Bannon's War Room - Episode 5041： War With Venezuela; The Capture Of Maduro

00:00:00.000 Now, Donald Trump is insisting that the main reason he's interested in Venezuela,

00:00:05.140 the main reason the US is kind of looking at tankers off the coast of Venezuela,

00:00:08.620 comes back to drugs, the trade, the smuggling of illegal drugs out of Venezuela.

00:00:13.020 But what if it's not just that? Maybe there's something else going on.

00:00:16.260 What if it's partly about oil?

00:00:19.380 Now, on the surface, you might be thinking,

00:00:22.320 why does America even need Venezuelan oil?

00:00:24.680 And I can kind of understand your point, because if you look at just total oil production,

00:00:27.940 look, this is up until 2005, the US was there, Venezuela was there, Saudi Arabia was there.

00:00:33.920 But as you probably know, you know, since then, everything has changed.

00:00:36.980 Look, American output has gone through the roof, way above Saudi Arabia, way above Saudi Arabia.

00:00:43.160 And Venezuela has gone basically to the floor.

00:00:45.220 And that's kind of post-Chavez, Maduro.

00:00:48.260 They're one of the minnows now, kind of, I think, 21st biggest producer in the world.

00:00:51.780 So, again, that question, why should America care?

00:00:54.740 Well, in the US, that big rise is largely down to this.

00:00:59.880 It's down to the shale revolution.

00:01:01.520 So, you've got fracking all around the US producing extraordinary amounts of crude oil.

00:01:07.600 And here's where we get to the interesting bit.

00:01:09.600 Because when you're thinking about crude oil, maybe you're just thinking about, well, barrels of oil.

00:01:15.080 It's all the same, isn't it?

00:01:16.560 Well, actually, no.

00:01:17.680 So, if you kind of look at crude oil, there are various different types of crude in different parts of the world.

00:01:23.440 There's actually kind of various different ways you can categorise it.

00:01:26.560 But one way you can look at it is look at the kind of density.

00:01:29.380 So, you're basically looking at how thick that crude is.

00:01:31.700 And when I say thick, I mean, literally how thick.

00:01:33.920 This is showing you global production broken down by the density of that oil.

00:01:38.800 And so, you've got the kind of medium stuff.

00:01:40.940 And this is probably, if you're thinking, if you've got kind of image in your mind of what crude oil looks like,

00:01:44.960 it's a bit like this, you know.

00:01:46.000 It's kind of black, but it's not too viscous.

00:01:48.260 It flows around.

00:01:49.020 But there's other stuff as well.

00:01:51.320 So, this, this is light crude.

00:01:53.980 And it kind of almost looks like a smoothie, doesn't it?

00:01:56.520 And that's the same stuff.

00:01:57.420 This is still crude oil, but down to the kind of geological and the biological conditions in the ground

00:02:03.560 when it was being formed, you know, hundreds of millions of years ago,

00:02:06.420 it comes out looking a bit different.

00:02:08.620 And so, that's light.

00:02:09.800 You've also got heavy stuff.

00:02:11.120 And it's kind of relatively small in global production, but this is gloopy, super viscous stuff.

00:02:17.920 Heavy oil.

00:02:18.540 So, heavy, medium, light.

00:02:20.160 Remember that.

00:02:21.080 And remember also, the key thing here is, you get it out of the ground, it may look like that,

00:02:26.060 but ultimately, you still need it to go into, you know, someone's car.

00:02:31.100 Or indeed, you know, be turned into chemicals.

00:02:32.900 Basically, you need to process it.

00:02:34.500 Major breaking news from Venezuela.

00:02:37.080 President Trump says the United States successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela

00:02:42.680 in an overnight operation.

00:02:44.940 In a social media post, he added that Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife were, quote,

00:02:51.640 captured and flown out of the country.

00:02:54.240 This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement.

00:02:58.020 President Trump will deliver a news conference from Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m.,

00:03:02.180 joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth,

00:03:07.040 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Cain.

00:03:10.840 In a brief interview with The New York Times, President Trump called the mission, quote,

00:03:14.960 a lot of good planning and a lot of great, great troops and great people.

00:03:19.420 It was a brilliant operation, actually.

00:03:21.660 Let me see you.

00:03:28.180 Ah!

00:03:31.140 Ah!

00:03:32.180 Some of the refineries in America.

00:03:36.100 So here are some of the refineries.

00:03:37.560 There's one in L.A. there.

00:03:39.260 These are the ten biggest.

00:03:41.280 You've got some up here around, kind of, towards Canada.

00:03:44.020 We'll kind of come to that in a second.

00:03:45.760 But a lot of them are down there, kind of Texas, Louisiana, on the coast.

00:03:50.140 And here's the critical thing.

00:03:52.120 These refineries are primarily set up for heavy oil,

00:03:55.740 for taking that gloopy stuff and turning it into gasoline and all of the other different products.

00:04:00.480 But here's where things get interesting.

00:04:02.800 And remember that chart I showed you a moment ago, the one which showed kind of shale oil and how it kind of went through the roof?

00:04:06.780 The oil that's generally produced with shale oil, the fracking oil, that comes out of the ground mostly in the light form.

00:04:16.100 So it's the smoothie.

00:04:18.100 Sometimes it's actually even clear, it comes out of the ground clear rather than black.

00:04:21.980 And that's the majority of American production right now.

00:04:25.340 Shale oil tends to be light stuff.

00:04:27.260 And actually, that's kind of going back ten years.

00:04:29.340 Look at where we are now.

00:04:30.200 Look at those bars.

00:04:31.540 In the last few years, the amount of light oil being produced in the U.S. has gone up and up and up.

00:04:36.160 And the amount of kind of heavy stuff has gone down.

00:04:38.480 But back to those refineries.

00:04:40.440 They need to be fed.

00:04:41.400 If America's going to have gasoline, it needs to feed those refineries with heavy oil.

00:04:46.720 So if you look at the kind of imports coming into America in recent years, even though America is producing so much oil, more oil than it ever produced before, it still needs to suck in loads of oil from overseas.

00:04:59.660 And the type of oil we're talking about, it used to be, it's mostly heavy crude, used to be only 12%.

