The latest on Maduro Facing Justice, Democrat meltdowns, Tim Waltz, and more! We re going to get into all of that on this episode of Triggered! Subscribe to our new show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date on all things TRiggered.
00:03:26.000Well, first of all, the granularity of the intelligence collection to know exactly what his pattern of life is, where he sleeps on which night, who's going to be around him, what's the threat level, what's the air defense environment, obviously, what, you know, down to the detail of how the doors open.
00:03:47.000What kind of explosive breaching charge do you need?
00:03:50.000That level of detail is extraordinary, extraordinarily difficult.
00:03:55.000And it's really what happens, you know, when Congress created U.S. SOCOM back in, I think, 1985.
00:04:03.000They did that to generate a unique funding source to take away money as a limiting factor to allow special operations to have all the unique equipment, the unique personnel and training, and the ability to do and to apply maximum human innovation to pull off something like this.
00:04:23.000It is incredible to come from the sea with 150 aircraft strike package to take out all the enemy air defenses, including multi-billion dollar air defense network that they purchased from Russia with some new Chinese stuff that was supposed to detect stealth fighters, all of which just got the lights turned out and they got smoked to the point of putting Delta in the building where he was.
00:04:48.000I see today that the Cuban government even acknowledged that 32 Cubans were killed in action trying to defend Maduro.
00:04:56.000I say the Americans, right, left, and center, should be extremely proud of their military because it performed.
00:05:03.000And it's really what it shows what happens when you focus on lethality and merit.
00:05:07.000And fortunately, JSOC never really strayed from that.
00:05:10.000A lot of the other military did, but they proved it in spades on Saturday.
00:05:16.000Yeah, it's sort of nice when you focus on lethality as a fighting force rather than like, you know, pronouns and transgenderism and whatever else it was that seemed to be the focus of the last administration.
00:05:25.000I mean, it's amazing what you can actually do with these guys.
00:05:28.000You can picture the kind of guys that did the mission, and they did it extraordinarily well, and they should be proud.
00:05:34.000They will know and remember that story for the rest of their lives.
00:07:27.000Jorge and Delsi, Jorge is the head of the National Assembly.
00:07:32.000Their father was a professional murderer, criminal, extortionist, kidnapper who used to make his money kidnapping white European oil workers in previous decades.
00:07:45.000So the gangster mentality has not fallen far from the tree.
00:07:47.000Diestado Cabello, who is the Minister of Interior, is a very bad dude.
00:07:51.000I think there's a $15 million bounty on him.
00:07:54.000And there's a $10 million bounty, I believe, on Padrino, the Minister of Defense.
00:07:58.000So I think for the administration, they're certainly negotiating from a much better position of authority because everyone around there can see, holy shit, the U.S. can reach in here and smack us when necessary.
00:08:12.000But the U.S. has not had a great track record of paying bounties, but they can change that, I think, in this case.
00:08:21.000If the interim regime is not behaving, I think then the president could, our president can announce to say, look, the $15 million bounty on Diestado Cabello, and now it's payable dead or alive.
00:08:37.000I know we spoke beforehand a little bit about how, you know, now, because, you know, obviously America has done a really good job of toppling dictators.
00:08:44.000They haven't necessarily done a great job of filling that void historically once they've gotten rid of the dictator.
00:08:49.000I mean, you know, Iraq being case in point, Libya, you know, the list goes on and on.
00:08:55.000How do you think the, and there's a couple other things I want to unpackage in what you spoke about, because I think they're important, but, you know, how does now, you know, the public sector, you know, get involved?
00:09:05.000I mean, you know, U.S., whether it's U.S. oil companies, whatever it may be, as they're involved, can they effectuate a pressure campaign to actually make some of those other changes without the U.S. government having to do it?
00:09:15.000Yeah, I'm sure the U.S. is putting them on some kind of a timeline to run another election.
00:09:20.000The fact is, the last election they had, which was a year ago, July, this guy named Edmundo Gonzalez was the figurehead on the ballot.
00:09:30.000He was only there because this woman, Maria Carina Machado, was forcibly removed, prevented from being on the ballot.
00:09:41.000She is the most fearless woman in all of Venezuela.
00:09:44.000She really deserves to be the president or have some significant executive role because she's the one that won the Nobel Prize for tirelessly campaigning for freedom in Venezuela.
00:09:55.000So I would say they're going to put them on a timeline for actually an observed, proper election and let the ships fall where they may.
