Cuba： Biggest Crisis Since The Revolution (Fixing Substack's Podcast Listing Error Bug Regular Users Ignore Duplicate)
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Summary
Venezuela is about to collapse, and Simone is here to talk about it. She is the founder of a travel agency that helps students get around Venezuela, and she has been in Venezuela for the past 20 years. She has been on the ground in Venezuela since the late 90s, and has been one of the most influential people in the Venezuelan opposition. She's been a member of the opposition to Venezuelan President Maduro for years, and now she's in charge of one of Venezuela's most influential opposition parties, the Bolivarian National Guard. In this episode, Simone talks about how bad things have gotten in Venezuela, why it's gotten so bad, and what we can do to help.
Transcript
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hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to be talking about something
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that is wildly under discussed in the news right now which is that cuba is about to collapse and
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when i say about to collapse you may think that i am exaggerating they have literally at this point
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14 to 19 days of oil left they have had no tanker arrivals since january 9th the the tankers that
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were being sent from venezuela have been cut off and their last lifeline which was mexico has also
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been cut off why that trump negotiations so it's about it's about to be renegotiated and trump put
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a lot of pressure on mexico to cut off also it's costing mexico a lot they spent three billion
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basically in free oil for venezuela over the past just few years i think since i started this
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person's administration well cuba was giving them their slave doctors for people who don't know
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oh yeah basically enslaves their their doctors and was giving them to mexico as like an exchange
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but they did the venezuela was an also interesting situation because we're seeing more and more
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venezuela had given cuba in terms of like loans that cuba would never pay back very obviously and stuff
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like that 18 billion dollars and if we look at the elite guard that was killed during the raid
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we know that 32 of them so almost all of the people who died were actually cubans so it appears
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that cuba basically controlled like the the the accusations that cuba had basically subjugated
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venezuela and was just extracting resources from it were accurate they basically controlled the entire
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elite guard of the country and most of the major military positions and this is being systemically
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reversed right now and i note here that another thing you're not seeing if you're watching mainstream news
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right now is that venezuela has actually made pretty big changes not only have they stopped sending
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money and oil to cuba but they have started releasing hundreds i think now we're at 300 but
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it shows no signs of slowing down political prisoners so we are actually seeing change in venezuela it's
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just all right trump can't dunk on it too much or it would look bad for the woman who's in power now
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right you know we have to be very nice about all of our political wins that we're making in venezuela
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and very graceful about it because yeah you don't want too many people asking did she cooperate with
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you guys to get rid of maduro yeah you don't want to look a little matchy matchy that would not be good
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yeah you know you don't want to look too matchy matchy so she constantly complains but in terms of
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what we actually want to see happen in venezuela that's what we're seeing right now wow and i'd note
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here that how bad things have gotten in cuba is is not a like this is happening completely out of
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nowhere scenario so i have to ask do they not have oil reserves we have oil reserves by the way if
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you're wondering if cuba has oil deposits somewhere they do but in 2012 three deep water more than 300
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meters of water exploration wells were drilled by italian platform scavro nine and none of the three
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found commercial quality of oil or gas which jeopardized cuba's hopes to find hydrocarbons to boost
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its economy so basically they they technically have some around the island but none of the commercial
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explorations have ever found a way to reach them in a cash positive manner cuba is a little island
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simone no cuba doesn't one can have some kind of i don't know tank this is my out of time i have to
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ask the out-of-touch questions that everyone else is asking because i'm not the only out-of-touch
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person here no they're completely out so their economy last year 20 was the tourism industry and
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this is despite the fact that tourism has been crashing for them so things have been getting much
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so the world's top destination for male sex workers is going out of faith oh this is because
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the younger people aren't having sex anymore that's what kind of woman wants to go to cuba anymore
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been a combinations of factors that hit their tourism industry one was trump reinstated
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sanctions that obama had lifted two we actually know this when when we ran our travel agency we
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used to have a decent amount of traffic to cuba and then after a while flights got kind of weird
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and it was harder to get people there the visa situation got very complicated and then we started
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having banking problems like oh do you do any business with cuba and then like we got shut out
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of various things like we as a travel agency were strongly disincentivized from even facilitating travel
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to cuba even if we're talking like a student trip at one point we helped to facilitate a student trip
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like a tour to cuba for you know cultural reasons and stuff so i can totally see why tourism is down
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not just because of sanctions and stuff but because the very operators and companies facilitating that
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travel were really there were a lot of friction was added to the process just that there was
