2026 is the year of clarity. All the veils fall. People are going to show you who they are. And when big things happen, when the world becomes more chaotic, people reveal themselves. And we're about to experience some adversity as Americans.
00:00:00.000The Trump administration deposes Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in a shocking and astonishing mission by the United States military.
00:00:07.000Plus, is the Iranian regime going to fall?
00:00:10.000And governor of Minnesota Tim Walz announces he is not running for re-election in the wake of gigantic fraud allegations.
00:00:16.000First, we are only five days into the year.
00:00:18.000If this weekend was any indication, this is going to be a year where you want the news as it happens, not tabloids, not clickbait, actual news, actual facts, well informed in real time, and analysis from the most trusted voices in conservative media.
00:00:34.000You get serious investigative journalism uncovering domestic issues like fraud in Minneapolis, real reporting on major international developments like the U.S. operation in Venezuela.
00:00:42.000You also get live updates, breaking news alerts, and full access to our daily ad-free uncensored shows in premium entertainment library.
00:00:49.000Head on over to dailywire.com/slash subscribe.
00:00:51.000Today is the last day to save 40% on a new annual membership.
00:01:21.000Sometimes it's difficult to deal with the realities of life, the realities of people you once trusted showing themselves to be something else.
00:01:27.000It can also be surprising and heartening because sometimes people show themselves to be a lot better than you thought they were.
00:01:32.000But this year, events in the United States and the world more broadly are going to unmask nearly everyone.
00:01:52.000Well, it could come from the international sphere.
00:01:55.000Adversity may spring from China's authoritarian ambitions against Taiwan or its global desire to expand power bases from Africa to Latin America.
00:02:02.000Already, we've seen some politicians and commentators shying away from revealing the realities about China, fearful that doing so could undercut their delusional vision of a world in which America in retreat is somehow good rather than harmful.
00:02:16.000Adversity could arise from the continued conflict between Russia and Ukraine or from Russia's growing ambitions in the region and globally.
00:02:22.000Many figures are already revealing themselves in their views of Russia, often evidencing shocking blindness toward what Russia is, what Russia wants, up to and including full-scale propagandizing on behalf of a tyrannical regime steeped in hatred of the values of the United States.
00:02:36.000Adversity could come from Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and international terrorism, or its desperate desire to stave off internal regime change, or from its propaganda arms in Qatar and elsewhere, pushing anti-Western, anti-American bull.
00:02:49.000Many politicians and commentators are already showing themselves willing to do anything and everything on behalf of such regimes, up to and including flying cover for radical Islam.
00:02:59.000Adversity might emanate from chaos in our southern hemisphere, where rogue states like Venezuela were pursuing deeper relations with our enemies until President Trump acted, as we'll get to in a moment, or from Europe, where unchecked immigration, combined with regulatory overreach, threatens to doom an entire continent to stagnation and disarray.
00:03:15.000Could come from any other variety of sources on the foreign front.
00:03:20.000It's a more chaotic place when America is weak, as many on the left and the right wish to make her.
00:03:25.000Adversity will arise domestically too.
00:03:28.000Adversity may come in the form of economic turmoil.
00:03:30.000While the economy right now appears to be in pretty good shape, nobody knows how the current AI investment cycle will play out in the short term.
00:03:37.000And economic turmoil brings with it political vultures.
00:03:40.000Already, we've seen some conservatives turning away from defense of free markets in favor of statism that seems more familiar from the left.
00:03:47.000And we've seen leftists embracing the most extreme versions of wealth seizure and collectivist centralization.
00:03:54.000Adversity will certainly originate in the size and scope of our massive and bureaucratic government, which provides extraordinary obstacles to American achievement and overwhelming support to people who are willing to steal from their fellow Americans.
00:04:05.000Adversity will certainly come too in the form of reactionary posturing.
00:04:08.000Lies told by the left will be mirrored in lies told by the right, and vice versa, resulting in a continued spiral of conspiratorial polarization totally disconnected from the actual lives of most Americans.
00:04:20.000Already, we've seen cynical politicians and morally corrupt commentators spew untruths in pursuit of algorithmic momentum, and that is definitely going to accelerate this year.
00:04:30.000Politicians and commentators reveal themselves in how they react to adversity.
00:04:34.000So, do they react by telling you the truth, no matter how much their audience might dislike it?
00:04:39.000Or do they lie to you by telling you the things they think you want to hear?
00:04:42.000Do they react out of principle or out of convenience?
00:04:44.000Do they recommend coalitional solidarity at the expense of basic decency and integrity and truth?
00:04:50.000In other words, do they treat you like a sucker or do they treat you like a citizen?
00:04:54.000Of course, it's an election year, and that means that we're going to be swamped by lies and prevarications, by a lot of politicians who promise the moon and deliver nothing.
00:05:02.000We'll be swamped too by commentators who suggest that political failure results generally from a lack of Nietzschean will rather than the complicated give and take of normal day-to-day politics, and who say that if you get more outraged, conspiratorial, and angry, somehow our politics will improve.
00:05:20.000How will we, Americans, react to that adversity, that onslaught of cultivated resentment and Machiavellian manipulation?
00:05:27.000The American Republic is founded on the one hand in a fundamental supposition that human beings are capable of discernment, of acting morally when faced with adversity, of preferring truth to comforting falsehood, of recognizing our own fallibility.
00:05:40.000And the American Republic is founded on the other hand on the reality of human nature's darker side, our tribalism, our vanality, our selfishness.
00:05:48.000All of which, when put together, is why our founders preferred a republic of checks and balances rather than a Francoist dictatorship or a pure democracy.
00:05:56.000It's why James Madison wrote in Federalist 51: Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
00:06:01.000The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.
00:06:05.000It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.
00:06:11.000But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
00:06:14.000If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
00:06:17.000If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
00:06:22.000In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this.
00:06:27.000You must first enable the government to control the governed and, in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
00:06:39.000We, the American people, must discern who is telling us the truth, even when we don't want to hear it, and who is lying to us out of audience capture or political expediency or sycophancy.
00:06:50.000We have to work to preserve the checks and balances of our system, even checks and balances that might seem to deprive us of temporary power.
00:06:57.000If we don't, we risk an authoritarian centralization that turns against basic freedom.
00:07:02.000What's more, we risk an arrogance about our own nature that surely turns to disaster, even if our side seems to have that temporary upper hand.