00:05:05.920 So only 12% of imports were heavy, gloopy crude.

00:05:09.600 Now, it's about 70%.

00:05:12.660 So 70% of the oil coming into America, which it needs to basically keep its economy going, is heavy crude.

00:05:42.660 Where does heavy crude come from?

00:05:49.340 Well, here are some of the big countries where you find most of it.

00:05:52.900 It's Canada and Venezuela. 0.92

00:05:55.340 There's one other I'll come to in a second, which we'll come back to.

00:05:58.060 But it's Canada and it's Venezuela, where you get most of this heavy crude oil.

00:06:02.140 Which is why, about to think about where those refineries are, they're mostly set up.

00:06:05.940 You've got some in the north there to get the heavy oil coming out of Canada, and you've got some around the kind of Louisiana and elsewhere and Texas to get that heavy oil that comes in from Venezuela.

00:06:17.120 That was kind of the way they were set up.

00:06:19.100 And it's really expensive to rebuild these things.

00:06:21.300 You can't just chuck out a refinery very easily overnight.

00:06:23.320 Some came from Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico as well, and that was pretty heavy too.

00:06:27.140 So that's the picture in America.

00:06:28.480 And the upshot is, even though America is producing more and more oil, the imports, this is showing you imports of oil into America, are still really high.

00:06:36.400 And if you break down those imports by the country that stuff is coming from, well, there's Venezuela.

00:06:42.080 And it used to be a decent slug, actually more coming from Venezuela just about than from Canada just at the turn of the millennium. 0.96

00:06:48.160 But now look at what's happened since.

00:06:49.540 Right now, Canada has gone from 15% of all of the U.S. imports of oil to 61%.

00:06:57.320 61%.

00:06:58.600 And Venezuela is basically next to nothing.

00:07:01.680 But here's what's tantalising, and here's the reason I think that a lot of people are looking towards Venezuela and thinking, well, there's more to this than just drugs.

00:07:09.040 Look at total oil reserves around the world.

00:07:12.620 The higher these bars are, the more oil there is in the ground.

00:07:14.880 So that hasn't yet been taken out of the ground.

00:07:16.560 So there you've got Saudi, Iran, Iraq, all of the usual suspects. 0.98

00:07:20.980 But the biggest of all, and this is according to various different sources, the biggest of all is Venezuela.

00:07:26.420 And what's that oil?

00:07:27.840 It's the heavy, tarry stuff that you might well want to put into those American refineries.

00:07:32.800 And there is really only one other place in the world that has a kind of serious amount of heavy oil other than Canada and Venezuela.

00:07:41.220 And lo and behold, guess where that is?

00:07:44.040 It's Russia. 0.81

00:07:44.760 All of which is to say, you know, it matters what kind of oil America needs.

00:07:51.100 It's worth just delving into these kind of nuances, because that helps you understand a little bit more about the backstory of geopolitics.

00:07:59.400 It was slightly busy, I would say.

00:08:02.020 It was very dark all over, especially in Venezuela.

00:08:06.740 The team did an incredible job.

00:08:08.860 They rehearsed and practiced like nobody's ever seen.

00:08:11.720 And I was told, and I was told by real military people that there's no other country on Earth that could do such a maneuver.

00:08:20.280 If you would have seen what happened.

00:08:22.420 I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show.

00:08:25.480 And if you would have seen the speed, the violence, you know, they say that the speed, the violence.

00:08:32.820 They use that term.

00:08:34.140 It's just it was an amazing thing.

00:08:36.720 An amazing job that these people did.

00:08:39.800 Nobody else could have done anything like it.

00:08:41.580 You know, we were prepared to do a second wave.

00:08:43.640 We were all set and very, this was so lethal.

00:08:48.180 This was so powerful that we didn't have to.

00:08:50.360 But we're prepared.

00:08:51.800 We're out there with an armada like nobody's ever seen before.

00:08:54.860 And we're prepared and we're prepared.

00:08:57.360 And frankly, probably thought we were going to have to do it.

00:09:01.160 But we were prepared for a second wave going in.

00:09:06.040 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.

00:09:10.940 Pray for our enemies.

00:09:12.280 Because we're going medieval on these people.

00:09:16.260 Here's the reason I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.

00:09:20.520 The people have had a belly full of it.

00:09:22.420 I know you don't like hearing that.

00:09:23.860 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that.

00:09:25.600 But you're not going to stop it.

00:09:26.540 It's going to happen.

00:09:27.580 And where do people like that go to share the big line?

00:09:31.220 Mega media.

00:09:32.640 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

00:09:37.980 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?

00:09:41.120 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

00:09:48.160 War Room.

00:09:48.960 Here's your host, Stephen K.

00:09:50.920 It's Saturday, 3 January, Year of the Lord, 2025.

00:10:00.980 A stunning and dazzling overnight strike by U.S. forces.

00:10:06.100 They've extracted Maduro and his wife from Venezuela with just a bold and brilliant raid.

00:10:14.060 He's now been indicted in the Southern District of New York.

00:10:18.020 The President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief, along with Secretary of War Hegseth, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,

00:10:24.060 and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are going to give a press conference at Mar-a-Lago at 11 o'clock.

00:10:29.580 And War Room is going to stick with it and give you both pregame analysis and postgame this morning.

00:10:35.280 So we've got an all-star lineup of some of the smartest people in the world that have dealt with this situation.

00:10:41.740 I want to start with Eric Prince.

00:10:44.980 Eric, you have been on this show now, I think, for years, I might say, saying the way to bring this to a head is to go in and extract Maduro.

00:10:55.480 Talk to me about your thoughts of what happened in the last couple of hours.

00:11:01.300 The phrase the President was looking for was speed, surprise, and violence of action.

00:11:07.340 And U.S. forces definitely delivered.

00:11:10.680 Certainly a magnificent job.

00:11:12.900 It's truly the most refined, decisive kinetic action operation organization I think the world has ever seen.

00:11:22.580 You know, back after the debacle of Desert One and the Iran hostage attempt, a rescue attempt in 79,

00:11:31.060 when Congress created SOCOM, it was done to create the money and the focus to have this kind of capability,

00:11:38.480 absolutely apex predator, go anywhere in the face of whatever, surface-to-air missile, air defense networks, whatever.

