122. Is Trump Going to War with Venezuela?

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2:30Welcome to The Rest is Politics, US. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Katty, we're both here in Prague. We are both here in Prague. Unfortunately, not in the same room, but there we go. So we wanted this week, Anthony, we're going to talk about Trump's so-called war on drugs, his attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia. The blow up that is happening between the Trump administration and Venezuela and Colombia, we didn't really get to it last week, but it has been hotting up. I think it's worth people knowing about because there are now concerns that this could lead to more of a kinetic war and possibly even the United States trying to launch regime change in Venezuela against Nicolas Maduro.

3:12This has upset a lot of people, not just in Venezuela, it's actually upset people in the Republican Party. And there's been some pretty outspoken Republicans on this issue. So we thought it was worth talking about. And then in the second half, we want to get to the Democrats and particularly look at this generational split. The Democrats still flailing around trying to come up with ideas ahead of the midterms and the 2028 election. But I think it's very worth talking about this extraordinary split between younger Democrats and older Democrats that is emerging in the party and what that means and whether it's good or bad for the Democrats' chances of winning back the House and the Senate.

3:53So first of all, let's get to Venezuela. This has all been happening slightly below the radar. It's been getting some attention in the US, but I think it's going to pick up. So I thought it was worth everybody being up to speed on it and kind of keeping an eye on it, because since September the 2nd, the Trump administration has attacked seven different boats off the coast of Venezuela. They've killed at least 32 people on the grounds that they were drug traffickers transporting contraband to the US. The president is justifying this on the grounds of self-defense, claiming, although he doesn't have the evidence, that drugs from the region are responsible for 300 ,000 deaths in the US last year.

4:36But there are both political and legal questions being raised about this activity, which seems to belie the idea, Anthony, that this is a president who is just going to stay at home and be isolationist, because this is a pretty expansionist thing to be doing, right? Well, I mean, first of all, it's probably not even legal. I mean, he's probably violating international law. He's violating the whole concept of due process in the free world. And I think you and I both know it's about trying to control the whole region and force and flex. But I think there's something else going on. I just have to tell people what I think.

5:16He's trying to anesthetize everybody to random killing. Because if you can randomly kill people off the coast of Venezuela or Colombian fishermen. And people are like, hey, that's fine. Maybe you'll push it onto the mainland of the United States. Maybe the narrative will be, well, that was an illegal alien. And we thought that they were dealing drugs. And so we shot a cruise missile at them in their tenement home in some urban city. Again, with him, you don't know where he's going or what he's trying to do, but all those things are on the table. By the way, Caddy, you ever been in one of those boats?

5:56My dad had a 20-foot fishing boat. It had 150 horsepower outboard engine. You think you can go from Venezuela to Miami with a boat like that? You think you can get there? You can't get there, Caddy. So this nonsense that he's going after people that are bringing the drugs into the country is absurd. And this is why Rand Paul is going after him, you know. And it's fentanyl in particular. And what he's saying is this is all part of the war on fentanyl. This was what helped get Trump elected in 2024 was going hard after fentanyl drugs. Deaths in America, fentanyl deaths are actually coming down. And Anthony, the fentanyl doesn't even come from the Caribbean.

6:39The fentanyl tends to come over the border from Mexico. The majority of it brought over the border by American citizens. it's not sitting in boats off the coast of Venezuela or the coast of Colombia. I think what I've heard that's interesting is that behind this is Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, came out, of course, under Fidel Castro's regime. His was a family that was one of many that escaped from the Castro regime to Miami. He's always had a very hard line on socialist governments in Central America because of his Cuban background. And he is driving, my understanding is, this policy in the White House.

7:20This is one area you don't see much of Marco Rubio, right? It's like we're looking for the Secretary of State and I don't know, I can't find him very much when it comes to Ukraine and Gaza. But on this issue, Marco Rubio takes this very personally and he's got Stephen Miller behind him, my understanding is, and the two of them are going hard after Maduro, they think that this is going to help them, perhaps with Venezuelan voters. Maybe it mitigates against some of the stuff that they've done of sending Venezuelans off to that prison in El Salvador. It just doesn't quite fit for me. Maybe what you're saying is right, because this doesn't fit with a president who came in on America First and initially was trying to do deals with the Venezuelans to get them to take the illegal deportees.