00:07:10.000Most of all, we have to remember this: people who promise utopia, an end to adversity, an end to the chaos and turmoil of life, so long as you give them your trust and your power, are providing you a Faustian bargain in which you receive neither utopia nor freedom.
00:07:25.000Those who tell you that your future is not in your hands and who encourage you to surrender whatever is left of that future to a demoralizing conspiracism, those people are lying to you and they are lying to you for their own gain.
00:07:37.000And you deserve better than that, and we all deserve better than that.
00:07:43.000Let people reveal themselves for who they are and believe them when they show you.
00:07:46.000And may we all approach the adversities of whatever comes our way with the courage, conviction, and decency that make America truly great.
00:07:54.000We'll get to everything that just went down in Venezuela in a moment.
00:07:57.000First, this episode is sponsored by Pure Talk.
00:07:59.000If your credit card balance is stressing you out after all that holiday spending, I have something that can save you money right now.
00:08:04.000You can cut your cell phone bill in half by switching to PureTalk's saver plan, just 20 bucks a month for unlimited talk text and three gigs of high-speed data on PureTalk's super fast and nationwide 5G network.
00:08:14.000And as a veteran-led company that cares about giving back to those who serve, if you're active duty or former military or first responder, you'll save an additional 20% every single month.
00:08:23.000The easiest way to free up cash flow is to reduce your monthly recurring bills.
00:08:26.000Start with cutting overpriced wireless and switching to my wireless company.
00:10:10.000Okay, now on to the news of the day, which is the news of the year, which is not saying a lot since we are only a few days into the year, but my goodness, the president of the United States has begun 2026 with a bang, literally a bang, because over the course of the last couple of days, the United States deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro by sending in American troops to essentially extradite him to the United States.
00:10:38.000According to the Wall Street Journal, by the time the sun rose in Caracas, this would have been Saturday morning, Nicholas Maduro's nearly 13-year grip on power had ended.
00:10:47.000In handcuffs, blindfolded, wearing a gray sweatsuit, he was on a U.S. warship on his way to New York City to face narco-terrorism charges following a five-hour operation.
00:10:59.000The mission, apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, was the culmination of months of secretive planning and a series of mixed signals that allowed the United States to preserve the element of surprise, even though the incursion at times seemed inevitable.
00:11:11.000Starting late this past summer, intelligence personnel began tracking what Maduro ate and wore, where he lived and traveled.
00:11:17.000And they were helped apparently by an asset within the Venezuelan leader's inner circle, according to administration officials and others familiar with the operation.
00:11:24.000We'll get back to who that source was, who they were likely working for, because that has implications for what happens next.
00:11:30.000Meanwhile, U.S. Special Operations rehearsed and rehearsed, practicing how to extract the Venezuelan president inside a replica of his fortified compound.
00:11:39.000Apparently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller met regularly to discuss the mission.
00:11:48.000Trump's advisors were torn about the wisdom of a military operation, and they offered conflicting statements publicly.
00:11:55.000Military officials told Trump any mistake could result in embarrassing failure.
00:11:59.000And they warned that some members of the conservative base would be outraged, even if it was successful, which we'll get to again in a moment, because there are some pseudo-conservatives who are spending today fulminating about the great evil of the United States taking out one of the worst dictators on planet Earth and certainly the worst dictator in the Western hemisphere.
00:12:19.000President Trump ultimately concluded that Maduro, indicted in the United States, needed to face justice and that his supporters would still back his decision, which, by the way, is true.
00:12:28.000Apparently, there was a plan in place by late December.
00:12:32.000Trump tried to pressure Maduro to basically go into exile on his own.
00:12:37.000The U.S. thought about doing this on Christmas and also on New Year's Day, but the weather prevented it.
00:12:41.000And then finally, at 10:46 p.m. on Friday, Operation Absolute Resolve was a go.
00:12:47.000Here is General Dan Raisin Kane detailing the operational details for Absolute Resolve.
00:12:54.000Last night, on the order of the President of the United States and in support of a request from the Department of Justice, as the President said, the United States military conducted an apprehension mission in Caracas, Venezuela to bring to justice two indicted persons, Nicholas and Cecile Maduro.
00:13:11.000This operation, known as Operation Absolute Resolve, was discreet, precise, and conducted during the darkest hours of January 2nd and was the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal, an operation that, frankly, only the United States military could undertake.
00:13:30.000Our interagency work began months ago and built on decades of experience of integrating complex air, ground, space, and maritime operations.
00:13:40.000While the past two decades have honed the skills of our special operations forces, this particular mission required every component of our joint force with soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians working in unison with our intelligence agency partners and law enforcement teammates in an unprecedented operation.
00:14:04.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States sent overwhelming air power for the operation that included F-18s, F-22s, F-35s, EA-18 Growlers, E-2 Hawkeye Command and Control Aircraft, B-1 bombers.
00:14:15.000They were tasked with dismantling and disabling Venezuela's air defense systems, which they did highly successfully.
00:14:20.000Again, Russian defenses were being used by the Venezuelans.
00:14:23.000Apparently, the Praetorian Guard from Maduro was Cuban.
00:14:26.000He is propped up by outside regimes or was.
00:14:29.000The helicopters, which carried an extraction force and law enforcement officers, at some points flew only 100 feet above the water during the flights into Venezuela, which is astonishing.
00:14:38.000One U.S. aircraft was hit during the operation.
00:14:44.000No Americans were killed, according to President Trump.
00:14:46.000At 2:01 local time, according to General Raisin Kane, a U.S. Delta force team arrived at Maduro's compound.
00:14:52.000As they approached, the U.S. helicopters came under fire, and American forces then responded with overwhelming force and self-defense.
00:14:59.000U.S. special forces arrived inside Maduro's compound.
00:15:02.000They exchanged gunfire with Venezuelan personnel.
00:15:04.000Probably some of those people were Cuban.
00:15:05.000Maduro and his wife attempted to flee into a steel-reinforced safe room.
00:15:09.000They were unable to close the door in time.
00:15:11.000They gave up and they were taken into custody by the Justice Department.
00:15:15.000President Trump announced the strike at 4:21 a.m. via Truth Social.
00:15:20.000He said, Quote, the United States has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country.
00:15:29.000This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement details to follow.