00:11:48.260 And remember, Caracas is at about 3,500 feet.

00:11:50.920 So you've got to go from sea level up a mountain plateau into this bowl and hit a lot of targets simultaneously, and they did.

00:12:00.080 The targeting and the intelligence to do this was spectacular.

00:12:04.340 I also must add I'm extremely glad to see that they bombed Chavez's grave as an extra FU to the cancer of socialism that has infected Venezuela.

00:12:14.660 As I said on your show a few weeks ago, you can vote in socialism.

00:12:19.380 You have to shoot your way out of it.

00:12:21.640 And for the people of Venezuela that voted a year ago, July, in free elections, and it was stolen, Maduro lost by 40 points.

00:12:31.440 F him.

00:12:32.420 I'm glad he's in New York.

00:12:34.460 I hope.

00:12:35.460 There's some other bad people that they have to take out.

00:12:37.640 Diastaro Cabello, Padrino, the minister of defense, Jorge and Delce Rodriguez, Diastaro Cabello, they all have to go.

00:12:50.280 And then Venezuela has a chance at breathing free.

00:12:54.560 This is not going to require U.S. occupation or anything else,

00:12:59.060 but it took away the inevitability of the regime and to see people breaking out and protesting in celebration all across Venezuela is a very, very great sign.

00:13:11.180 And also in Chile.

00:13:12.660 So what we're going to do to walk through this, there's a huge geopolitical, and is there going to be stability or civil war?

00:13:20.700 We're going to get to all that, but I want to focus on just the military strike part of it, which is a capability that is extraordinary.

00:13:28.260 This is breathtaking, being a young naval officer and being there for the workup for Desert One.

00:13:34.020 They don't run things.

00:13:34.860 Back then, what they run today is a totally different deal.

00:13:38.400 This is absolutely breathtaking.

00:13:39.900 You combine the end of the 12-day war with that strike, including from the Navy submarines, you add this.

00:13:47.040 The American people have to understand now, the geopolitics of it, strategically, what's going to happen, what's going to happen in Venezuela, we're going to get to all that.

00:13:53.940 Mike Davis is going to join us about the legality.

00:13:55.960 There already are on Trump about that.

00:13:57.280 We're going to cover it all, but just the mechanics of the capability of can you do it.

00:14:03.640 No military in the world.

00:14:05.320 It's breathtaking what our troops, what our sailors, marine special forces have done.

00:14:09.880 We're going to go through all that.

00:14:10.780 We've got Captain Fennell, L. Todd Woods.

00:14:13.640 Todd Woods was a Delta Force pilot, helicopter pilot.

00:14:17.220 The Eric Prince is with us.

00:14:18.840 Posobiec is going to join us.

00:14:19.920 Mike Davis, all of it, leading up to the presser.

00:14:23.260 And, of course, we're going to have all the geopolitics, economics.

00:14:25.600 I want to thank the Denver team and my own production team here at the War Room.

00:14:30.680 That cold open, nothing short of magnificent.

00:14:33.300 You've got the entire package right there of what happened and maybe why it happened.

00:14:39.540 Short commercial break.

00:14:40.600 Johnny Conn takes us out.

00:14:41.880 We're going to come back.

00:14:42.840 It's a stunning overnight achievement by the Commander-in-Chief, President Trump.

00:14:49.920 Back in a moment.

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00:17:03.880 Okay, I want to make sure whether you're interventionist, non-interventionist, you think this is part of the MAGA strategy, not part of the MAGA strategy, whether Madura should go, all the geopolitical aspects of this, the geoeconomic aspects of this.

00:17:17.520 Also, what's going to happen?

00:17:18.980 Is it going to be stable?

00:17:19.900 Is it going to collapse in the civil war?

00:17:21.420 We're going to get to all those topics.

00:17:23.480 But the first is just the ability to do it.

00:17:26.660 And to have American troops and American military that's coordinated enough to actually pull it off.

00:17:31.340 No military in the world can do this.

00:17:34.700 Now, the geopolitics.

00:17:36.060 This is T up Taiwan or Xi, all that. 0.85

00:17:38.380 We're going to get to that moment.

00:17:39.220 But, Eric, let me just go back there.

00:17:40.600 I'm going to get Todd Woods, who was actually a Delta Force pilot after he came out of the Air Force Academy.

00:17:45.820 Just walk people through the logistics, how complicated.

00:17:48.280 We've got – President Trump said Armada.

00:17:50.180 We've been talking about this.

00:17:51.140 You've got a carrier strike group.

00:17:52.760 You've got an amphibious ready group.

00:17:54.300 We've had, I don't know, 12,000, 14,000 fleet Marines, sailors, special operators, special forces.

00:18:00.620 And we've been pouring – Hegseth, Pete's been pouring people through, I think, the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, I think.

00:18:07.260 Just walk through to the knowledge, to what you know, because you've been advocating something along these lines of a quick strike that can take care of at least the problem with the Maduro.

00:18:19.220 Maybe not with his bad hombres that are around him.

00:18:22.260 But just walk me through what you know about this strike and how complicated it was to pull off and how proud we should be of our forces.

00:18:30.720 The Maduro regime has spent a lot of money on building out – they spent a lot of money on defense.

00:18:38.960 And the Russian air defense systems, the Pantsir, anti-aircraft cannons, the S-300s, all of that stuff would have been on high alert because of the presence of all those ships offshore.

00:18:51.280 And the fact is the U.S. could come in, turn the lights off – I'm sure they'd turn the power off, turn the phones off, turn the ability of those surface-to-air missile systems to even function, destroyed them, and to fly helicopters right into an urban area like that and to get everybody out clean is truly spectacular.

00:19:12.400 It is an enormous amount of coordination. Congrats to Pete Hegseth and General Kane and the entire Department of War.

00:19:21.960 It's amazing what you get when you focus on merit and lethality instead of politics and social engineering, and it works.

00:19:29.820 This is exactly what we want our military to be, a snarling attack dog waiting to be let off leash.

00:19:35.960 And they did it last night, and they did it really well.

00:19:37.980 Now, when you take that magnificent capability, and if you're going to park it in Venezuela for the next 20 years, right now you have a – like a diamond-bladed, four-foot-long chainsaw with a big motor, okay?