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basically to give a bit of history of what happened is obama opened everything and much like when
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apartheid ended in south africa a bunch of people went in thinking oh my god look at this opportunity
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look at these green fields oh but you go and the only thing that's cool is the male sex workers
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and everything else is crappy we'll get to that but so a lot of travel started happening to cuba
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and a lot of people said oh well invest in it so it was all subsidized and sort of over the top of
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what the economy could actually handle even before the new sanctions came in many of the travel
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providers that we were operating with that had been set up during that boom period were already about
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to go bankrupt or had already gone bankrupt before trump sanctions it's just not that many people
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actually wanted to go to cuba is is what we really learned and really the only reason people reliably
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went to cuba which as simone said was male sex workers that was the core thing so it was mostly
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older like middle-aged women and gay men that's that's who was going for male cuban sex workers
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this is now in my head right and but to give you an idea of how bad things have been in cuba
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since 2021 did you know that around 10 this is only since 2021 we're talking five years
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ten percent of the cuban population has immigrated out of the country okay so they haven't made it
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impossible to escape i thought it was mostly get on a raft and hope for the best kind of situation so
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it's not well having ten percent of your population leave and keep in mind the population that leaves
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has almost been entirely under 40 so it is their working population cuba has a worse tfr than in
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the united states around 1.5 to 1.3 from what i've seen in various studies they are extremely effed
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on that point but you were saying like do they have reserves of oil the reason i was emphasizing
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the importance of their tourism industry is that even with the returns industry being like
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their lifeline right now um the hotels regularly go with blackouts yeah no power they go
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we had issues with that yeah he's out running water uh they go is out so so even like their key
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industry and you've got to understand if you're like what does it mean to run out of oil in a
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matter of days at this point what this means is you have no factories operate almost all of cuba's
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energy is made with gas so you have no light no electricity your farming equipment doesn't work
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so wait their electrical grid you think is based on it is based like 70 percent
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oil gas yeah okay and the reason they built it that way is because they were getting free gas from
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venezuela that helps so they have no electricity no farming equipment no way to get from one place
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to another like god and those old cars aren't exactly fuel efficient oh yeah the scale of the badness is
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very very very bad this is not good okay and so we don't know and then again let's say that this
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happens and then a bunch of people in in pretty dire straits actually hop on more rafts and float over
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to miami and then ice just takes them and i don't know flies them to somalia this is not going to be
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good yeah yeah it is it is not well it could be good depending on the outcome so i really think we
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have never seen a president so well positioned to end this okay and we see that from the way that he's
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done both is he going to puerto rico greenland which has been really really impressive as well as
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what he did was venezuela and the subsequent deal afterwards so we'll i'll get to this so what is
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he gonna be throwing toilet paper rolls at them next did he throw toilet paper rolls at somebody
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in puerto rico don't you remember when he's like puerto rico and then he kept saying it and then
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it's like i mean i don't know the way he pronounces countries just kind of gets me
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china and puerto rico he gets a little flamboyant with that one but yeah during one of the hurricane
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recovery processes he he went to puerto rico and he he threw i think i believe paper towels at the
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audience and people were like rolls of them don't worry i mean i would be thrilled to have someone
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throw a roll of paper towels at me either we need them but yeah like people that got caught up in the
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media because people were very angry about him you know not not actually helping people and you know
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trump was like i don't know they seem pretty happy about getting paper towels so that is hilarious
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and very trump but you're saying yeah we this could be like another another puerto rico for the united
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states like we treat it the same way no unlikely but what we could do and i think that this is why it
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will go so well is we have seen through trump's engagement with venezuela typically what you have
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when you had you know leftists or the old sort of neocons in a in a argue you know trying to
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build american power in a region they go to a country like venezuela that had been heavily you
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know blockaded by america and everything like that yeah and they would say hey guys we need you
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to start holding democratic elections and release your political prisoners and we're going to start
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holding like world trials for everyone who broke you know major whatever's right or we would try to do
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a coup in the country right like we would fund a bunch of militants with the cia or something like this
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those two strategies it turned out were really bad trump tried something totally new which is not
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like anyone has ever thought to do in a country like venezuela or for that matter which is trump
