smalls used in a very different context to say, if you don't know, now you know. We've reported tonight on Trump saying the U.S.