8:01They had Rick Grinnell, their ambassador, Rick Grinnell, they sent him down to Caracas to negotiate. So there's been this back and forth. And now I just think it's extraordinary how hard he is going after this with, yeah, you've got a couple of people pushing back, but he seems to be getting away with just these extrajudicial killings. Okay. Well, I rendered my opinion. I told you why I think it's ridiculous. And I'm siding with Rand Paul, but let me push back for a second and give the trump administration opinion and get you to react to it so the three things that the which character are you playing by the way you are you caroline levitt no i'm i'm i see myself more as a pam bondy actually we could talk about that after the show's over but yeah i don't see myself as we made it we need a bit of therapy on that one but okay yeah i see myself more as a pam bondy because you know she's uh she's my age and she's moisturizing let's put it that way she she looks good for her age Okay, so here we go.

8:55Ready? National defense argument. That's number one. Okay, this is in our interest, national defense. There's a national security threat. These are criminal terrorists, and therefore they are enemy unlawful combatants. And so if you're enemy unlawful combatants, then we can use the military against you. Okay, and this is how they're justifying military force international waters. Number two, they're going to say that this is inside the existing legal framework of the United States, that as commander in chief, the president can conduct these. It's under that Emergency Powers Act that he's veiled under tariffs, everything else that he's doing.

9:41And then the last thing, and this is the thing that Trump would say, he would say it quietly. He wouldn't say it to you, Kat. He definitely wouldn't say it to me, but he's saying it internally. This is not of a drug war. This is a culture war. Okay, always look at Trump through the culture war. My white living and breathing on the Bible Belt people, those people, yeah, these are bad people. They're black and brown. they are bringing drugs in we hate drugs trump's our guy blow them up blow them up and then again you know i don't get it because in our country i guess we we don't learn this anymore but there's an entitlement to innocence there's a presumption of innocence and there's also due process you have to have some type of process before you start indiscriminately shooting at people ms bondy Miss Bondi, may I ask a question?

10:38The question everybody's asking here is, is America formally at war with Venezuela? I have no idea why I said Miss Bondi, by the way. I'm in trouble now. I'm sort of loving it. Is the United States at war with Venezuela? The United States is at war with the enemy combatants that are emanating from Venezuela. We're not at war with the sovereign state, but we're at war with this stateless, amorphous what we would define as a terrorist organization. So that's why the Defense Department has moved 10 ,000 troops into the region, eight American warships and a submarine now in the Caribbean, to go after a few people in fishing boats who may or may not be carrying drugs because we haven't actually had any access to the intelligence that the Defense Department had before firing on these people.

11:28How does that fit in international law, Ms. Bondi? Okay, well, this is consistent with what America has been doing in the region for the last 200 years. You know, we're controlling the maritime shipping lanes. There was a guy by the name of James Monroe who said that we have to make sure that we have hegemony in the Western hemisphere of the world. I mean, I got to break character here for a second though, because you've got me and I'm like painted into the corner. And what I want to whisper to you, because I'm under oath as Van Bondi now, what I want to whisper to you, I want to lean in and say, hey caddy you know this is really effed up and you know we're trying to knock maduro out of office with all this bellicosity and all of these threats and by the way that's really bad for us because it makes us look like jackasses and a banana republic but let's go back into character okay ready so so that's it it's the monroe doctrine miss k it's the monroe doctrine okay let's get back to the politics of this for a moment, because I think the whole legal issue is dubious.

12:36And that's why you've got Rand Paul standing up and saying, in an unusual outspoken moment against the president saying, hey, this does not work. You can't just go attacking people willy nilly without some kind of authorization going through Congress or having some kind of look at the legality of this. But let's talk about politics, because in a way, I think Trump... Before you go to the politics, I just want to say something, because I'm now channeling Trump. Ram Paul, no chicken fingers and french fries for you on what was once the beautiful Jackie Kennedy Rose Garden. I've paved that Rose Garden over with white paving stones and we are serving chicken McNuggets and we're serving french fries and ketchup and none for you.

13:18And by the way, he was the only Republican senator that didn't show up yesterday. Yesterday, he was supposed to be there with all the other Republicans beating the drum about why the Democrats are to blame for the closing of the government. So no chicken nuggets for you. I am the chicken nugget Nazi and there's no chicken nuggets for you. OK, keep going, Gatti. Sorry. Rampol has a long history of being a very much a non-military interventionist. He didn't support the wars in the Middle East. He was an outspoken against he was a thorn in the side of George W. Bush over this. and he's going to be a thorn in the side of Donald Trump if Donald Trump decides to have regime change in Venezuela, I suspect.