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basically just went in and was like okay who's willing to negotiate what do you what do we really
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want we really want your oil so you know what do you care about right like it's out of the deal
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why don't you why don't you release some token number of prisoners you know and they're like do
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we need to hold fair elections whatever you know like you do you stop sending money to oil to cuba
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and they're like you know what we've been really pissed about this cuba arrangement for a while as
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well yeah we'll work on that so so with cuba the interesting thing is and this is something i really
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want to take some time to talk about here what what he might be offering cuba could be significantly
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different than what other presidential administrations have attempted to offer cuba
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right interesting he could be going in there being like oh yeah keep your regime whatever right like
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we'll just change a few things here and there and it's important to understand that cuba is
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significantly more centralized than venezuela i mean that's how cuba essentially took over venezuela to
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begin with they are essentially coup proof at this point given how centralized the power structure is
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and considering that in venezuela they had memories of democracy in venezuela right like they knew
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how much communists had screwed them over in cuba there isn't this same memory of this either right
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and i think another thing that we need to touch on here before i go further also cuba is not as
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corrupt like it is corrupt but it's not nearly as corrupt they care much more about the longevity of
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the regime than personal enrichment even people in positions of power finally they have a real military which
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which venezuela didn't really have or is it just like russians hanging out no cuba has like cuban
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military i mean mexico venezuela's military was a cuban yeah i guess yeah i i didn't know so they
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have like a a sizable army what's their specialty navy air force what's the situation if you want the
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full answer here cuba's strongest branch is its army where it has around 113 main battle tanks t-55 to 62
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models and relies on a dense network of anti-air systems radar satellites and surface to air
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missiles cuba's navy is relatively weak they only have around 19 vessels including patrol craft mine
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creepers and a few intelligence shifts um and then for their air force it was at its peak in the 1990s
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when they boasted 230 fixed-wing aircraft today it operates around 31 to 34 active aircraft mostly aging
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mig 21 or 23 fighters yeah but i mean i don't know it's the point being is it's not like a fragmented
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force like venezuela's was another like venezuela as i said their military was basically controlled by
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cubans cubans military is basically controlled by the guys who own about 30 to 40 percent of the cuban
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economy so the people who least want regime change also control the military which is i mean if you're
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trying to structure an economy not to undergo a coup or anything that makes a lot of sense
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but it also potentially gives trump alternate people to negotiate with within the country
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depending on what they want another thing i was going to note before well actually one really
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interesting thing about this that we'll get to in a second but i want to just note here
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is cuba has been a really important part of fueling leftist ideological causes within the united states
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for about the last 50 years not through funding but through training what so they're not they're
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not like russian trollbot farms they're not like ccp no no no so it's really fascinating so it's
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through two sectors one is is sort of covert training programs that they've been operating for
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a long time and if and you see this in antifa circles one of the things that's known when people
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come out of antifa circles and the guy who we had who was working in antifa who came on our show
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talked about this is that there is something of a status symbol within antifa communities of being
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cuban trained like that means you are elite well you are legit and no one will question you so the navy
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seals of antifa are cuban trained well cuban trained in their ideology yeah um and it's not just
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them it's also the political group the socialist political organization we have in the united states
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that like mondami was affiliated with uh they have been democratic socialists of america yeah yeah they
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were heavily influenced or even potentially set out by the cubans um and cuba also offers for like
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college students and we see a lot of like leftist ideologues even mainstream within democratic politics
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who do this program where you go to cuba for i don't know how long like a few months
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when you get political training and learn how birthright for commies yes wow okay taking down
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cuba is i think a lot of people do not realize how critical and intelligent trump's handling of the
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venezuela situation was because basically it's knocking down like a their one is not down the
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perception that russia or china could protect you um and with cuba we have been knocking out all of their
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potential allies one by one and i think a lot of the rest of the world didn't see that this was
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happening you know iran is off the table as someone who can help them now russia is off the table as
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someone who can help them venezuela is off the table as someone who can help them and north korea
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is off the table as someone who can help them they have no one they can go to and i guess they could