00:10:05.000There's another guy that won a previous election that was stolen, Enrique Camprilis.
00:10:11.000So I just think it's important to move away from the socialist gang that was literally defended by dozens and dozens of communist Cuban agents.
00:10:49.000It's been interesting watching sort of, obviously, hey, I live in South Florida, right?
00:10:52.000I mean, the huge Venezuelan population, those people are elated.
00:10:55.000They're dancing in the streets, the people of Venezuela doing the same thing.
00:10:59.000It seems like the people of New York, I feel like I've seen so many of the faces before where they're doing the anti, go into Venezuela, anti-this operation thing, but it seems like those people, you know, had, they were the mask bearers during COVID.
00:11:14.000They were then Ukrainian flag bearers during there.
00:11:17.000Then they became Palestinian flag bearers.
00:11:21.000But against, you know, against this movement, it seems like you even recognize the faces.
00:11:25.000None of them actually look even Latin American, and yet that's happening.
00:11:29.000But all the places with actual Venezuelan populations, it seems those people are ecstatic.
00:11:34.000What are your thoughts on sort of the difference between the creation that's out there versus what's actually happening for people who have suffered from this regime?
00:11:42.000I saw Zorham Mandani, the new mayor of New York, tweeted yesterday, there's tens of thousands of Venezuelans in New York.
00:11:48.000I'm like, yeah, they're there because they had to flee a regime that was going to murder them.
00:11:53.000And they're all over the rest of the country because of that.
00:11:55.000Not because for a while, it was so bad they used to call it the Maduro diet because the average citizen lost 18 pounds because of food deprivation.
00:12:04.000I was in Brussels yesterday, and there were 200 Venezuelans with flags in the center of a city square, also celebrating in the middle of a snowstorm.
00:12:13.000So, yeah, there's a lot of happy people that they have a chance to breathe free.
00:12:20.000It's up to the Venezuelan people to finish the job now.
00:12:23.000The inevitability of the regime of a criminal element has been definitely kneecapped.
00:12:31.000Now, I think it's better than, I guess, going with a full deck of cards and taking them all out right away and leaving a vacuum.
00:12:40.000But now the Venezuelan people have to rise up and make sure that they finish the job and restore some semblance of rule of law instead of the gangsterism that's been kind of compounding for the last couple of decades.
00:12:52.000So, you've been in these war theaters your whole life.
00:12:55.000You were a Navy SEAL, you founded Blackwater.
00:12:59.000An interesting point that you mentioned, and you saw yesterday, or I guess, you know, the pictures of the Chinese there probably either making oil deals or selling them weapons.
00:13:07.000But you said, you know, there's Chinese weaponry that was defending this stuff.
00:13:10.000There's Russian weaponry that defending this.
00:13:12.000This wasn't just an attack on sort of a third world banana republic, even if that's how that government functioned.
00:13:18.000These guys were protected by some serious technology, by some serious operators.
00:13:23.000Again, Cuba's known to sort of have that militarized intelligence for a long time.
00:13:29.000They were all there probably doing the same thing in our own hemisphere, in our own backyard.
00:13:34.000I guess, does that make the operation that much more of a success?
00:13:37.000Because it wasn't, again, you're not just going after a bunch of guys that are farmers.
00:13:42.000You're going after up against some of the most expensive technology in the world outside of the United States.
00:13:49.000They had a not insignificant level of sophistication, jammers, good communications, night vision, thermal, lots of man pads, lots of surface-to-air missiles shoulder-fired to take out a helicopter and aircraft, lots of threats that could have really killed Americans.
00:14:09.000And they got away, they got in, they got the job done, and got out clean.
00:14:15.000All personnel in the Department of War should be extremely proud of what happened because, and it sends a fantastic message to the rest of the world.
00:14:22.000Because I can tell you, there is no country on the planet that could do what just happened.
00:15:06.000The sound bites that they're talking about now versus a couple years ago when they were in power have changed drastically.
00:15:13.000But how do you think what happened compared to what you would have envisioned?
00:15:18.000Look, there's 34 known, effectively industrial narcotics processing facilities in Venezuela, not some lab in the jungle, actually commercial metal buildings with industrial power, concrete floors, producing narcotics that get shipped to the United States and to Europe.
00:15:36.000And so that first step in undoing that was taken on Saturday.
00:15:41.000The most difficult, dangerous piece was done.
00:15:44.000And now you can move towards better governance.
00:15:47.000And so that will ultimately be a fight that the Venezuelans have to have inside to say, are you going to have a rule of law society or are you going to have a narco-society?