00:15:32.000There will be a news conference at 11 a.m. at Mar-a-Lago.
00:15:35.000Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
00:15:47.000That'd be the CIA director John Ratcliffe and the president of the United States who are sitting in this makeshift operations room watching this thing play out.
00:15:57.000Another picture, of course, of the president of the United States looking on as the operation takes place.
00:16:03.000And then you have the president flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe, the leader of the CIA.
00:16:09.000An excellent top team here for the president of the United States, as the success of the mission would seem to suggest.
00:16:16.000Maduro was then brought aboard the USS Iwo Jima, wearing a Nike tracksuit.
00:16:22.000And of course, they have the ear and eye blackout on him, so he doesn't know quite where he is.
00:16:30.000There is tape of him being escorted by a swarm of agents in New York onto the tarmac.
00:16:35.000Any attempt by New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani to prevent all of this was unsuccessful.
00:16:39.000Here was Nicolas Maduro being escorted onto American soil.
00:16:45.000In what looks like a maybe a gray or blue sweatshirt.
00:16:49.000We saw him a little bit earlier on the image that the president posted, blindfolded and handcuffed.
00:16:54.000And it appears maybe he's still blindfolded in a gray sweatshirt, which would likely come off as blue given the daylight scenario, the lack of daylight.
00:17:07.000Maduro has been transferred to a Manhattan federal courthouse early on Monday, where he is set to appear on charges related to cocaine trafficking.
00:17:15.000Here is the tape of his perp walk at the DEA New York City headquarters.
00:17:24.000As you can see, here he is being walked through.
00:17:29.000It's an astonishing thing what the president of the United States and the U.S. military just pulled off.
00:17:34.000And first of all, let's just be clear: the U.S. military is so badass, it's astonishing.
00:17:41.000As the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, F-A-F-O, Nicholas Maduro had been taunting the United States for a very long time, and it turns out that President Trump is not one to be taunted.
00:18:09.000Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed that idea.
00:18:11.000He said, listen, when President Trump says a thing, he means he is going to do the thing.
00:18:16.000But I want to be clear about one thing.
00:18:17.000Nicolas Maduro had multiple opportunities to avoid this.
00:18:21.000He was provided multiple very, very, very generous offers and chose instead to act like a wild man, chose instead to play around.
00:18:29.000And the result is what we saw tonight.
00:18:31.000The other message here is the following.
00:18:33.000You have a guy, like many people around the world, they like to play games.
00:18:36.000You have a guy who decides he's going to invite Iran into his country, is going to do the confiscation of American oil companies, is going to flood our country with gang members, is going to take Americans prisoner and try to hold them for hostage and trade them like he was able to do with the Biden administration.
00:18:52.000Basically likes to play games all this time and thinks nothing's going to happen.
00:18:56.000And I hope what people now understand is that we have a president.
00:18:58.000The 47th president of the United States is not a game player.
00:19:02.000When he tells you that he's going to do something, when he tells you he's going to address a problem, he means it.
00:19:08.000This does have major implications for America's pursuit of its own political interests around the world, because what it means, the president is not one to bluff.
00:19:16.000This is the second major military operation pursued by the Trump administration that involved essentially a few hours of American force, resulting in catastrophic consequences for America's enemies.
00:19:27.000The first, of course, was last year when the president authorized that B-2 bomber flight into Iran to take out the Fordo nuclear facility, totally upending geopolitics in the region with one airstrike.
00:19:38.000And now what he's done with Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
00:19:42.000President Trump explained exactly what he is doing.
00:19:44.000And again, I have been saying for a very long time that President Trump's foreign policy is not isolationism.
00:19:50.000Anyone who has been telling you that it is isolationism is lying to you, lying to you.
00:19:55.000By the way, their view of foreign policy also happens to be wrong about the world, just as a matter of reality, which we'll get to in a little while here.
00:20:04.000The president was on this program before the election, explaining that his foreign policy is peace through strength, that he pursues America's interests in muscular, realist fashion.
00:20:13.000He's not interested in long-term hundreds of thousands of troops occupying place.
00:20:17.000He's not interested in Iraq-style occupations, but he is interested in pursuing America's real hard interests in the world because that does put Americans first.
00:20:55.000And we want to make sure we can protect it.
00:20:59.000Why, I mean, it's almost as though the president understands that the United States exists on a globe.
00:21:05.000And on that globe are many other countries.
00:21:06.000And we have interests in what happens in those other countries, including in places like Venezuela, or, for example, in Iran, or for example, in Taiwan, or maybe even, for example, in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.
00:21:18.000It turns out that the United States is the world's dominant hegemon, has interests in a lot of different areas.
00:21:23.000That doesn't mean that we should, of course, be in full-scale occupational war mode in all or any of those areas.
00:21:29.000It does mean that pretending that an America in retreat, that retreats inside its own borders, makes Americans safer and more prosperous, that is a lie.
00:21:36.000And that's something the president of the United States understands.
00:21:39.000Here is the president also explaining over the course of the last 48 hours that, as opposed to Afghanistan, we are no longer a laughingstock, that Joe Biden made us a laughing stock, that Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan likely led to the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin.
00:21:53.000And President Trump says, listen, if our policy is indeed, as the Secretary of War says, FAFO, then fewer people are likely to FA.
00:22:03.000Compare this to Afghanistan, where we were a laughing stock all over the world.
00:22:20.000Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on pretty much all of the Sunday shows and was grilled by a wide variety of reporters, many of whom were very critical of President Trump for not doing anything about Maduro during his first term.
00:22:30.000Watching everybody flip and suddenly become Maduro defender.
00:22:33.000This is President Trump's magical gift politically.
00:22:36.000Whatever he does, a bunch of people always have to come out in opposition to it.
00:22:40.000It doesn't matter if he deposes a murderous dictator like Nicolas Maduro.
00:23:24.000No more Iran has beloved presence there and no more using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world and not benefiting the people of Venezuela or frankly, benefiting the United States and the region.
00:23:39.000President Trump has called this the Don Rowe doctrine as opposed to the Monroe Doctrine.
00:23:46.000Here's the president of the United States.
00:23:49.000All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries and not anymore.
00:24:02.000All the way back, it dated to the Monroe doctrines.
00:24:07.000And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot.