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try to go to china but i haven't seen any signs that that's going to happen for them i mean china
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is in a difficult position as it is right now so cuba just doesn't really have any friends left
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and they are incredibly isolated the other thing i wanted to note that i think is really clever
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about trump in terms of how he's built his administration which is just so it's actually
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really sweet and heartening to see is marco rubio is the one who's handling cuba right now he's handling
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all of the cuba situation all the venezuela situation and what i've repeatedly see with trump in
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terms of how he handles enemies or competitors for presidential positions is he promises them and
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gets them a position that they would prefer to being president the the you know what did kennedy
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want more than anything it was it was to run the the food it was to run the the medical associations of
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the united states it was to fix all of our food and drug stuff and all of the medical stuff and that is
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the position that trump put him in everybody you you could have told me if you looked at kennedy's
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campaign ads does is this man running to be head of medical establishments in the united states or is
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he running to be head of the the country no he wants to fix all the medical stuff you look at you know what
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what rubio really wanted more than anything and and anyone could tell you if you asked rubio would you
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rather free cuba or be president he'd say i'd rather free cuba hands down that's it's like life's work right
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it's the number one biggest gift anyone could ever give him is to be in this position and so he's
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treating it really really seriously right like i think way was was much more honesty than you could
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normally appreciate from a lackey who's out there doing something right now people should know i
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personally don't really like marco rubio i think he's boring and like old school politics which is also
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good that you know trump didn't put him in a position to be the next presidential candidate i think
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he's really done as a rising star in republican politics and he put vance in that position who's
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a great as well like vance wanted to be vp more than anything vance is the one who actually wants
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to be president one day and has been pulling the strings on that for a long time he's had some really
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great speeches recently mind you around well we'll get on that in another video this this is around the
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the have you have you been following the stuff on like voter id uh i just broadly that the that they
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want the trump administration is fighting for i think universal voter id right which they should
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for context in the united states in many places you do not have to have a state issued photo id in order
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to vote you can just say my name is malcolm collins and i'm here to vote and this is my address and
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these places if you i i can put a map i'll put two maps on the screen here one is of whether places
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go democrat or republican in state elections yeah and whether or not they require a voter id and what
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you see is almost every state that requires a voter id goes republican in almost every state that doesn't
00:19:05.920
go to democrat i'm a little worried for this video because when i was searching this this is way more
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banned of a topic than i thought you can watch one of our videos this weekend for paid subscribers
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where we're gonna go over the topics we can't talk about on youtube but this is really adjacent to one
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of them but all the you know debunking things on this they say well it is true that camilla won
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most of the states that didn't require voter id she won some that did require it that were extremely
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blue states which proves that this isn't true this is such a weird i mean obviously there's still
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going to be some states that she won nobody's saying that she literally only won everything
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what yeah when we went to this one conference they were handing out hats and said when i die don't let
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me vote democrat and well it's a real phenomenon that's been reported on even you know when when
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elon was doing the sort of breakdown of the roles for medicaid and stuff like that and he found
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all the dead people who are on the roles he then checked to see how many voted and a lot of them
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had voted you know this is a this is a real thing that's really happening i mean and i didn't realize
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that because when we got the hats i was like i don't get it well kennedy famously joked like literally
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kennedy joked when somebody was congratulating him on a presidential win something about like oh well
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you should think that whatever cemetery this joke was explicitly made by kennedy but in a coded
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language on a call he had was daily about how he won illinois's in ohio i'm like this has been a
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pretty open thing for a while and so i'm really glad that something hopefully is being done i've heard
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that like the republicans in the senate are like being super pussies about this right now and it's
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really freaking me out that they could be that pathetic on this because you know we need to stop the
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cheat right like this cannot be allowed to continue especially at the scale that has been happening
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it's just wild that you have to have a driver's license a form of government issued id in order
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to drive a car like if you can't figure that out should you really be allowed to vote really right
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there there was a funny video clip i saw of somebody going around and repeating what leftists so basically
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they went to a college campus and said why why do you need a voter id right and they were like well
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because then black people won't be able to vote and he's like why don't you think black people can get a