00:19:52.500 It can go and cut through anything.

00:19:54.500 But if you park it there for 20 years and do nation building, it's like cutting a tree with a railroad spike in it.

00:20:00.100 It destroys the blade, and that's what the endless war is, the nonsense of Iraq and Afghanistan did when you allowed lawyers to be making decisions instead of warriors.

00:20:10.740 Warriors made the decisions last night, and that's what works.

00:20:16.020 Just to – I want the audience to understand.

00:20:18.180 They went in and extracted the dictator.

00:20:23.540 This is not like some democratically elected guy that's like some liberal or whatever.

00:20:28.560 This guy was hunkered down.

00:20:30.660 He knew that the Americans were coming for him.

00:20:32.520 He put a bounty on his head.

00:20:34.260 They knew he – this is the type of guy, like Saddam Hussein, that's changing residences every night.

00:20:39.880 To actually go in, know exactly where he is, extract him and the wife, right? 0.98

00:20:44.600 And we know there may be a few casualties on the Venezuelan side, but it doesn't sound like it was a massive shootout.

00:20:49.800 To go in and know exactly where he is, given the fact that they – he's hunkered down.

00:20:55.400 You know they got tremendous defense capability.

00:20:59.160 To extract it and come out – essentially, it looks like bloodless is breathtaking, is it not?

00:21:05.780 And sends a signal to every bad guy in the world that you're not beyond the reach of the United States military, sir.

00:21:13.140 And to put an icing on the cake, Steve, there was a high-level Chinese delegation, military delegation, in Caracas, trying to sell them more Chinese weaponry.

00:21:24.000 And so those dudes, I'm sure, were hunkered down in their hotel hearing, I guess in the words of Mondami, what rugged individualism looks like and feels like instead of that warm embrace of collectivism.

00:21:37.160 While I've got you, I know you've got to bounce.

00:21:38.880 While I've got you, just let's talk about the geostrategically for a moment.

00:21:42.380 But this is – I wanted to start about this analysis they had on the oil.

00:21:45.860 Of course, he was extradited and I think already indicted in the southern district.

00:21:51.400 He hasn't been arraigned.

00:21:52.260 Our understanding is he is headed to New York with the wife to be arraigned in the southern district.

00:21:57.420 I think that may take place actually today.

00:22:01.680 It was on drugs and being a narco-terrorist and a narco-state and stealing the election and all the terror he's done. 0.78

00:22:07.240 Oil is a big part of this.

00:22:08.460 Between Venezuela and Guyana, you know, bad news for his – for the Gulf Emirates because they're not as important. 0.98

00:22:17.380 Also, Iran's his big partner. 0.98

00:22:19.120 I think they've got Hezbollah down there.

00:22:20.600 They've got the Chinese Communist Party down there.

00:22:22.880 Just geostrategically, how big a deal is this?

00:22:25.840 Here's the thing.

00:22:28.220 It was actually incentive for the Russians to let Venezuela be as screwed up as it was for as long as it was because it took probably two and a half million barrels a day of production offline.

00:22:38.260 There is an enormous, as your prelim said, enormous amount of crude in the ground in Venezuela.

00:22:44.040 Venezuela, but it takes a lot of special processing equipment, and a lot of that stuff has been largely rotting and unmaintained for years and years and years.

00:22:52.820 So great opportunity.

00:22:54.720 There's a reason Venezuela was called El Dorado.

00:22:57.060 There is unbelievable natural resources in the country.

00:23:00.060 Venezuela hit its peak in like the early 70s, 80s, because there was a lot of Italians and Germans that went there as part of the oil business and built it out.

00:23:09.020 It was an extremely successful, growing economy, and they voted in socialism, and this is what they have now.

00:23:16.280 Look, the intervention in 89 to take out Noriega from Panama was necessary. 1.00

00:23:21.400 That guy was an absolute narco thug. 0.95

00:23:24.600 And sitting aside a super strategic waterway like the Panama Canal, I would put Venezuela in the same boat because of the money they can generate that they used to spread narco nonsense. 0.97

00:23:36.620 And leftist, leftist rot across all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

00:23:43.280 It's good, and the fact is they've had an election a year and a half ago, and now an actual representative government can take power.

00:23:52.620 Yes, there's going to be problems in Venezuela.

00:23:54.600 It's not going to be perfect, but it is, the pendulum is starting to swing in the right direction, and kudos to the U.S. military for doing a spectacular job in removing that guy from power.

00:24:06.620 But you've been on here now for over a year talking about it, maybe two years, talking about this.

00:24:13.260 When you discussed it, you actually talk about there's another ring around him, his inner circle, and you've mentioned those guys at the beginning.

00:24:19.740 I think they're still there.

00:24:20.900 In fact, I think they've picked a successor.

00:24:22.400 So if his bad hombres are not leaving, how comfortable you are that the second and third order events that are going to happen, are you comfortable that this has been thought through and this thing's not going to devolve into a civil war?

00:24:39.400 I think there's a different negotiating position now if the Trump administration people can say, we highly encourage you to step down or take the money and leave, because look what happened to number one.

00:24:52.160 And the Venezuelan military folded like a napkin in that kind of press.

00:24:59.300 So, look, this is especially near and dear.

00:25:02.780 We planned an operation like this from the private sector if the Venezuelan, free of Venezuelan government, was able to fund it to do something like it at this scale.

00:25:12.820 Obviously, not to the spectacular level of performance that JSOC just did it, and good on them, and congratulations.

00:25:19.780 So, yes, the terrain, the difficulty, there are some bad people there that need to go, but they should be in a very different frame of mind right now, seeing that their leader is in bracelets in a Gulfstream aircraft headed for prison in New York.

00:25:37.680 You can't think, you know, what's happening in the streets of Tehran, right, with this kind of uprising, as we've talked about, the sanctions are killing these guys.

00:25:47.880 We've argued you've got to shut the oil down, but the Persian real is crashing. 1.00

00:25:55.120 The economy is so bad, I think they've shot and killed now five to seven protesters.

00:26:01.140 Venezuela was actually one of the Mullah's best strategic partners.

00:26:05.580 Do you think this is linked, the timing of this is linked to what's happening in Iran?