00:24:32.000So Nicolas Maduro took over for the strongman, Hugo Chavez, who had transitioned Venezuela from an oil-rich democratic state into a socialist dictatorship, totally oppositional to the interests of the United States in 1999.
00:24:46.000Hugo Chavez died in 2013, and Nicolas Maduro took over as his successor.
00:24:52.000There has not been a real election in Venezuela for a quarter century because of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
00:24:59.000He was responsible for tens of thousands of extrajudicial executions, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
00:25:05.000Typically, I don't cite the UN as a source.
00:25:07.000But when the UN is critical of left-wing dictators, it's probably true because the UN is, in fact, run by people who are friendly to left-wing dictators as a general rule.
00:25:16.000Health and hunger crises have likely cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
00:25:19.000Infant mortality skyrocketed under the Chavez and then under the Maduro regimes.
00:25:25.000Between 2013 and 2021, when Maduro was already in charge, GDP per capita in Venezuela dropped by 75%.
00:26:10.000Because they nationalized the oil industry.
00:26:11.000They barred American companies from trafficking in oil, from drilling, from ownership in the oil industry, which meant less production.
00:26:21.000Because when you nationalize things and then you hand over all the proceeds to your cronies, it turns out things become wildly less productive.
00:26:27.000Hyperinflation then set in because the government didn't have enough money to pay for all of the services it had promised.
00:26:56.000They had shipped the Russians into Venezuela systems, including the S-300 VM and Buk M2 missiles, none of which did any good against American forces.
00:27:05.000China, of course, is a major patron state of Venezuela.
00:27:08.000They lent them some $50 billion repaid in crude oil.
00:27:11.000China has some natural resources, but not a lot of oil.
00:27:14.000They get a lot of it from Venezuela and a lot of it from Iran.
00:27:16.00070% of all Venezuelan oil exports went to China.
00:27:21.000Obviously, the Iran, China, Russia, Axis is very involved in Venezuela as well.
00:27:28.000Not only, as you heard the Secretary of State mention, does Iran actually have fighters in Venezuela?
00:27:34.000Hezbollah actually does work in Venezuela, but Iran sent Dilowins to process its heavy crude, and Venezuela paid in gold.
00:27:42.000Iran manufactures suicide drones in Venezuela as well.
00:27:46.000Okay, so those are all reasons why the United States has an interest.
00:27:49.000And that's leaving aside the massive drug trafficking into the United States, the massive migration north that has happened because of misgovernance in Venezuela, the fact that Venezuela is a sponsor state of Cuba, which of course exists very short distance from the United States.
00:28:06.000Well, first we have to sort of determine what happened here.
00:28:08.000So there are a couple of models for changing regimes in Latin and South America.
00:28:12.000One model is what I think we just saw in Venezuela.
00:28:15.000The other model is what we saw in Panama.
00:28:17.000So a lot of people are likening what we saw in Venezuela over the weekend to what happened in Panama under George H.W. Bush.
00:28:25.000So there was an invasion of Panama that happened under George H.W. Bush, in which Manuel Noriega, who was the dictator of Panama, was arrested, brought to the United States, charged.
00:28:39.000And then the regime in Panama was essentially overthrown.
00:28:43.000Noriega ended up being tried and convicted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering and served 20 years in the U.S. and then was extradited to France.
00:28:53.000The basis for invading Panama at that time was that Noriega had declared a state of war and the U.S. had declared a response to an imminent threat.
00:29:00.000There were about 35,000 Americans living in the canal zone.
00:29:04.000And so the United States took significant action.
00:29:07.000We had 13,000 troops in the Panama Canal Zone in the first place because we built it.
00:29:14.000And then we didn't just depose Noriega.
00:29:16.000We swore in Guillermo Andara, who was the winner of the 1989 election as president and dismantled the entire Panamanian defense forces and replaced them with the Panamanian public forces.
00:29:28.000What happened here is a large-scale airstrike in Caracas, the use of special forces in order to extradite Maduro and the vice president, who is, in fact, a hard-nosed socialist Machiavellian player named Delsi Rodriguez, who is as bad as Maduro in nearly every way, except that may see reality, maybe more pragmatic than Maduro.
00:29:51.000She was immediately sworn in and is apparently expressing willingness to cooperate with the United States transition.
00:29:57.000So what this looks more like is a palace coup.
00:29:59.000And that brings us back to that statement in the Wall Street Journal that there were sources who were close to Maduro who were giving the United States information.
00:30:05.000Would not be a surprise at all at all if those sources were very close to Del City Rodriguez, the vice president of Venezuela.
00:30:12.000Now, if Rodriguez remains in power for a long period of time without granting America her interests in Venezuela, then that's the way you can judge whether this is a success or a failure.
00:30:25.000Now, President Trump surprised a lot of people by saying that, for example, the opposition leader in Venezuela, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, would not be the new leader of Venezuela, at least in the short term, Maria Machado.
00:30:42.000So President Trump was asked about Machado.
00:30:44.000He said she's nice, but she doesn't have the support.
00:30:48.000Oh, I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader.
00:30:50.000She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country.
00:30:53.000She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect.
00:30:59.000He doesn't mean that she doesn't actually have the quote-unquote respect.
00:31:02.000What he actually means is that she does not have control of the military apparatus.
00:31:06.000And absent the United States inserting tens of thousands of troops to overthrow the Venezuelan military, the United States instead is going to put extraordinary external pressure on Del Codriguez to initiate change.
00:31:19.000If he had immediately come out, for example, and said we're going to put Machado in place, that might have started a civil war in Venezuela.
00:31:26.000It may have required massive American interventionism on the ground.
00:31:30.000So right now, the Trump administration is going to try and work with Del Codriguez to effectuate that change.
00:31:36.000Rodriguez, for her part, is already virtue signaling to all of her socialist friends.
00:31:54.000In reality, it seems as though the Trump administration is going to use external pressure to get Del Codriguez to open up the oil industry, to maybe make some democratic changes, to transition toward a more orderly system.
00:32:05.000Here is President Trump suggesting the United States is running Venezuela.
00:32:08.000And again, people are taking this at face value.
00:32:11.000People are suggesting this means that Marco Rubio is now dictator of Venezuela.
00:32:15.000What President Trump, I believe, means that the United States' external pressure on Venezuela will cause the new regime leadership to work with us.