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voter id why would they think we don't have id that's a lie why would you say that do you have
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id yeah and so he took kind of insulting all of their quotes around that like black people don't know
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how to use the internet or black people don't know where dmvs are what are you doing and then he took
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these and he went to a black community and started asking black people if this is true and they were
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like very confused would you like me to help you access the internet oh my god oh
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this is black twitter wasn't a thing i i well i mean the the polls for this are overwhelming it's
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something like even like 76 of black people want this to be a law everybody wants this to be a law
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it's really just being used by people who want to cheat like that's that's sort of i mean we're in
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a situation with the redistricting that's going to happen in 2030 the only way democrats can stay
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relevant is if they cheat and and we're increasingly seeing that in the tactics that they're using so
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what i wanted to yes go to here because i find this really interesting so the verner moose brigade this
00:22:38.160
is from 1969 to present in 2024 to 2025 cuba hosted multiple contingents including a queer trans brigade
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americans got two to four weeks of political education marxist leninist indoctrinations meeting
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with cuban intelligence officers icap plus minint labor plus solidarity work many alumni later became
00:23:01.440
organizers at the psl the answer coalition and students for democratic society as well as antifa
00:23:08.000
adjacent groups the people's front led by malano de los santos who lived in cuba for years and has
00:23:15.840
extremely close ties to the cuban government his group played a central role in the 2024 colombia
00:23:21.520
university occupation and many pro-palestine radical actions and then the party for socialism and
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liberation psl the most pro-cuba communist party in the us many top comrades have gone through cuban
00:23:34.720
government training programs so yes cuba has been directly coordinating with these groups so now
00:23:42.080
it's time to think what what is trump going to do like what is the actual plan
00:23:49.120
and what could stop this plan from going through but before i get into that simone what are your thoughts
00:23:54.880
i am very curious to hear what you're going to propose in terms of here's what the leaders of
00:24:04.560
cuba would prefer to being the leaders of cuba not to say that they're having a ton of fun right now
00:24:11.200
anyway i just i just want to know so the important thing to note about the leaders of cuba right now
00:24:17.520
is they are all tremendously the heads of the military the heads of the state it is a country
00:24:24.560
being ruined by a boomer autocracy right like a age agent i'm sorry the whole world is being
00:24:31.840
ruined by boomer autocracies so well this is a little different they don't really have outside voices
00:24:39.040
because it's not exactly a place where young people can rise up in power very easily so there aren't like
00:24:47.200
in the white house it is very clear in terms of the way they're making decisions and even when we
00:24:51.520
go you know because we've been to the white house to advise the the people we're meeting with are our
00:24:56.320
age or younger often the trump administration is a very young administration maga as a movement is a
00:25:03.280
young movement right like the and the new right especially like screams youth as a movement when i when
00:25:11.040
i look at who the movement is it's a bunch of people who would have been like college effective
00:25:16.640
altruists a generation ago right like it's young autistic nerds right and this means that they are
00:25:23.440
on board with the latest technology the latest ideas the way the world actually works right now
00:25:29.200
the people who are running things in cuba are the people who lived through the cold war they understand
00:25:35.920
cold war style politics which is not what we're dealing with right now
00:25:41.280
and we also have the the the big problem with so the the current president of cuba miguel diaz canal
00:25:51.440
canal i don't know i'm not i'm not gonna put these foreign words in my mouth anyway
00:25:57.280
he is going to have a very hard time stepping back because the the military controls significant economic
00:26:05.760
sectors through conglomerates like ge g-a-e-s-a grupo de administración imperialosa which oversees
00:26:14.960
tourism remittances and other revenue streams under the current minister of defense alavo lopez
00:26:21.840
mayera and which is a very clever way to put it remember how i was talking about what all of their cash
00:26:26.960
cow industries were they put all of those directly under the military and a run by a very old guy
00:26:34.320
mind you um yeah is the military has a structural reason to resist change in a way that the military
00:26:42.880
in say something like china may not right like if all they have is the military right they they don't
00:26:49.040
personally lose money all your generals don't personally lose money if there is any sort of economic
00:26:54.160
or systems change yeah so the question becomes how do you make a deal for cuba that keeps the rich
00:27:00.720
people in cuba rich but also ends the current administration i'm actually open to your thoughts
00:27:06.800
on this one because i'm not entirely sure what the administration is planning or attempting they could
00:27:13.360
be trying to do a generational trade-off thing being like you guys get this until x date and then you
00:27:21.280
transfer it to the next generation or you guys like i'm i'm genuinely not sure what it's going to look
00:27:27.680
like what are your thoughts possibly i don't know how nepotistic the leading party is or how much they
00:27:37.040
care about setting up their personal family and descendants but i could possibly see incentivizing
00:27:45.920
them to create an oligarchy in a post-cuban government world or a different administration
00:27:51.440
to be like well by agreeing to step down after your term like you're the last one
00:27:58.800
we will help you set up a system in which your descendants disproportionately profit but also on
00:28:06.560
average every citizen will be materially better off because they're not in power anymore that's that's
00:28:13.920
that's gonna happen no matter what if you look right now well unless we do like a full regime
00:28:18.320
overhaul which i do not think trump has any stomach for if you look at the descendants of fidel castro
00:28:24.080
a lot of them are super rich people living in the us right now like there's a number of like young
00:28:28.400
like super i think there's like hundreds of millions of dollars like teenage instagram stars who
00:28:34.480
are like castro's descendants yeah adorable they they looted that country that you know not not an
00:28:40.480
an ethical government exactly i i love i had this girlfriend in college who was from germany and
00:28:46.720
she was like a communist who absolutely believed that life was better in cuba than the united states
00:28:52.640
and she's like oh their medical system i was like you're aware that their doctors are basically slaves
00:28:57.120
right for people who don't know how their doctor program works and this is responsible for i think
00:29:00.960
another 20 of the cuban economy they send them to other countries and they work for three to four years
00:29:08.160
and they only get to keep around 10 of the salary that they make and then they also don't get paid
00:29:15.200