00:15:55.000But that is for Venezuelan patriots to take up that cause and make that happen.
00:16:02.000The Venezuelan regime was making money really three ways on oil sales, which have been curtailed, and they might be put under a quarantine so that it's at least closely watched where the oil goes.
00:16:17.000Second was gold, a huge amount of gold that was mined through a lot of nationalized concessions, packaged and flown to Turkey and to the Gulf.
00:16:29.000And third was, of course, narcotics trafficking.
00:16:32.000It was mostly a transshipment point and a processing point.
00:16:36.000The cocaine is grown still in Colombia and Peru and Bolivia, but they definitely made money significantly off the trafficking.
00:16:45.000So you take away or you impair those three flows.
00:16:48.000The government had limited time as it is.
00:16:51.000Taking out Maduro was the right thing to do.
00:16:54.000And now they'll move towards some kind of election, I would imagine, in some months and try to stabilize the country.
00:17:04.000But there needs to be reliable security forces that are actually in favor of the government instead of effectively the gang that was running the country.
00:17:12.000So what message, Eric, do you think does this send to other authoritarian regimes in the hemisphere, whether it's Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, and to their backers in Russia, China, and Iran?
00:17:25.000Because I mean, I think that's the part that people are oftentimes missing.
00:17:28.000Like, you know, they're like, well, you know, get your own oil.
00:17:31.000Well, you know, why is America's only in there because of the oil?
00:17:33.000It's like, yeah, why do you think Russia, China, and Iran are there?
00:17:35.000You think they're in there for anything else other than the oil or whatever it could be?
00:17:39.000At least, you know, does this not give us a lot of control over that also?
00:17:43.000I don't want China having their oil supply off of our border and dependent on that and taking advantage of that when American companies built up an infrastructure, spend time, and then they're just thrown out blindly.
00:17:53.000But what message does this send to the other operators of those regimes in those areas about America and what's going to happen in our backyard?
00:18:04.000Well, I think it would be like opening up a corporate board discussion by coming into the room and laying a loaded 45 pistol on the table.
00:18:14.000It's just a very different conversation when the other thug regimes see what just happened to one of their former colleagues.
00:18:23.000And now I'd say they'd be more like a little kid in the back of the classroom, kind of with their head down saying, please don't pick me, teacher.
00:18:33.000It is a fantastic reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine.
00:18:37.000I like what your dad called it, the Donroe Doctrine.
00:18:42.000But look, America first does mean knowing what's going on in our hemisphere and keeping criminal states out of it.
00:18:51.000The money that Venezuela was spreading around to other super crazy left-wing regimes does actually hurt America because those countries, when they're suffering under crazy leftism, when they collapse, they tend to send their illegal migrants, their refugees, to America trying to seek better governance.
00:19:10.000So it's good governance matters in the Western hemisphere.
00:19:14.000We can't run the whole world, of course, but at least we should start and keep our backyard cleaned up and organized.
00:19:20.000Yeah, you mentioned sort of the information that we drive from this.
00:19:24.000What are the intelligence implications now that Maduro has been captured?
00:19:28.000Again, he was being guarded by Cuban intelligence agents.
00:19:57.000Those are the people that expose themselves to real risk.
00:20:01.000I mean, Gonzalez's son is still locked up in a Venezuelan prison.
00:20:06.000It's kind of ridiculous for the other regime people of Venezuela to be complaining about Maduro that they need proof of life.
00:20:12.000Well, listen, provide proof of life for a lot of the people that you've locked up completely illegally for the mere desire of speaking free and wanting to oppose a poorly run, corrupt socialist government.
00:20:28.000Yeah, no, I mean, again, we've talked about it in the past.
00:20:31.000I've had Maria Carina Machada on the show.
00:20:33.000You know, Maduro lost the July 2024 election by, I guess it was like 40 points.
00:20:49.000Do you think the VP there who's assumed at least temporary control, do you think they try to do that same thing if whether it's her or someone else comes in and actually wins?
00:20:59.000I think this certainly opens the door for others who would not have taken the risks that Maria took, assuming that, I mean, if she went to a business to get a lunch, they'd shut down the business for even serving her.
00:21:12.000She had to do my show literally from a safe room, just talking about what was actually going on.
00:21:18.000But how do you make sure that the choice of the people is implemented?
00:21:23.000Because this isn't a traditional transition process.
00:21:26.000How do we make it work so we have actual allies in power as well?