00:26:13.340 Look, this timing is based on what needed to happen in Venezuela.

00:26:17.520 The fact is the Iranians had a significant presence in Venezuela, including a drone factory making a lot of the same long-range drones that were used to attack U.S. ships in the Gulf of Aden, off of Yemen,

00:26:30.320 and to attack Israel and other U.S. targets throughout the Middle East.

00:26:35.580 The other thing to be watching for is the Chinese are planning some big quarantine exercise where they surround Taiwan with all their ships. 0.99

00:26:47.680 And if they actually try to close it off, the question is, will the Navy guarantee freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and around Taiwan?

00:26:57.760 Will they have to do convoys to escort merchant ships to breach that Chinese PLA Navy quarantine?

00:27:04.540 That's the next flashpoint you should be watching for.

00:27:06.780 Last thing, you think Hezbollah, there's all this talk, they've had Hezbollah training camps, the Venezuelan, Maduro is very close to them.

00:27:15.540 Do you think that could be a problem here in the United States?

00:27:17.900 There's been thousands and thousands of Iranians that have flown to Venezuela and be rebadged as Venezuelans.

00:27:27.340 Some of them have come to America.

00:27:29.440 Possible there could be reprisals.

00:27:31.840 This is why secure borders matter.

00:27:33.580 The biggest issue will be kneecapping the cartels because the narco business, Venezuela is really not a production point, but it is a transshipment and processing point for all the drugs coming out of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, etc.

00:27:50.400 There's 34 industrial-grade processing facilities.

00:27:54.960 Those need to be liquidated, and that cartel infrastructure needs to be really squeezed on.

00:28:01.100 That's the thing that makes the makings of a narco insurgency kind of like the FARC was in Colombia.

00:28:08.260 Eric, hang on for one second.

00:28:09.480 I know you've got to bounce, but I want to send it right to the site for the phones.

00:28:13.640 Stick with us for a couple more minutes.

00:28:15.340 It's Captain Fennell, El Todd Woods, Mike Davis, Jack Posobiec leading up to the press conference at Mar-a-Lago with the Commander-in-Chief.

00:28:23.740 Short break.

00:28:24.380 Back in a moment.

00:28:31.500 Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.

00:28:36.060 Eric Prince, pretty good called shot.

00:28:38.240 You've been talking about this for a couple of years, and it rolled out basically like you said it would.

00:28:42.440 And talk to me, where do we go to get your new phone, and then we'll let you bounce, sir.

00:28:47.680 I appreciate you taking time away.

00:28:50.020 By the way, new information, they're unsealing a new indictment in the Southern District right now.

00:28:56.500 Mike Davis is going to look through that.

00:28:57.900 Mike Davis is going to join us momentarily.

00:29:00.160 Also, he is part of now Ship's Company, Maduro and his wife, on the Iwo Jima, an LHA that's, I think, 0.99

00:29:08.540 the flagship of the Amphib Ready Group.

00:29:12.820 Eric Prince, closing thoughts, and where do we go to get your phone?

00:29:17.640 So, Steve, you can get the phone at Unplugged.com.

00:29:20.180 You can also get it at Best Buy, but go to Unplugged.com slash War Room.

00:29:24.420 We built this phone for free people to protect their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

00:29:31.060 It protects your data.

00:29:32.320 It lets you be in the world, but not of the world, and not let big tech collect and own all your data.

00:29:38.440 Extremely dangerous in an era of AI.

00:29:41.100 We are on the way to becoming an American-made phone.

00:29:45.100 We're in the process, so we're doing a raise right now, and we'll make our next tranche of phones in the United States.

00:29:51.200 So, go to Unplugged.com slash War Room and get your phone now.

00:29:56.780 Any closing thoughts, sir, before I let you go?

00:30:01.260 The next days are key.

00:30:03.560 They need to remove a great book called The Dictator's Handbook on How Do You Do Regime Change Against Dictatorial Regimes.

00:30:09.800 This is – the next two weeks will be critical, and to get adult leadership in there and actual security capability to kneecap the cartels.

00:30:22.740 Hopefully, there are some patriots amongst the Venezuelan generals that will rise and protect a free Venezuelan now.

00:30:33.320 Eric Prince, thank you so much, sir.

00:30:35.080 I'll talk to you after the show.

00:30:36.760 Great job.

00:30:37.240 Thank you, Steve.

00:30:37.620 Great job.

00:30:38.120 Jack Posobiec joins us by phone.

00:30:41.720 Jack, you're a naval intelligence officer.

00:30:44.160 Intelligence here, at least on the strike, had to be pretty damn good, right?

00:30:47.980 They knew exactly where he was, exactly how to get him, and extracting, sir.

00:30:54.840 Steve, as of 0400 Eastern Standard Time, every single world leader who is an adversary of the United States

00:31:05.080 was suddenly woken up by the head of their security detail saying, sir, you might want to put on the television because this just showed them that no matter where you are,

00:31:16.840 no matter how secure you are, no matter how secure you think you are, no matter how safe you think your defense is, your security is, the United States of America and the United States military has the capability to reach out in the middle of the night and get you, your family and everyone around you with the flick of – with the snap of President Trump's fingers.

00:31:38.840 And when President Trump says go, that is exactly what the United States military does.

00:31:43.240 And, Steve, I know you and I were talking about this, the 15,000 U.S. Navy sailors that were parked there off the coast of Venezuela throughout New Year's, throughout Christmas, saying it looks like there's an operation imminent.

00:31:55.720 A lot of people talked about this, and now we see that this is the culmination of those operations, and we know that a variety of operations were given to President Trump, and this is the one that he ultimately went with.

00:32:08.400 One of the things that I'm looking at right now – obviously, you mentioned earlier, of course, what will be the status of those massive oil reserves in Venezuela, those untapped oil reserves, some of the largest – the largest in the hemisphere between them and Canada.

00:32:21.540 And then, of course, what comes of the regime? Are we seeing full-on regime change, or are we simply seeing a removal of Maduro?

00:32:31.000 Of course, all of this is going to be playing out in the coming days, weeks, and months.

00:32:35.060 Yeah. For our troops, for our special operators, Navy, fleet, Marines, just a magnificent day.