13:57But he is not going to get those chicken nuggets in the lovely paved patio. He may not even get invited to the ballroom, which is being built at the moment. I don't know if you've seen the photos. We are going to get to the politics of this. But that ballroom, I'm sorry, we can't let this go. Blowing up half of the White House, not half of the White House, I'm exaggerating, a bit of the East Wing to create this massive gold ballroom. I'm going to be the contrarian for a second, okay? You think it's nice to have a ballroom? I do think the White House needs a ballroom. I don't like that he knocked down half of the East Wing.

14:31And just for everybody's, so everybody knows, that wasn't part of the original building. It was added to the building by FDR in 1940. I think you've walked through there. I've walked through there. It's quite beautiful. It's a reception area, you know, beautiful portraits and pictures in the area. He knocked down a good portion of it to open up that area for this ballroom. But if you were asking me, and Trump went to Obama 10 years ago and said, we're having these state dinners on the lawn in tents. And, you know, it's the American government. It's the American president. We should have a ballroom.

15:04And Trump said he would raise the money to build the ballroom. Of course, Obama rebuffed him. Obama built a basketball court. Well, he built a basketball court. They all do something. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on. Reagan took them off. You had a swimming pool for Kennedy and Roosevelt. Some people were very mad at Richard Nixon. The Brady press room, where I actually gave my one infamous press conference there, is on top of the swing pool. And if you go down the steps, Caddy, you can still see the tile from the swimming pool that was built in the 1930s for the polio-ridden Roosevelt to get his exercise in.

15:41So I get the fact that we're going to make changes, but smashing into the building and like a destroying part of the building, I think is really bad. And it's just bad form. Well, I think destroying some of the history of the building, you could have added on a ballroom. I've been to state dinners in the tents. I thought they were kind of lovely. And I've been to big parties which held hundreds of people in some of those big reception rooms. Those are lovely, too. I would have thought they were enough, but you could always add them on. I don't know that you needed to blow up a section of a historic building.

16:09I'm with you on it. OK, the politics of the Venezuelans, which is interesting. Trump was kind of masterful. In his first term, Trump reached out to the opposition against Maduro in Venezuela, was a big supporter of Juan Guaido, who was the opposition leader. He invited him to one of his State of the Union addresses, and he was a guest of honor at the State of the Union address. This had the kind of instant effect of turning Venezuelan voters in Florida, which at that point was a swing state, into instant Trump supporters. And they voted for Donald Trump in 2020, helped turn Florida red and have been strong supporters of the president ever since.

16:50And they're not an insubstantial voting bloc. But here's the problem for Donald Trump. He's been losing support amongst Venezuelans because Venezuelans have been particularly targeted in the ice crackdowns. A whole bunch of them have been sent to that prison seacot in El Salvador. And his support amongst Venezuelans in polls has dropped pretty dramatically. Now, I don't know if targeting these boats is part of a drive also to drive up support domestically at home amongst Venezuelan voters, but it wouldn't hurt him to get his support numbers back up amongst that. But, Caddy, he's at 37 percent, though.

17:25He's at 37 percent. So it's not working, right? Job approval rating, you mean? Yeah, his job. So he's at 37 percent. He's not polling well with these Venezuelans now in Miami. He's not polling well with the farmers in Iowa who all voted for him. Not one soybean has been purchased by the Chinese. He's giving all these different people grief. This is random. It's not necessarily a poll, but there's several Dominicans I know in New York. They work in the various car garages. They all voted for Donald Trump. Now their family members are faced with ICE raids, and they would like to pull their vote back.

18:04So why is he doing this? And how is it? Is it working for him? Tell me, is there something that he's doing with this that I don't see? Or maybe he's just preparing us for martial law? Is that what he's doing? I think that there is an element of Trump's policy, which is unusual in this second term, which is the degree to which he has actually been interventionist and he has been spending a lot of money around the world. Yes, he cut the USAID budget and he pulled back from conventional ways of spending. But if you look at this White House, he's not unafraid to spend either money or defense capability in hitting his enemies and shoring up his friends, particularly in Latin America.

18:48So he's gone after Venezuela. He's going after Nicolas Maduro. He admitted in public that he's got CIA operatives working in the country. Who knows whether he's now going to try and go for regime change in Venezuela. It wouldn't be a stretch to think so. And certainly Venezuelans that I've spoken to think that that's going to happen, which is why, by the way, Venezuelan bonds have gone up in price because people think there could be regime change there. He's gone after the Colombians. He hit a fishing boat off the coast of Colombia and the Colombian president, a left winger, Petro, said that this was a direct threat to national sovereignty.