00:21:31.000Having a narco-terrorist in charge is a lot different than a common sense person who may put Venezuela first for themselves, but will probably realize that being an ally of the United States is definitely their best bet as opposed to Iran or Russia or wherever it is, especially in the region.
00:21:48.000This is where the unique authorities of the CIA should be exercised to the maximum.
00:21:54.000Because if you think about the continuum of statecraft, you have diplomacy and embassies.
00:21:59.000On one end, they can probably handle 10% of stuff.
00:22:04.000And they clearly demonstrated they can handle that unusual, extreme situation.
00:22:08.000But the other, the murky middle, that 80%, is the intelligence world.
00:22:12.000And you've got to get some CIA stations opened up there where they can observe what the regime is doing in real time themselves, not just depend on Venezuelans reporting and phoning it in to try to shape the reality on the ground so that you move towards reform, you get towards an election, you can start to rebuild some parts of the security force that are not beholden only to the very corrupt regime.
00:22:37.000And you kind of pair off the middle that way.
00:22:42.000And you make deals with the really bad ones that they can leave.
00:22:47.000Or if they want to get it on with our countrymen, they can choose to do that.
00:22:50.000But it's almost like a Plomo E Plato offer that they were giving to anybody else.
00:22:55.000Yeah, because I guess that's a position.
00:22:59.000If it's just the leader and a couple people, but if it goes all the way down into the generals and to the ranks, do you ever get that chance to go back?
00:23:51.000And then five years from now, what does that look like?
00:23:55.000I would say five months from now that the country, that the economy is starting to turn around, that all those diaspora that got pushed out because of the social incompetence are packing their bags and they're moving back to Venezuela.
00:24:07.000Look, Venezuela has unbelievable natural resources underground, more oil, more proven oil reserves than the rest of the world, any other country, unbelievable gold, coal, other minerals in the ground.
00:24:24.000With just a semblance of decent governance, the country will attract a lot of people.
00:24:29.000Their economy will roar and it will be a value added to South America, not a super negative cancerous tumor like it was.
00:24:37.000So perhaps this was a shot of chemotherapy that the country needed.
00:24:42.000And now they got to get their, they got the citizens have to get their act together.
00:24:46.000The wealthy Venezuelan diaspora have to get off their asses from Florida and go back and start to retake their country.
00:24:54.000So, you know, we spoke a little while ago about sort of the impact on what it means to the other regimes in the area, whether it's Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, et cetera.
00:25:03.000How do you find this impacts other conflict zones and war zones abroad?
00:25:08.000Right now, obviously, you got everything going on in Ukraine.
00:25:18.000Does it change the playing field, so to speak, in any of those areas in your mind?
00:25:23.000It's a one-night shot heard around the world because you saw full military spectrum capability from naval power that can project air power,
00:25:34.000air power that can come over the beach and smash pretty much enemy air defenses at will, taking out bases, taking out bunkers, taking out strategic targets, including very high-end personnel that you can put on the ground in the center of your enemy's capital and go blackbag their president out of this.
00:25:53.000And by the way, Caracas isn't exactly an easy place.
00:25:56.000It's not like a flat area like Baghdad or something like that.
00:25:59.000I mean, it's literally in a big bowl at 3,000 feet of altitude.
00:26:02.000I mean, it's a harder target than a lot of other capital cities.
00:26:07.000And right, helicopters perform differently trying to hover at 3,500 feet than at sea level.
00:26:14.000All those things really matter in a really high air defense environment.
00:26:19.000And it's not like the Venezuelans didn't have any heads up because we had a Navy fleet, significant naval combat power lurking off their shore for months at a time.
00:26:31.000So the Venezuelans claimed they were getting ready.
00:26:35.000I did hear a particularly bad fact that a staffer from Hakeem Jeffries called down to Maduro trying to tip them off that a raid was coming.
00:26:44.000Fortunately, he was already in custody and the big bangs had already happened.
00:26:53.000I mean, you endanger the lives of American soldiers in real time.
00:26:56.000I mean, I can't think of how do we, how do we, if it's, how do we find out, A, if it's true?
00:27:01.000And if it is, how do you actually effectuate real action?
00:27:04.000Because that, that deserves some serious accountability.
00:27:07.000Clearly, the U.S., the NSA tracks all those international phone calls going to overseas locations.
00:27:15.000If there was one that came from that staffer indicating that if perhaps the gang of eight had been briefed, that that person needs to be tried and sentence carried out very swiftly and most severely.