00:32:24.000And if they don't, there's more where that came from.
00:32:28.000So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.
00:32:36.000And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about.
00:32:42.000We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela.
00:32:47.000And that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country.
00:33:45.000Again, that is him saying F around and find out.
00:33:47.000Marco Rubio was asked by Kristen Welker over at NBC about President Trump's comments on quote-unquote running Venezuela.
00:33:52.000And here's what the Secretary of State had to say.
00:33:55.000Concerning policy, the policy with regards to this.
00:33:58.000We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it's good for the people of Venezuela, it's in our national interest.
00:34:04.000It either touches on something that's a threat to our national security or touches on something that's either beneficial or harmful.
00:34:09.000And are you involved in that transition?
00:34:11.000So obviously I'm very involved in this.
00:34:13.000Well, of course, I mean, I think everyone knows I'm pretty involved on politics in this hemisphere.
00:34:17.000Obviously, a Secretary of State, a national security advisor, very involved in all these elements.
00:34:22.000The Department of War plays a very important role here, along with the Department of Justice, for example, because they're the ones that have to go to court.
00:34:28.000So this is a team effort by the entire national security apparatus of our country, but it is running this policy.
00:34:36.000Okay, so again, Secretary of State Rubio, by the way, coming off amazingly well in all of this.
00:34:41.000I have to say, this is a huge moment for Secretary of State Rubio.
00:34:44.000President Trump suggested that, yes, there are some hard American interests at stake here, including oil.
00:34:50.000It is pretty amazing that President Trump just says all the quiet parts out loud.
00:35:06.000In addition, Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars.
00:35:20.000They did this a while ago, but we never had a president that did anything about it.
00:35:32.000He says that it is a priority for the United States to rebuild Venezuela's energy infrastructure, and that will create gains in the economy for Venezuelans, which, of course, is true.
00:35:39.000President Trump was also asked what happens next.
00:35:42.000And he said, listen, it's not just Venezuela.
00:35:44.000Countries had better start doing what is in America's interest, or there might be changes there as well.
00:35:49.000He was asked about the country of Colombia, and he had these comments.
00:37:15.000All attempts to establish some alternative to it have failed, which is why self-defense is necessary and why a strong military is necessary for powerful Western states and why a stronger America in the world is better for the world.
00:37:27.000I saw a hilarious post by somebody who said, well, now that we've done this, what's to stop China from morally attempting to take Taiwan?
00:37:33.000I wasn't aware that China was balanced by our moral strictures.
00:37:37.000If they were, I don't think that they would be China, actually.
00:37:39.000I don't think Russia is waiting around for our opinions.
00:37:43.000And the thing that stops them is us, not our moral suasion.
00:37:48.000On a moral level, by the way, taking out a communist dictator who has impoverished his people and destroyed his country is, in fact, morally superior to taking out, say, a democratic leader in another country who is not doing any of those things.
00:38:03.000Sort of bizarre moral relativism that has set in on both the horseshoe left and the isolationist right is pretty astonishing to watch.
00:38:09.000There's the question of American domestic law, like on what basis was the United States supposed to do this domestically?
00:38:49.000We call members of Congress immediately after this.
00:38:51.000It was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on.
00:38:54.000It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night.
00:38:57.000We watched and monitored that for a number of days.
00:38:59.000So it's just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days.
00:39:05.000But it's largely a law enforcement function.
00:39:07.000Remember, at the end of the day, at its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job.
00:39:16.000Now, there are broader policy implications here, but it's just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission.
00:39:24.000Secretary of State Rubio also put up a statement on Twitter saying that Maduro is not, in fact, a legitimate government.
00:39:32.000His regime is not the legitimate government.
00:39:34.000Maduro is the head of the Cartel de la Solas, a narco-terror organization which has taken over possession of a country.
00:39:39.000He's under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States.
00:39:42.000Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, put out a similar statement saying that Maduro is going to face the full wrath of American justice, that he has been charged with 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.
00:40:00.000They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts, according to Pambondi.
00:40:07.000According to the Barr memo, which is a very famous memo written by William Barr about the Panamanian change of regime in 1989, the argument was that the president can order the FBI to investigate and arrest individuals in foreign countries, that the UN Charter is a non-binding advisory document that is secondary to domestic law, and that there are no Fourth Amendment protections to apply to foreign citizens abroad.
00:40:29.000Jonathan Turley has a good piece over at Fox News explaining why this doesn't run up against legal guardrails.
00:40:37.000Democrats, of course, are whining about all of this.
00:40:39.000You know, after Barack Obama bombed Libya, after Joe Biden got us involved in funding Ukraine, like there are a lot of things that have happened here that would amount to warlike action under various Democratic presidents that did not end with congressional authorization.
00:41:02.000The idea that Congress is the war-declaring body at this point in American history is just not true on an effectual level.
00:41:09.000And it hasn't been true for decades, really since World War II.
00:41:13.000So as Jonathan Turley points out, Noriega does not have any sort of diplomatic immunity.
00:41:21.000He says legally, Trump has the upper hand in this case.
00:41:24.000Maduro will replay arguments from the Noriega case, but he has very little actual basis for that in law in terms of his legal extradition.
00:41:33.000Well, the international reaction is predictable.
00:41:36.000All the countries that love Maduro are very upset, and everybody else is pretty happy that Maduro is gone.
00:41:41.000Venezuelans around the world are very happy he's gone.
00:41:43.000some footage of Venezuelans celebrating from around the world.
00:41:57.000Now, again, you have the huge crowds, not a giant shock.
00:42:01.000Venezuelans everywhere despise Nicolas Maduro and Ugo Chavez for having destroyed their country.
00:42:06.000Hilariously, there was a Chinese delegation there to meet with Maduro on Friday morning, and they were stuck in the country while all of this was going on.
00:42:15.000Whoopsie, it didn't go amazing for them.
00:42:19.000Meanwhile, the EU president Ursula Vonderlaine put out a statement saying that they stand by the people of Venezuela, quote, following very closely the situation in Venezuela.
00:42:27.000We stand by the people of Venezuela and support a peaceful and democratic transition.
00:42:30.000Any solution must respect international law and the UN charter, yada, yada, yada.
00:42:36.000So between international law and the UN Charter and five bucks, you could buy a cup of coffee, or you could wait for the United States military to do the thing that all of you have been too spineless to do for a full generation of humans.