until they come back and they have a constant military minder on them at all times so yes it's not
00:29:21.840
an awesome life to be a cuban doctor i only learned that weirdly when man it was a great dental practice
00:29:27.760
too a cuban dentist in miami told me everything did you go to that dentist did i set you up with him
00:29:33.040
he was right across from our office in the amadeus building i don't know but yeah he like he would
00:29:38.480
serve you espresso and then just like chat with you while cleaning his teeth it was a great dental office
00:29:43.040
and he was he was from cuba and he just walked me through the whole process like oh my god they like
00:29:49.280
everyone in his office was a recent cuban immigrant and he's just like man i'm glad to be out of there like
00:29:55.040
yeah it's bad no no the crazy thing though is he was a really good dentist like i feel like the
00:30:01.920
medical professionals from cuba and in general the people who managed to get out of cuba are
00:30:07.120
very competent very cool yeah no no there's a i mean obviously there's a huge cuban business
00:30:13.440
community in the united states um they're a big faction of the conservative party in the united states
00:30:18.320
they've been very loyal to the party and they are uh very well accepted i mean marco rubio right
00:30:24.960
like could have been president like by the conservative establishment uh and this means
00:30:30.320
that there is we were talking with our super fans one of them who was iranian was like well do you think
00:30:34.720
that if the current regime was toppled that the iranian expats could ever come back and really
00:30:40.640
re-establish something and i didn't really feel they could it's it's just too far they've done too much
00:30:46.640
damage already to the country infrastructure and they've built alternate communities in in other
00:30:52.320
places and he thought they would i mean maybe they care more i feel the same way about cubans in the
00:30:56.320
u.s it's an interesting thing because i think cubans in the u.s would send money to cuba to try to get
00:31:00.160
it reset up but i don't think that they would re-migrate i don't know man i get the impression from
00:31:04.880
the cuban immigrants i've met that they're like i'm out of there i'm not sending anything back like
00:31:09.760
i don't know them no and and then i say that knowing that a lot of other people from other
00:31:18.240
countries do send a lot of remittances back including venezuela where the government was
00:31:23.520
really screwed up and people had major problems with it they were still sending money back in fact
00:31:28.400
our business made a lot of money from people literally flying with suitcases full of cash because
00:31:33.280
we were selling the plane tickets it was insane yeah so so like i i know but like there's something
00:31:38.960
about when people leave cuba they're like screw that place i mean it's very different from like
00:31:44.160
fleeing venezuela when they flee venezuela there's always like a plan to go back eventually or a plan
00:31:49.680
to send money back oh yeah this is a temporary setback venezuela is amazing like we're just got to sit
00:31:55.840
this out that kind of thing yeah well it's more like they send money to their their relatives back
00:32:01.040
in venezuela i actually don't see that very much with the cubans i know they do no no it's like well
00:32:06.400
and i think it might come from a belief that it's just going to be taken i guess or i don't know i
00:32:15.120
don't know but it's it's a different culture it's a different culture right so the the point here being
00:32:19.600
is i don't know if if i think what we're going to get is cuba has no cards on the table right now
00:32:26.720
right like yeah i think within a matter of weeks you should expect to see something
00:32:32.000
pretty big happen i don't know what it's going to look like but yeah if they're that low on
00:32:39.440
on oil resource that like i mean something's got to give right yeah i suspect it's going to be
00:32:45.120
i was going to say what describe what it's going to look like it's going to look i think unusually
00:32:51.760
pragmatic it's going to be a win for the trump administration whatever it is and it's going to
00:32:58.880
long term set us up very well with cuba well one of the how is i guess okay so yeah towards
00:33:07.440
so you're saying they're both out of oil and money because tourism is way down and that was
00:33:10.640
they're out of oil well and i was going to say maybe trump would love to extort them for oil money
00:33:15.920
especially if it was just from the venezuelan tankers that he seized he was like we're going
00:33:22.000
to sell that oil i guess i'm gonna keep it i i don't know i mean what i guess the the major thorn
00:33:29.920
in the side that cuba has been and if we were to look at the strategic document released by the us
00:33:35.280
government on our international policy our military policy basically was we do not want the americas anyone
00:33:42.880
in the americas to be a strategic threat and cuba is like the outpost of russia and china left aside
00:33:49.440
from venezuela right i mean who else aside from cuba and venezuela were strongholds of russian and china
00:33:57.840
chinese interests i mean i guess you could say peru has a ton of chinese business so maybe it's a risk
00:34:03.520
but i don't really see it keep in mind the peruvian chinese population immigrated to peru either
00:34:11.120
pre-ccp or as refugees from the ccp yeah but the mining industry in in peru like exists for china
00:34:18.960
oh yeah yeah it exists to sell to china so china has economic like doesn't i guess there's not like a
00:34:24.800
there's not a big belt there i don't even know if there is a belt and road initiative but there isn't
00:34:28.920
any ethnic love of china any more than like a country with a big fowong gang group would have a love of
00:34:34.800
china like they they they don't they don't have a yearning to return to the ccp i was actually
00:34:41.120
decided to ask because i was wondering like why isn't china helping them right now that's a good
00:34:47.420
question well china has its own problems though so i guess if i were to sum it up though the united
00:34:52.900
states per its stated strategic interests does not want cuba to be a stronghold of russian or chinese
00:34:59.640
interests so the most important thing is for whatever yeah so china has offered some humanitarian
00:35:06.420
aid 80 million in emergency financial aid for electrical equipment and urgent needs with 67
00:35:12.440
to 90 000 tons of rights donations and food supplies in january 2026 beijing has also written
00:35:18.320
off some cuban debt and provided some funds and assistance but it does not appear yeah that they
00:35:27.460
are offering what cuba needs which is oil well come on i mean china isn't an importer of energy
00:35:35.760
they need it for themselves although they're really making good progress well they can pay for it from
00:35:41.060
somewhere i mean pay for some other i know cuba has supposedly like if you read their internal
00:35:46.400
documents they expected that something could happen with venezuela and they all could be cut off
00:35:50.200
yeah and so they planned for some like african oil shipment routes from like algeria
00:35:55.760
um and that china could play a role in that the problem is is that cuba just doesn't really have
00:36:02.440
anything to play other than a geopolitical enemy that's significant though you know it's i think
00:36:08.440
it's the one big thorn left in our geopolitical side in the americas unless we want to count
00:36:14.680
canada as a foreign asset now which it practically is yeah okay so this is why china is not giving oil
00:36:22.680
trump has been threatening and this is also what got mexico to back off a 30 tariff on any country
00:36:27.580
that gives cuba oil and just nobody cares about cuba that much right like they've they're completely
00:36:34.980
out on their own at this point it's it's geopolitically a big deal because if the united
00:36:40.460
states captures the allegiance of cuba as much as we have venezuela which has been astounding
00:36:46.740
their level of cooperation yeah so far we have no more geopolitical enemies anywhere threatening to
00:36:53.660