00:32:43.400 But you talk about hemispheric defense, and you talk about what's happening in Iran, and between America First, interventionists.

00:32:51.320 I mean, put it in perspective right now as MAGA wakes up to this and sees a magnificent military operation.

00:32:56.960 And, folks, I'm going to tell you, if you look at the two expeditionary operations we've had for mid-July with the ending of the 12-day war so dramatically,

00:33:05.720 and then the dramatic extraction of Maduro and his wife, and now they're sitting on the Iwo Jima right now,

00:33:13.580 probably in the captain's cabin, pretty extraordinary.

00:33:19.800 But what about the bigger picture here?

00:33:21.260 Particularly, you know, Eric Prince had been on here.

00:33:23.480 You had been on here for over a year talking about this.

00:33:26.080 We didn't get the bad hombre.

00:33:27.460 So it looks like a very specific decision was made not to take out some of the worst elements of his regime.

00:33:34.120 How do you think this plays out?

00:33:35.720 Well, I think that it's – personally, I think that it seems to be to me, and this is just my analysis,

00:33:42.840 that the strategy is remove Maduro, but the rest of the regime stays in place.

00:33:47.200 And hopefully then they get a more pliant regime, a regime that is more willing to cut these deals with the United States,

00:33:54.740 return those oil flows back into the United States, into the world energy supply.

00:33:59.880 But with the corollary being that you will cut ties with China and Iran and push them out. 0.99

00:34:08.660 Because Venezuela has been the base of operations for China, Iran, and Russia.

00:34:14.840 So it's been the base of operations for Chinese intelligence, Russian intelligence,

00:34:18.360 and so many Chinese commercial operations which are spreading throughout the Caribbean.

00:34:22.480 The People's Republic of China is taking over the Caribbean Sea and even elements of the Gulf of America.

00:34:28.220 And people need to understand that from the Panama Canal all the way up.

00:34:31.580 And Venezuela has been, as well as Cuba, have been their key benefactors.

00:34:35.880 So I wouldn't be – by the way, I would not be surprised if the Cubans are waking up right now saying, 1.00

00:34:40.980 get President Trump on the phone because we don't want to talk to that Rubio guy.

00:34:47.640 The narco-terrorism part, too.

00:34:50.200 I mean, this puts – it's a crossroads.

00:34:51.980 Obviously, the fentanyl comes from China, but the CCP had their military delegation there yesterday, right?

00:34:58.380 I mean, it couldn't have been a better calling call for President Trump to say,

00:35:01.020 hey, look, we got our eyeball on you.

00:35:02.500 We know exactly what you're doing.

00:35:04.260 And they dropped this – they dropped this dime on these guys when they're there.

00:35:07.820 But also the narco-terrorism part, you know, Colombia today, the president's going nuts.

00:35:12.320 He's not in a good place.

00:35:13.340 The Cubans are not in a good place. 1.00

00:35:15.300 So is this part of overall hemispheric defense and we're going to clean up this mess in Latin America? 0.99

00:35:20.860 Or is this just – is this the neocons talking into it, sir?

00:35:26.820 Well, look, of course, the neocons have always supported these types of operations.

00:35:30.980 I'm sure the neocons wanted to go further.

00:35:32.700 And we've got a huge special up right now at Human Events talking all about what the neocons did in Iraq, Syria, in Ukraine,

00:35:42.720 what they've done in Afghanistan, and then the 20 years of trying to import democracy on these places.

00:35:47.520 It doesn't work.

00:35:48.660 It simply doesn't work.

00:35:50.240 However, it seems that Trump – and if you go back to the strategy document, go back to the strategy document that was put out.

00:35:57.020 They talked about hemispheric defense, remember, the Monroe Doctrine with the Trump corollary, the Monroe Doctrine with the Trump corollary that we will clean up the mess.

00:36:06.480 This is what President Trump is executing on.

00:36:08.720 He was very public about this.

00:36:10.480 And so the question that I have looking forward when we're talking about these narco-terrorist syndicates is are they going to hit the Mexican drug cartels next?

00:36:18.200 Are they going to take out capture-kill operations for every single one?

00:36:21.480 Go Pablo Escobar on these guys, all right?

00:36:24.640 And by the way, you know, I know officially we say that the United States was not involved in that decapitation operation,

00:36:30.160 but let's just say behind the scenes people talk, all right?

00:36:33.100 People talk about who actually took the shot on Pablo Escobar, all I'm saying right there.

00:36:37.840 So we need to do that to every single one of these cartels and to the people like the president of Colombia and the friend Scheinbaum down there in Mexico

00:36:46.280 who do play all this happy talk saying that they're partners of the United States when in reality we know that they are working hand-in-hand with the cartels,

00:36:54.360 looking the other way while the Condels conduct the operations.

00:36:57.140 The question is no longer up for debate.

00:37:00.100 You will work with the United States or you will get Maduro'd.

00:37:06.100 Is the timing of this tied to this uprising you see on the streets of Iran, sir?

00:37:11.400 Well, it certainly could be.

00:37:14.440 I mean, it's hard to say that, you know, events in South America could be tied to something that's a world away in the center of the world island over there,

00:37:23.840 the capital of Persia, the ancient empire.

00:37:26.560 But certainly there's no question that there are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences.

00:37:32.900 And so when we look at this, we do have to wonder whether or not there are elements that are looking to potentially maximize on these uprisings that are going on in Iran right now.

00:37:46.920 Jack Posobiec, where do people go?

00:37:49.100 I know your Twitter feed is going to be hot today.

00:37:51.900 Where do people go to catch up with you, sir?

00:37:55.340 It's going to be hot.

00:37:56.120 We've got our Tales of Regime Change series that's going on right now that couldn't be more timed.

00:38:01.680 Then I want to thank War Room and the entire War Room engine room for supporting that and getting that up to say,

00:38:06.440 look, when the United States goes and conducts these regime change enterprises in various parts of the world,

00:38:13.300 there are times, look what Ukraine turned into. 0.80

00:38:15.800 Look what Iraq turned into. 1.00

00:38:16.800 Look what Afghanistan turned into. 1.00

00:38:19.540 And then you have people saying they want to do the same in Iran.