19:22He accused him of murdering a Colombian fisherman who had absolutely nothing to do with the drug trade. Trump then hit back by saying, OK, we're cutting off aid to Colombia. Paradoxically, this could actually help Petro. Somebody in Bogota texted me this morning who follows Colombian politics, said this could rally people around the left wing president. But the pattern is that Trump is using the power that he has, whether it's money or defense capacity, to go after left wing governments in areas of Latin America and to support MAGA governments. So he's offered Mille 20 billion and then offered to give him more billions.

20:04It's an expensive process, but the pattern is, I'm going to use power and money to help you if you're MAGA, and I'm going to use power and money to hurt you if you're a socialist, and I think it's going to help me domestically at home. So I think that's what's happening. I think that's the pattern. And what's unusual is that for a president who came in saying we're not going to get involved abroad, he is involved all over the place abroad at the moment. But again, it's not working because his approval rating, he has a net negative number worse than Joe Biden. Even the worst number that Joe Biden could come up with in the four years that he was president, Donald Trump's number right now is lower than that.

20:46So what's afoot? Is it something else? I guess my question to you is maybe it's not about popularity. Maybe it's about strengthening his base and then seeing if he can condition people to him ignominiously breaking the law. If I could do it in the Caribbean waters, I can do it at home too. Yeah. And, but by the way, in blue cities, in blue states, not in red states where the murder rates per capita are higher than New York and California, but in blue states. So this is good for my base. And let's see, these guys, are they going to even respond? You know, they, they're admitting to people openly that they're out of ideas in terms of how to respond to him.

21:32I mean, they're flat footed, you know? Okay, that's really good. We are going to talk about that more after the break, when we come back and look at the Democratic Party, whether they're out of ideas and this generational split that is emerging and is going to get only bigger.

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23:40Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci. A.K.A. Pan Bondi. Oh, man, you know, I'm not going to live that down. Maybe I got to go back to the colorist, Gatti, and I'll bleach it up top. But before I do that, I want to talk to you about the Democrats and the fighting that's going on. And there is, as you pointed out, a demographic split in the Democrats. The older Democrats, I guess they're a little out to lunch. The newer Democrats are like, hey, your policies are not working. And a lot of these guys are lurching further to the left. But they feel like they're in disarray.

24:15And I'll start this conversation with a conversation that I had with a gentleman in the Congress, a Democrat in the Congress yesterday. He's there. I guess he's there seven terms, 14 years. So an older Democrat or not necessarily? Older, older, youngish, youngish, older. Youngish by our terms. He's he's he's he's 50. He's not 85 like Nancy Pelosi. But he's saying we're out of ideas. And I'm like, you're out of ideas. What do you mean you're out of ideas? Well, you know, the founders didn't contemplate this and the founders didn't contemplate that. And the founders didn't contemplate that the whole Republican Party or one side of the partisan politics would just capitulate to somebody like Donald Trump.

25:00So I don't know. Are they out of? I mean, can you believe that they're out of ideas, Katty? And then if they're out of ideas, what ideas could we present to them? I mean, I have a couple, but I'm interested in what you have to say. Well, I think that being out of ideas is partly why you see the kind of biggest generational split that I've seen in the Democratic Party for a long time. You now have 20 Democrats under the age of 40 who have thrown their hat in the ring for the 2026 midterms. You've only had one Republican so far in that age group who's thrown their hat into the ring. So from California to Massachusetts to Maine to D.C., you've got young Democrats everywhere saying those old guys are now synonymous with Joe Biden.

25:50Joe Biden lost. He gave us out of control inflation. That means that we younger people can't afford our rent. We can't afford groceries. We can't afford our college debts. And we need to have a real change in the party. And it's not just, I think, a change about age. OK, here you go. Of the 52 House lawmakers who have served more than 10 terms, 70 % of them are Democrats. Since 2022, the party has also seen eight members of Congress die while they were in office. Six of them were aged 70. I mean, this age issue for the Democratic Party has been around for a long time. But Joe Biden blew the gasket on it.

26:38He blew the lid off it. Because now you've got younger Democrats, I think, feeling emboldened, saying, look what the old generation gave us. They lost. And so anyone who is older in the Democratic Party is now synonymous with Joe Biden and therefore synonymous with losing. And I think that all of those ideas that came from the older generation of we play by the rules, we focus group people, we bring in older people who have a track record of already winning in politics. We get the committees to decide who has done enough of their time and then we promote them. That's what's gone out the window.