us especially if we're able to get greenland as well like america the united states basically will
00:36:59.640
own the americas without it will have been one of the the most stunning political coups and victories
00:37:07.880
like any human has pulled off in history what this administration of the trump administration has
00:37:13.880
pulled off if they can neutralize venezuela and cuba as threats and then better yet expand our
00:37:20.740
position in greenland for people who don't understand why greenland is so important it is
00:37:25.740
and a lot of people are like well you can already build military bases anywhere you want in greenland
00:37:29.600
so why do you care about greenland because i point out that like millet missile pathways that are
00:37:35.720
coming from china or russia go over greenland right like if if you have good installations in
00:37:41.620
greenland you can stop in there and people like well you could just build more and it's like
00:37:44.160
yeah except greenland has an independence movement right now and europe has shown themselves to be
00:37:49.180
complete pussies to independence movements and as soon as we get an independent greenland greenland
00:37:53.900
is not self-sustaining they basically live off of money for they basically live off of money from
00:38:00.680
their host country right now specifically greenland requires around 700 million dollars a year in
00:38:05.560
subsidies to function which is why it would make sense for denmark to want to offload it as well
00:38:10.760
and they that means that they will all of a sudden be desperate for anyone who will give them money
00:38:16.780
and if you look at the people of denmark the problem is is basically nobody lives there like no
00:38:23.360
like basically nobody lives there geopolitically it is an irrelevant number in greenland a lot of people
00:38:28.180
live in denmark no in greenland yeah okay nobody lives in greenland and so if you from from a
00:38:34.840
geopolitical standpoint it's like the size of a town right and but the people who do live there are
00:38:39.960
super urban monoculture brain cooked and if they got their independence they would be hesitant to
00:38:46.020
form alliances with the united states it would be very likely to form one that was china or russia
00:38:51.460
oh what what the trump administration is doing right now especially china because i've noticed
00:38:56.740
urban monoculture people do not care about china's atrocities at all it's basically like
00:39:00.660
what atrocities what atrocities and so trump is absolutely we do need to to pressure this deal
00:39:07.460
and it sounds like he's got something i don't know what it's going to look like yet but it sounds
00:39:11.100
like he's got something but if he gets those to to to that would mean that america not only like
00:39:19.980
anyone who would have any reason to attack us has to cross oceans right but we've got on lock
00:39:27.960
the entire not just our continent but every continent that abridges us that is anywhere close
00:39:35.900
to us it's a general idea yeah it would be as safe as you could be as a country because nobody's
00:39:42.020
attacking us through mexico nobody's attacking us through canada we're energy independent food
00:39:46.520
independent well have a diversified economy mexico has a bit of a big gang problem yeah but the gangs
00:39:54.140
have no interest in like directly attacking the united states and if they did the it would give
00:40:00.180
the united states a an opportunity to fight back or i don't know i mean that that it's a very tough
00:40:06.340
problem i mean because what we're looking at is a very grassroots guerrilla insurgency essentially
00:40:11.180
that's just running many parts of mexico functionally speaking yeah yeah actually actually like we
00:40:18.080
there for the same reasons why we couldn't durably take many middle eastern countries we couldn't
00:40:24.020
durably take mexico oh we could do extremely hard i mean maybe once you have like drone swarms or
00:40:29.840
like i don't know oh my gosh we could just do a kingsman based like attack you know the the second
00:40:38.140
one where they had a drug laced to something that just selectively killed everyone who consumed that
00:40:43.580
drug yeah go for that strategy the problem so so we we absolutely could durably take mexico
00:40:51.620
what you're not considering is the the extremely low logistics cost of attempting to take mexico
00:40:57.100
because it is just on our southern border with roads going directly into it rail lines going directly
00:41:02.880
into it oh it's just a daytime commute multiple giant home in time for dinner gulfs and what like
00:41:10.260
the gulf of america right is just like right there around most of mexico's land the big problem is the
00:41:15.500
the the mountainous regions which make it you know it makes it easier for gorillas to hide out and
00:41:21.100
everything like that but then the other thing that you've got to keep in mind is keep in mind how
00:41:25.240
many of our armed forces just are latin american right like we have a lot of latin america there is
00:41:31.460
not a cultural divide there and if you did the military operations right you would just have them led by
00:41:37.480
latin americans and make it very much like a from a pr strategy like did you know that the the ice
00:41:44.900
officers who shot whatever woman were two gay mexican ice officers thank god really so i wasn't
00:41:51.800
able to find evidence on the lg the gay connection but i was able to find that the ones who shot the guy
00:41:57.820
recently were two hispanic officers yeah yeah people were saying it's wild that everyone who has died
00:42:05.360
during this on the on on the democrat side the the deaths have been from a white shooter who shot
00:42:11.960
undocumented immigrants by accident and on our side it has been multiple cases of like hispanic
00:42:19.820
shooters shooting white women or or men which is ironic there was recently a court hearing where
00:42:26.800
non-white people reported in in court about their mistreatment so it's not only white people who are
00:42:34.100
being impacted but yeah well that non-white it's the white people who are being deranged and blowing
00:42:40.140
whistles and stuff actually yeah i mean all the instances that i saw reported in this court hearing
00:42:44.920
were of people like trying to get to appointments or just driving i think they weren't actively trying
00:42:50.700
to one woman was but yeah it was mostly there's been a viral video recently of a black ice officer
00:42:56.900
being called a house inward oh after being like are you a man are you a man yeah yeah yeah did that did
00:43:06.800
that person answer the question because it did they didn't say no somebody was like how dare you ask
00:43:11.500
a woman if she's a woman why would you ask her that he seemed genuinely confused so yeah like
00:43:19.000
this person was wearing a mask and they had long hair but they sounded like a man so you could
00:43:25.100
understand how if you weren't from their culture and you're very confused the funny thing is this he
00:43:31.980
didn't even seem like an angry ice officer he just no confused normal black guy like yeah he's just
00:43:36.760
like yeah that like maybe hadn't been exposed to super woke people so he's just like you know this
00:43:42.340
what masked woman approaches i mean a person with long hair behind a mask and then like they talk and
00:43:48.480
they sound like a man and he's just like are you a man and then they know that homicides in the united
00:43:53.960
states went down 25 last year since since ice started wow like it's having a big effect this
00:44:00.980
was from a jd vance speech which i was really surprised to know so we just got to keep winning
00:44:05.460
keep winning keep it up i got to make my video game gta minianapolis i i would so want to play that
00:44:12.080
gosh no i don't want well i mean to make it realistic you'd have to have the incessant whistling
00:44:18.480
and i don't know there has to be an option to just turn it off you're telling you about the
00:44:24.260
person who brought a whistle to the oscars like no the grammys yeah they were they were their
00:44:28.640
performative i support the current thing whistle as one i support the current thing no i want people