00:38:21.560 We have to be very careful about this and how we conduct these types of foreign policies.

00:38:27.660 We can't go down the road of George Bush and George Soros.

00:38:30.300 No, absolutely not.

00:38:31.220 If President Trump is saying he's forming a new road, we're going to back him.

00:38:35.400 We're going to see how that goes.

00:38:36.580 But at the same time, Steve, what I'm seeing right now is people are saying, look,

00:38:40.080 if President Trump could do that to Maduro, I want him to do that to every single one of these illegal criminals

00:38:46.260 that's there in the United States right now. 0.67

00:38:48.800 Get them out, black bag them, put them on the Iwo Jima, and have the United States Navy send them packing. 0.83

00:38:53.920 And by the way, by the way, maybe throw in a couple of Mandamis and Pritzkers and Newsoms while you're along with it.

00:39:03.620 Yeah.

00:39:05.460 Well, at least Mandami.

00:39:06.740 I'm Mandami, Omar, that whole crowd.

00:39:08.540 I think you go do it.

00:39:09.580 Jack, by the way, the timing of the book on humans, just amazing.

00:39:13.360 Your new series, just incredible.

00:39:16.080 The timing couldn't be better.

00:39:17.340 One more time.

00:39:18.200 Social media, where do people go?

00:39:20.660 At Human Events.

00:39:21.700 It's on podcast.

00:39:22.660 It's on Spotify, racing up the Apple podcast charts.

00:39:26.120 But, of course, there's another podcast called The War Room with Steve Bannon that is slightly, slightly, slightly ahead of us.

00:39:33.620 Well, you can get up in our draft.

00:39:36.880 Jack, great job.

00:39:37.800 Go back to the family.

00:39:38.720 I'll track you down later in the day, sir.

00:39:41.220 God bless.

00:39:44.180 We're going to get Mike Davis up in a minute about the legality.

00:39:46.680 I want to bring El Todd Woods in.

00:39:48.020 But this is also the reason that you want to understand gold as a hedge right now.

00:39:52.740 I think markets on Monday may be on fire, right?

00:39:57.200 Of course, this is another shift in geopolitics.

00:39:59.420 This may be a massive shift because the oil shift, the oil.

00:40:02.340 So assets here are breathtaking when you talk about Venezuela and Guyana and about America's need for overseas hemispheric defense and maybe get off the Eurasian landmass.

00:40:15.240 El Todd Woods, you came out of the Air Force Academy.

00:40:17.200 You were kind of a Delta Force pilot.

00:40:18.780 You've done these operations before.

00:40:20.700 We've got a couple of minutes here before break.

00:40:22.400 What went on last night, sir?

00:40:23.660 Thank you.

00:40:25.520 I flew for the Air Force Unit 20th Special Operations Squadron, which at the time, Prince mentioned the Desert One debacle.

00:40:33.140 We were tagged with that mission until the Army got more capability.

00:40:36.740 So I did that in the early 90s.

00:40:38.120 Our customers were Delta Force and ST-6 or SEAL Team 6.

00:40:41.420 We had to get them anywhere, as you mentioned.

00:40:44.360 No matter the threat, no matter the timing, no matter the weather, that was our job.

00:40:47.800 And I want people to understand that this is a much bigger operation than what you see on the news.

00:40:54.120 There were literally hundreds of aircraft involved.

00:40:56.860 You've got aircraft coming in to bring in, you know, typically how this goes down is the Rangers will temporarily take an airfield and block off any traffic in and out of there and allow U.S. aircraft to get in there.

00:41:10.420 And then you have the special operators coming in and rotary wing aircraft to the target, extract the precious cargo, and either take them to the airfield or take them to a ship here.

00:41:18.880 I'm not sure what happened, but this is a big dance.

00:41:22.520 And literally, you will have helicopters coming into a target with fire coming on the target, and then the fire will let up like five to ten seconds before they arrive.

00:41:32.560 So it's very choreographed.

00:41:34.840 They practice this.

00:41:35.700 He mentioned they practice this over and over.

00:41:38.040 The president mentioned that.

00:41:39.320 They likely set up some type of, you know, practice area.

00:41:43.320 And so it's extremely complicated.

00:41:45.260 You've got CSAR.

00:41:46.000 You've got strike aircraft.

00:41:46.980 You've got command elements.

00:41:48.540 And it's a very choreographed dance.

00:41:51.560 And kudos to the boys for getting this done.

00:41:55.200 Yeah.

00:41:55.880 Todd, hang on.

00:41:56.800 I'm going to hold you through.

00:41:57.940 Captain Fennell is with us.

00:41:59.440 Also, Frank Gaffney.

00:42:00.820 We're heading up to the 11 o'clock briefing by the president of the press conference at Mar-a-Lago.

00:42:08.140 We're going to cover it all live and be around for analysis and observations after it's over.

00:42:12.600 Short commercial break.

00:42:14.400 Take your phone out.

00:42:15.220 Text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, at 989898.

00:42:18.780 Get the ultimate guide, which is totally free and with no obligation, from Birch Gold for investing in gold and precious metals.

00:42:25.540 Don't forget silver in the age of Trump.

00:42:27.500 Short break.

00:42:30.600 Host Stephen K.

00:42:32.140 Bannon.

00:42:35.180 Okay.

00:42:36.540 Todd Woods is going to stick around.

00:42:38.260 Captain Fennell's here.

00:42:39.520 We're going to get into the logistics of this magnificent extraction.

00:42:44.600 But I want to get.

00:42:45.460 So Mike Davis immediately.

00:42:48.120 In fact, a New York Times reporter had President Trump's number.

00:42:51.000 Folks should know a couple of three reporters may have his number.

00:42:53.300 He called him.

00:42:55.240 President Trump gave him 50 seconds and actually teed up this 11 o'clock press briefing.

00:43:00.920 The second question this guy asked him is, well, do you really have the legal authority to do this?

00:43:05.200 I mean, already they were on President Trump.

00:43:07.640 So you've been the biggest advocate of, in Project 2025, in the years in the wilderness, the inherent, going back to President Lincoln, the inherent powers in Article 2 of the President of the United States as commander-in-chief to repel an invasion and actually to, you know, get into a, you know, get, basically try to put down a conflict between some bad guys that are trying to destroy the United States.