00:42:49.000Kiera Starmer, the socialist prime minister of the UK, he emphasized that the UK had no involvement in any of this.
00:42:58.000What I can say is that the UK was not involved in any way in this operation.
00:43:04.000And as you'd expect, we're focusing on British nationals in Venezuela and working very closely with our embassy.
00:43:10.000And so we will want to talk to the president.
00:43:15.000But at the moment, I think we need to establish the facts.
00:43:20.000Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is very upset because there is not a dictatorship on earth that is antithetical to American interests the Russians do not support.
00:43:28.000They put out a statement, quote, in view of the confirmed reports about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his spouse being in the United States, we strongly urge the United States leadership to reconsider their position and release the legitimately elected president of a sovereign country and his spouse.
00:43:42.000He is, in fact, a narco-terrorist criminal.
00:43:45.000He is a dictator of a country who has ruined his country.
00:43:47.000And listening to the Russians jabber on about the legitimacy of elections in Venezuela is like O.J. Simpson talking about spousal love.
00:43:56.000Meanwhile, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a condemnation as well when they weren't apparently watching out the windows of their hotel as America just took Maduro out.
00:44:06.000Quote, China is deeply shocked and strongly condemns the U.S.'s blatant use of force against a sovereign state in action against its president.
00:44:12.000Man, somebody should talk to Hong Kong.
00:44:14.000Such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law.
00:44:17.000Oh, the Chinese invoking international law.
00:44:21.000Well, you know, chaining up the Uyghurs and threatening Taiwan.
00:44:24.000And they threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
00:44:29.000China, which has spread chaos all over the planet throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
00:44:35.000We call on the U.S. to abide by international law.
00:44:37.000This, by the way, should, for those who care, be a good and informational point about the uselessness of international law.
00:44:45.000If Russia and China can invoke it to their own benefit, it is not worth the paper that it is printed on.
00:44:51.000Meanwhile, Mexico's president, Claudia Scheinbaum, condemned all of this.
00:44:55.000The Mexican government put out a statement, again, calling on the United States to, quote-unquote, respect international law.
00:45:01.000Listen, any international law that says that Nicolas Maduro must remain as the dictator of Venezuela, forcing his people to eat dog in the streets.
00:45:59.000And putting America's enemies on notice is a great way of making them do the things that are in American citizens' interests.
00:46:05.000The Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Qatar, which is effectively the press agency for Iran, expressed its own deep concern when not stuffing its money into the pockets of a wide variety of political figures.
00:46:16.000Quote, the state of Qatar expresses its deep concern over the current developments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, calling in this context for restraint, de-escalation, and the adoption of dialogue as the appropriate means to address all outstanding issues.
00:46:28.000Well, part of that is because, of course, Qatar has tried to act as a go-between.
00:46:31.000As always, they insert themselves as a go-between between notorious regimes in the United States and then pretend they're useful, which they typically are not.
00:46:39.000And then they say that they are ready to contribute to any international effort aimed at achieving an immediate, peaceful solution.
00:47:06.000And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn't, especially to distract from Epstein and skyrocketing healthcare.
00:47:11.000Okay, so her theory is that this is a gigantic wag the dog, which of course it is not, and is not going to, quote unquote, distract from things like healthcare costs.
00:47:23.000I mean, I understand she likes socialism, like really, really likes socialism.
00:47:27.000But if you were smart, if you're on the left and you were smart, you would say, yeah, it's actually quite good that Nicolas Maduro is gone.
00:47:33.000I've been reliably informed by all of our Democratic socialist friends that Venezuela is a bad example of a socialist republic, that really they want Norway or Denmark.
00:47:41.000And yet, so many of them are out there defending Nicolas Maduro today.
00:47:45.000Meanwhile, isolationists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are out there trying to make hay.
00:47:51.000Marjorie Taylor Greene, again, it is amazing that all you have to do to earn strange respect from the press, you can be the dumbest member of Congress, which Marjorie Taylor Greene assuredly was.
00:48:04.000And the media will treat you as that until precisely the moment at which you yell at President Trump, at which point you become a worthy guest on Meet the Press to discuss foreign affairs.
00:48:13.000Quick, Marjorie, name five countries in South America.
00:48:18.000Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene on Meet the Press.
00:48:22.000And, you know, you want to know something?
00:48:24.000After this regime change in Venezuela, I fear that we're going to see jobs just move south because we're already hearing about big corporations lining up their trips to Venezuela for the next big business opportunity that exists while Americans sit here with no options that are going to provide them with good paying jobs and affordable health care.
00:48:45.000So her economic theory is that by opening up the oil fields of Venezuela to American development, we're going to lose American jobs.
00:48:56.000She also put out a statement, by the way, and I only point this out because she is indicative of a strain of pseudo-Republican thought that really is just a chaos agent inside the Republican Party, mocking President Trump.
00:49:10.000She says, quote, we are running Venezuela now.
00:49:12.000And then she put up the hand-to-face emoji, America first, you know, sarcasm.
00:49:17.000And then she put out a statement suggesting, quote, in 2024, we voted for America to stop being the world's police funding foreign wars and murdering innocent people and funding fraud scams and foreigners brought let in America.
00:49:30.000We voted against America last, so it's America last now to actually secure America's oil interests in Venezuela or to relieve the pressure on Venezuela so that, you know, millions of Venezuelans living in the United States might be able to go back to their home country.
00:49:45.000So, you know, I suppose that if this is the direction that they want to move, they can.
00:49:53.000Marjorie Taylor Green linking up with AOC, not a shock.
00:50:34.000Colleagues are going to be very silent or pretend they're against us or won't even support the war powers resolution before them, primarily because they benefit personally, not only through stock ownership, through war manufacturing and private defense contractors, but many of them get direct donations from these oil companies.
00:50:58.000My goodness, what terrible dictatorship will she not uphold?
00:51:15.000You went on Twitter like everybody else.
00:51:16.000Yeah, I'm sure that the Trump administration called up Zorhan Mamdani and they're like, Zoron, we need to tell you about what's going down in Venezuela right now.
00:51:23.000And then he said, unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law.
00:51:29.000Man, somebody should tell him about what Hamas did on October 7th.
00:51:32.000This blatant pursuit of regime change doesn't just affect those abroad.