00:44:34.620
to remember you know when we're talking about all of this remember who our biggest enemies are they
00:44:39.500
are domestic they want to you know steal this country indefinitely that is the plan right like as
00:44:46.600
soon as elections are compromised it's in and and they get into power that's that's really bad
00:44:52.120
going forwards especially if they don't think that they can win fair elections which is going to become
00:44:56.740
very hard post the 20 to 30 redistricting and if you look at voting patterns among younger individuals
00:45:03.480
and in current trend shifts it's it's it's not good for them especially you know birth rates so you know
00:45:10.300
i think that they're sort of like we've we've got to do something at this point so so keep this in
00:45:14.340
mind and i think that you know when we're working with something like cuba we don't need the people
00:45:18.840
in charge of cuba to suffer we just want a deal that puts them in our debt rather than china's debt
00:45:30.600
they can either be pretending to be socialists we don't care you know whatever
00:45:35.860
what would be really cool is if somehow a bunch of a blend they would never be incentivized to do
00:45:44.320
this though but a bunch of based american cubans just went back to the country flooded it and had
00:45:49.800
a better administration elected that would be really great but i don't know i don't think that's
00:45:57.680
gonna happen but like you know people who had family history in the country who cared about it but
00:46:03.300
i just haven't met a cuban who would want to go back so that's too bad but anyway yeah i thought
00:46:13.260
to myself i guess we could build like a large military base in cuba and then i was like oh yeah
00:46:17.120
guantanamo like we already have a large military base it could be larger that could be larger yeah
00:46:23.860
yeah you'll always be bigger and trump is all about real estate development too i mean you know before
00:46:30.100
we make the new gaza maybe we could make the new cuba when we talk about the grift and i'm like you
00:46:36.500
don't hate these people enough one of the stats i heard recently that shocked me is in california
00:46:40.200
the average homeless person costs a state 175 000 a year so keep in mind how big this grift is it's not
00:46:47.760
just minnesota they've been fighting throughout la hospice fraud this fraud is all over the united
00:46:53.700
states and we need something like like but at a multi-state level i think at this point is where
00:47:00.240
we need to go next yeah yeah all right love you simone accountability i love you too all right and
00:47:07.920
be keeping an eye on the news let's see what happens with cuba i will be watching with bated breath
00:47:12.320
glad you highlighted this because you know it's not related to to ice and minnesota and therefore
00:47:19.100
subscribe it's like i have we have fans and they go oh gosh malcolm everyone's talking about iran's
00:47:27.000
revolution right now like why haven't you done a video on that and it's like because i didn't wait
00:47:30.220
till the algo to pick it up to start talking about it right i did that video like two months ago guys
00:47:35.080
yeah everyone's talking about epstein and ice now there's other things going on all right love you
00:47:41.220
love you too and we will do the weekend episodes yeah look at that it's just so much better
00:47:46.940
it's just so much better i cannot stop replaying epstein pizza party you like it the problem is
00:47:55.980
it octavian because he's working right next to me he's like starting to just repeat the
00:48:01.680
sorry the chorus and i'm like hearing it come from a kid i'm like no actually not for you
00:48:10.060
epstein pizza party like i'll play it at the end of this video for our fans they get to hear the
00:48:15.380
first epstein pizza party song we're gonna play it when we do the video on ai on the right but um
00:48:20.180
we'll have that video go live tomorrow oh gosh okay yeah hold on he just like gets really mad about
00:48:28.140
eating and i don't know why because then he drinks oh look at doing that drift thing you're talking about
00:48:34.180
but it just seems too complicated to be worth it the effects will be practically unnoticeable
00:48:38.600
and i do not think eyebrows is actually doing what you think he's doing i think he's doing it in the
00:48:43.140
prompts it would be very hard to do like structurally you you really need to structure every shot assuming
00:48:51.140
that you're going to do that which is really hard to do because the ai doesn't know how to give you
00:48:57.060
extra stuff if i took time to try to make clips for you this evening which you may be considering it
00:49:03.300
would take you way too much time you you've got to understand you're doing this with like a hundred
00:49:07.580
clips how many clips are in there really yeah probably i i think it's probably at least 25 or 30
00:49:14.760
maybe like 25 or 30 but because you well you're thinking that they're all individual where many of
00:49:20.000
them are made over multiple ai takes yeah but you can get grok to make 10 second split like clips
00:49:25.820
right but you don't have those that's not what i made because i didn't expect that you would try
00:49:31.420
to keep them all together because you've got to basically ungroup them and i don't even know how
00:49:34.880
to do that i don't know you're talking about many of the clips that look like one clip are multiple
00:49:40.800
clips so we've got to find a way but you can make a single 10 second grok clip right so you would
00:49:46.320
replace every animation in the song potentially if they're really good because we're only just learning
00:49:53.180
how to do this and what i'm realizing is that what skybrows is doing i mean not like we're ever
00:50:00.820
going to get to that level but no i mean i can see what he's doing that makes it so different from what
00:50:05.580
we're doing the core thing is he is much more diligent about always using mid-journey for the
00:50:10.800
original image and always using a prompt image that gives a style idea so that he can do the more
00:50:16.580
consistent style yeah yeah plus in his video prompts i think it's more along the lines of
00:50:26.380
panning and like the camera as it were is moving but not existing yes he's describing how the camera is
00:50:37.080
moving which we haven't been doing but he's i just i want to see what it's like to do that i i i
00:50:41.580
personally just want to get better at it and learn so well we can do it with a different song
00:50:46.600
i like this song maybe i can do it for everest nowhere that's the other song that just gets so
00:50:52.440
stuck in in my head i can make another really catchy song just let me know and we'll do it okay
00:50:59.860
all the people crying we don't care and i just love that our kids know about everest being that
00:51:06.780
really tall mountain where rich people go to die that's how it is skybrow's recent amelia video is
00:51:13.240
really good by the way yeah no i mean skybrow's videos in general are super fun i love that he
00:51:18.520
made one that i don't even understand how he made it i don't know did you see his nvidia one
00:51:22.340
so he made it about team america and did everything in a team america style and even did the song in
00:51:29.940
the style of the team america song well that's that seems doable with a lot of finagling but
00:51:35.260
yeah it would require a lot of finagling yeah respect respect for skybrows anyway i i don't like
00:51:42.680
that song very i don't like the the way that video came out but it was just really impressive that he
00:51:46.720
poppin antibiotics post hooker sweat sweat gate strapped even mail white don't know yet
00:52:42.260
files dropping leaks prince andrew's lore torture bit emails blacked out for sure gates forcing jabs microchips in the arm
00:53:33.260
Vax mandates dropping, dropping, dropping, totally loved it, ay, yo, file is unsealed, pizza means more than cheese, gates at the party, party, spreading disease, disease, maga memes, don't take that shot, Epstein's black book connecting a lot, like an Epstein pizza party, party, we all get naughty, break soda, blizzard, pizza, 18, ay, like an Epstein pizza party, party, we all get naughty,