00:43:36.460 And in this case, maybe just enforcing a, what, a warrant from a, from a, from a, from a federal court.

00:43:44.520 What happened here?

00:43:45.660 What, what powers did the president use today, sir?

00:43:48.820 Well, there's a, an indictment out of the Southern District of New York, a four, a four counts indictment that Attorney General Pam Bondi just released.

00:43:57.980 It was unsealed.

00:43:59.020 It's a four count indictment for narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.

00:44:14.660 And so there was this indictment that was unsealed.

00:44:17.040 There was an arrest warrant, and the president executed this arrest warrant, went and got the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, and he brought them back to, he's bringing them back to court in New York City.

00:44:34.500 They're going to stay in a Brooklyn jail.

00:44:37.240 The president absolutely has that constitutional and statutory power to do that.

00:44:43.060 Separate from that, remember what Maduro did.

00:44:46.140 Maduro unleashed trendy Aragua terrorists on the United States who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered Americans, including Lake and Riley.

00:44:57.220 We, we have people, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from fentanyl poisoning because of Maduro and his wife.

00:45:07.600 And so the president absolutely has the Article II and statutory power to do what he did.

00:45:15.340 There's no question about it.

00:45:17.020 And I would say to the Democrat politicians who are crying about this today, President Trump made it much easier for these Democrat politicians to go have margaritas with Maduro in this Brooklyn jail.

00:45:31.780 They don't have to travel down to Venezuela.

00:45:33.960 They don't have to travel down to Caracas to do it now.

00:45:37.600 Yeah, and they don't have to go to, what, El Salvador to have, to have Mai Tais with them. 0.83

00:45:44.520 So you're saying here that the indictment, this was, he was actually using his power as the chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer since there was an indictment from the attorney general in a federal court, the Southern District of Manhattan, to allow the military to go execute on that indictment and to bring him in as a criminal?

00:46:03.840 Yeah, yeah, Southern District of New York in Manhattan.

00:46:06.700 And there was a separate indictment in 2020 also.

00:46:10.020 So there are two different indictments.

00:46:12.300 This is the latest indictment.

00:46:14.720 And these are very serious charges.

00:46:17.420 Maduro and his wife are going to spend the rest of their lives in federal prison in the United States.

00:46:25.020 And so, you know, this is, President Trump is following the rules.

00:46:31.320 His attorney general is following the rules.

00:46:33.840 I want to say congratulations to President Trump and his team, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hexf, the Attorney General Pam Bondi.

00:46:43.500 They did a lawless job of executing this arrest warrant and bringing these alleged criminals to justice.

00:46:54.960 Mike, do you think the reason, now you had the Article II powers as commander in chief, and we've had this with Trendy Aragora and what he's trying to do to the United States and obviously killing people with the drugs that are coming up here, which is also part of the indictment.

00:47:05.620 And it's one of the things that just does jump out here, because we've been talking about this now from when President Trump got back, but Eric Prince had been talking about this even in the first term.

00:47:17.160 They did not round up the rest of the bad hombres, right?

00:47:20.080 And he's got some very bad hombres that are his inner circle.

00:47:23.840 Do you think that's because they very narrow casted this around this indictment and let's go extract this guy and getting back on federal charges and then we can negotiate with these other guys?

00:47:34.840 I mean, I'm sure these other guys are co-conspirators, are part of it.

00:47:38.520 Why would they not go in and get those on enforcing this indictment?

00:47:43.940 I think President Trump was correct to focus on getting these two big fish and getting them out of Venezuela, getting them into U.S. custody.

00:47:54.200 I'm not saying where Maduro's security forces put up much of a fight.

00:47:59.700 So there were no American deaths.

00:48:01.840 I don't think there were American injuries, or at least none were reported.

00:48:06.240 You look at the Venezuelans celebrating on the streets of Caracas around the country, Venezuelans in America.

00:48:14.700 I don't think that too many people in Venezuela are losing much sleep.

00:48:19.780 I think they're pretty happy about this.

00:48:22.120 And I've actually had a meeting with this opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado.

00:48:28.520 She's very pro-America.

00:48:30.280 She's very tough.

00:48:32.240 And if she's the next leader of Venezuela, that's going to be a very good thing for the United States of America.

00:48:38.720 We're going to have a key ally in Venezuela.

00:48:40.620 Well, remember Venezuela was once a very wealthy, successful country before Chavez and Maduro destroyed this country with their left-wing Marxist socialism.

00:48:55.740 And I think that a leader like Machado can restore Venezuela and make Venezuela great again.

00:49:04.640 And I look forward to that day.

00:49:06.860 We won't have Venezuelans flooding our country if they have a country they can go back to. 1.00

00:49:12.680 Mike, where can people go for Article III?

00:49:17.620 We're getting ready to start the press conference down in Mar-a-Lago.

00:49:20.060 We'll try to track you down afterwards with any new information.

00:49:22.680 But where do people go in the interim, sir, your social media and Article III?

00:49:28.180 Article3project.org, Article3project.org.

00:49:31.500 You can donate, follow us on social media.

00:49:33.740 And the War Room Posse superpower, as always, is action, action, action.

00:49:38.540 And thank you, Steve.

00:49:39.240 Thank you, Mike Davis.

00:49:42.660 Track you down later.

00:49:44.140 Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break.

00:49:46.760 The press conference is supposed to start in Mar-a-Lago.

00:49:50.180 Of course, as these things go, it may start a few minutes late, but we've got a lot of folks to talk to.

00:49:56.920 And we're going to stick through the press conference, and we're going to wrap up afterwards with the new information on President Trump,

00:50:03.480 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Cain, Secretary of War Hexa, Secretary of State Rubio,

00:50:10.340 give us in this press conference.

00:50:11.540 We'll have observations and analysis after.

00:50:15.400 Short commercial break.

00:50:16.540 We're going to come back to the War Room and probably go right to Mar-a-Lago.

00:50:20.280 Stick around.

00:50:20.700 We'll be right back to the War Room and we'll be right back to the War Room and we'll be right back to the War Room.

Bannon's War Room - January 03, 2026

Episode 5041： War With Venezuela; The Capture Of Maduro

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