00:51:35.000It directly impacts New Yorkers, including tens of thousands of Venezuelans who call the city home.
00:51:42.000Okay, so Mamdani is claiming this is bad for Venezuelans.
00:51:46.000I suggest you take a poll of Venezuelans in New York and see how they feel about all of this.
00:51:50.000Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer demonstrating his own hypocrisy, the Senate minority leader, here was Chuck Schumer in 2020, chiding President Trump for not being harsh enough on Maduro.
00:52:01.000And then here he was yesterday chiding the president for taking out Maduro.
00:52:06.000And the president brags about his Venezuela policy?
00:52:31.000Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, but launching military action without congressional authorization, without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.
00:52:44.000I don't know, just call it a drone strike from Barack Obama, and he's fine with it.
00:52:49.000Bernie Sanders, who again has never met a socialist dictator he does not adore, put out a long statement that I will not read the entirety of because it's boring.
00:52:57.000Quote, Donald Trump has once again shown his contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.
00:53:00.000This guy does not get to talk about the Constitution.
00:53:03.000There is no one with more contempt for the Constitution than Senator socialist Bernie Sanders.
00:53:07.000The president of the United States does not have the right to unilaterally take this country to war, even against a corrupt and brutal dictator like Maduro.
00:53:14.000The United States does not have the right, as Trump stated this morning, to run Venezuela.
00:53:17.000Congress must immediately pass a war powers resolution to end this illegal military operation and reassert its constitutional responsibility.
00:54:06.000And of course, not restricted to people on the left.
00:54:09.000I offer you the genius of foreign policy analyst John Mearsheimer in November of 2025, somebody brought forth consistently by Tucker Carlson as an expert on foreign relations, who says that the United States is incapable of toppling Maduro.
00:54:24.000I argue in my book that, you know, land power is usually the way you have to go when you go to war against a country.
00:54:56.000So all this is a long way of saying, I find it hard to believe that he's going to do anything substantial from a military point of view against Venezuela.
00:55:09.000I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to work out a deal with Maduro because just, you know, a pinprick type attack is not going to buy him very much.
00:55:20.000And people will point that out to him.
00:55:22.000And therefore, it just makes more sense to back off, cut a deal.
00:55:28.000Probably should keep listening to the schmuck, who hasn't been right for, you know, 20 years or so.
00:55:33.000Or maybe we should listen to the guy who said in October that the only people who want regime change in Venezuela are Globo Homo.
00:55:57.000Sex changes for transgenderism are banned.
00:56:01.000It's one of the very few countries in the entire hemisphere with those policies.
00:56:04.000It is on social policy, not defending the regime, just saying one of the most conservative countries in North or South or Central America.
00:56:16.000Only El Salvador really comes close, which is much smaller, of course.
00:56:20.000And by the way, the U.S.-backed opposition leader who would take Maduro's place if he were taken out is, of course, pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela.
00:56:31.000So to those of you who thought this whole project was Globo Homo, not crazy, actually.
00:56:38.000So apparently Donald Trump, JD Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, Pete Hegseth, new additions to Globo Homo happening every day.
00:56:48.000Yeah, by the way, the reason that Venezuela is socially conservative is because it is Catholic and abortion has been banned in Venezuela since 1926.
00:56:56.000So yeah, that was not because of Nicolas Maduro and his wonderful social conservatism.
00:57:01.000Some of us were saying, who gives a sh about that particular point, you know, a few weeks ago when referring to Nicolas Maduro, one of the worst dictators in the Western hemisphere.
00:57:11.000Joining me on the line is Daniel D. Martino, born and raised in Venezuela.
00:57:15.000He has lived through the consequences of Maduro socialism firsthand.
00:57:18.000He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University.
00:57:22.000Daniel, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:57:37.000What was life like under Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro?
00:57:40.000Well, it was a slow but very obvious transition away from being really almost a first world country to being a third world country.
00:57:50.000From you, you know, can purchase everything you need to having to line up and then from having to put your fingerprint in a government scanning machine at the grocery store so that the cashier could tell you what you're allowed to purchase based on your government quota.
00:58:06.000It's, you know, I call it high-tech communism because at least we had fingerprint scanning machines unlike the Cubans.
00:58:14.000So, you know, things like that, no water, no electricity, the internet becoming rarer and rarer.
00:58:22.000And then ultimately, just extreme poverty.
00:58:26.000You know, my family went from making $2,000, $3,000 a month to $100,000.
00:58:33.000So when you look at what the Trump administration just did, obviously the taking of Nicolas Maduro back to the United States, the deposing of him, but the leaving in place of his vice president for the moment.
00:58:45.000What do you think the future looks like there?
00:58:46.000I mean, there's a lot of questions about the fact that the opposition leader Machado was not put in place.
00:58:51.000It doesn't seem as though she had the level of support in the military that would have allowed for that.
00:58:56.000My supposition right now is that the United States is working with the vice president of Venezuela, who is a socialist dictator herself, would be dictator herself.
00:59:05.000Her brother runs the Venezuelan Assembly.
00:59:08.000They're both pretty dire characters, but it seems to me that what the United States is basically doing is ratcheting up the pressure on the number two and saying, if you don't do what we want, then we'll do the same thing to you that we just did to Nicolas Maduro.
00:59:19.000You have to allow the United States to pursue oil interests, allow American companies to work in Venezuela and then transition toward democracy.
01:00:24.000The question is: will Del C and the rest of the regime do the right thing?
01:00:29.000Will they leave peacefully and hold new elections or give power to Maria Corina and her team in the next couple of months?
01:00:38.000Or will there need to be a second strike?
01:00:42.000So, when you look at what the United States just said, obviously, Maduro being gone makes an enormous difference.
01:00:47.000You're seeing celebration in the streets.
01:00:48.000The assumption seems to be on the part of Venezuelans that there will be this sort of transition.
01:00:53.000But as you say, the next step matters an awful lot.
01:00:55.000The president of the United States doesn't have the desire, presumably, to put hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of troops into Venezuela.
01:01:01.000What do you think the prospects are of the kind of change coming from the Rodriguez regime that the United States was unable to achieve from the Maduro regime?
01:01:10.000Well, I think that they thought at the beginning, to be honest, that Trump was bluffing.
01:01:15.000They didn't think he was going to do this.
01:01:17.000They didn't think he was going to be successful.
01:01:19.000You know, many presidents have threatened this.
01:01:55.000I think it would be very useful for the Department of State to negotiate with a foreign dictatorship other than Venezuela to give safe haven to these people.
01:02:37.000Again, this is a pretty amazing piece of news to come out over the course of the last couple of weeks.
01:02:42.000And we all have hope that the Trump administration is going to follow through and ensure that the first sprigs of freedom actually turn into a forest here as opposed to being eviscerated by the current regime.
01:03:17.000Apparently, some 41 people have been killed in these riots so far.
01:03:21.000The president of the United States said if Iran goes around killing protesters the way that it has in the past, there will be consequences for that.
01:03:27.000And again, do I think that the president means hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. military occupying Tehran?
01:03:35.000And people who tell you that that's what the president means are once again lying to you.
01:03:39.000But if the Ayatollahs feel as though they cannot crack down on the protesters because there might be an F-35 that takes out an IRGC facility, well, then maybe that regime has some troubles as well.
01:03:54.000If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the U.S.
01:04:02.000Well, that seems to me, again, a good piece of American foreign policy, assuring America's interests in the Middle East.
01:04:09.000Apparently, according to the Times of the UK, Iran's Ayatollah, Ali Khomeini, has a backup plan to flee the country if his security force failed to suppress protests or desert, according to an intelligence report shared with the Times.
01:04:23.000My guess is that there is a lot of searching going on by Western powers for some sort of number two or number three in the IRGC to depose Khomeini and move to some sort of transitional regime in Iran.
01:04:45.000So he went from the hot new thing selected by Kamala Harris as her VP candidate to making a goof of himself on the national stage to going back to Minnesota, where it turns out that actually people are upset with him because he has presided over the mass defrauding of the Minnesota taxpayer.
01:05:05.000So Tim Walz today announced that he would not be running for reelection in Minnesota.
01:05:13.000The Calci markets, Calci is a sponsor of the program.
01:05:15.000The Calci markets suggest that Amy Klobuchar is the likeliest next nominee for Minnesota governor by the Democratic Party, with Keith Ellison running a distant second.
01:05:25.000Amy Klobuchar is well-liked in the state of Minnesota.
01:05:29.000Tim Walz announced he was ending his campaign for re-election.
01:05:32.000According to Axios, he had announced in September that he would run for an unprecedented third term, but he has bad approval ratings and a lot of intensified scrutiny into fraud in statewide programs.
01:05:45.000House Speaker Lisa Demuth on the Republican side of the aisle was looking at possibly running there because of that weakness.
01:05:53.000Again, all of that followed on a video from an internet personality named Nick Shirley.
01:06:00.000He basically drove around Minneapolis looking for child and daycare facilities that were being funded by government money, trying to find out whether there are actually any kids there.
01:06:09.000Now, there's not actually anything new there per se.
01:06:12.000I mean, he went around and the video is pretty evocative.
01:06:14.000It's unclear exactly how many of these facilities have children.
01:06:21.000There have been reports from places like the Minneapolis Star Tribune that some of the facilities, in fact, do have kids there, that he went during off hours, that they didn't let him in because he was a stranger.
01:06:34.000You don't let kids in, you don't let strangers in the daycare facilities.
01:06:38.000Apparently, some of the 10 daycares, the YouTube content creator blasted for having no children, invited reporters in to see for themselves.
01:06:43.000That does not end, however, the gigantic scandal that is the amount defrauded from the Minnesota taxpayers.
01:06:49.000However, the Minneapolis Star Tribune did say that seven of the facilities that Nick Shirley visited had been cited for safety and administrative violations within the past four years, some of them dozens of times.
01:06:59.000One of them that featured in Nick Shirley's video was a place called Quality Learning Center.
01:07:03.000Hilariously, the sign was misspelled, said Quality Learing Center.
01:07:07.000It had received 121 violations in the past three years alone.
01:07:11.000Five of the facilities that Shirley visited were meal sites for feeding our future, which was, of course, the pandemic fraud scandal that resulted in 50 convictions.
01:07:20.000The manager of Quality Vearing Center then tried to claim that Shirley came outside of operating hours.
01:07:27.000They've been operating for eight and a half years.
01:07:30.000And I think most hilariously, one of the members of a Somali-run daycare facility came out and said their documents had actually been stolen.
01:07:38.000Whoopsie, somebody broke in and stole the exact documents necessary in order to prove that they weren't defrauding the federal government.
01:07:44.000Bottom line here is that the amount of fraud in Minnesota based on these gigantic state programs has resulted in a pause on a funding stream that provides $185 million in annual aid to the state's daycare centers because of federal investigations into Somali-led fraud in the state of Minnesota.
01:08:02.000According to the New York Times, more than a dozen schemes have come to light in Minnesota in recent years, many of them involving people of Somali origin.
01:08:08.000Prosecutors say the schemes have cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
01:08:12.000The scandal has rattled Minnesota politics and drawn the ire of the White House.
01:08:17.000And again, Shirley's video brought attention to a thing.
01:08:22.000Some of the claims made are so far unsubstantiated.
01:08:26.000Some of them, however, have led to further substantiation of the fact that many of these daycare facilities are at the very least poorly run bleep shows that should not be on government funding.
01:08:38.000And to be fair, in a sentence I will rarely say, to be fair to legacy media, all the way back in October 2024, there was a piece from CNN titled, As Fraud Scandals Erupt in Minnesota on Governor Tim Walz's watch, Accountability is in short supply.
01:08:53.000Quote, when confronted with troubling examples of waste, fraud, and abuse, some state agencies working under the administration of Democratic Governor Tim Walz repeatedly minimized or dismissed the allegations, according to the state's nonpartisan auditor, Judy Randall.
01:09:07.000So Walls has presided over extraordinary fraud in the system.
01:09:11.000And now Tim Walz is not running for re-election, which is in fact one of the proper solutions politically to truly running this thing like a bleep show.
01:09:21.000Alrighty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.
01:09:24.000Much more to get to, including, is there going to be another government shutdown at the end of this month?
01:09:28.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
01:09:29.000If you're not a member, become a member.
01:09:30.000Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
01:09:33.000Click that link in the description and join us.
01:09:37.000What was it like, Marlon, to be alone with God?
01:09:46.000Is that who you think I was alone with?