00:27:29.000Speaking of that kind of stuff, can you talk a little bit more about the Mark Kelly situation?
00:27:34.000In Mark Kelly seemed to be actively trying to prevent this operation from even happening.
00:27:38.000He tried, you know, essentially, you know, creating an insurrection in and of itself, telling military personnel while still actively involved in the military, even though he's a sitting senator now to basically disobey the commander-in-chief.
00:27:51.000Can you talk about that situation and how you feel as someone who's, again, been a big part of the chain of command for a long time?
00:27:58.000Yeah, I mean, they were all up in arms just at the prospect of shooting drug boats.
00:28:31.000And it'd be very interesting to see who was the money behind sponsoring that.
00:28:34.000But the fact is, if Mark Kelly had worn a uniform for that long, he understands the uniform code of military justice and that there is accountability up and down the chain, and there needs to be.
00:28:47.000And so it's definitely worth looking at it.
00:28:49.000And a jury of his peers of other 06s and probably some other flag and some flag officers can determine whether he knowingly, if they actually bring it to full court martial, if there was intentionality in doing that.
00:29:07.000It's fair to have people looked at for intentionally undermining good order and discipline of the chain of command.
00:32:25.000Venezuela Americans, again, people who actually lived under Maduro's tyranny are celebrating in the streets while Democrats in Washington are having a complete and total meltdown.
00:32:39.000But of course, if my father cured cancer, the Democrats would be pro-cancer.
00:32:45.000They'd say he's not giving the cancer cells enough time to develop and to become nice, good cells.
00:32:52.000Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a guy who has never met a criminal that he didn't want to coddle, came out and said the operation was reckless.
00:33:49.000He hasn't brought an end to the Maduro regime.
00:33:51.000The Maduro regime is more powerful today and more entrenched today than it was when the president began.
00:33:57.000Fast forward six years to right now, the Maduro regime is done thanks to President Donald Trump.
00:34:03.000And here's what this guy said today: We have the War Powers Act.
00:34:08.000That's a privilege resolution, which means the Republicans can't block it.
00:34:12.000Tim Kaine and I and Rand Paul are sponsors of it.
00:34:15.000It's going to come to the floor this week.
00:34:18.000And if it is voted for, if it's voted positively in both houses, then the president can't do another thing in Venezuela without the okay of Congress.
00:34:43.000He called it a sickening return to American dominance in the Western hemisphere.
00:34:52.000I don't know, I kind of want to be dominant in my own hemisphere, but that's just me.
00:34:55.000I'm not a freaking insane soyboy libtardem.
00:34:59.000Of course, if Democrats had their way, we wouldn't do anything other than spend billions of dollars on USAID money, on queer musical theaters, in programs in Caracas.
00:35:25.000And as for Joe Biden, well, he doesn't even know what day it is, but years ago, years ago, before he became dementia-riddled, he actually wanted to do exactly what Team Trump accomplished.
00:35:40.000But we know Biden could never have pulled it off.
00:35:45.000We are fighting and losing a war on our own soil.
00:35:49.000Let's go after the drug lords where they live.
00:35:52.000With an international strike force, there must be no safe haven for these narco-terrorists, and they must know it.
00:36:01.000How the times they are a changing, folks.
00:36:15.000And the same Democrats who spent years telling us that Trump was a threat to democracy, that he was a dictator himself, that he was dangerous, are now mad that he's too tough on dictators.
00:36:35.000But, you know, they're never going to appreciate the full irony of this.
00:36:40.000Kamala Harris herself condemned the operation for no actual reason, of course, and I'm sure she couldn't articulate it in anything other than a ridiculous word salad.
00:36:50.000And she seemed to forget that she herself also endorsed the bounty that was actually on Maduro's head.
00:36:59.000So when my father actually removes a real dictator, a fugitive indicted in a U.S. federal court in the southern district of New York, guys.
00:37:08.000So this is not exactly a conservative venue, okay?
00:37:11.000A guy who stole elections, quite literally, lost by 40 points.
00:37:16.000Imprisoned his opponents, trafficked drugs, sent us Trendelaragua, gang members, human trafficking, drug trafficking, violent thugs, and literally starved his own people.
00:38:23.000I think the reality is, is that for centuries, we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good.
00:38:32.000And we are going to transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently.
00:38:43.000And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one.
00:38:58.000Yeah, guys, remember, that's their words, not mine.
00:39:01.000That was Mandami's tenant director in her own words.
00:39:14.000And so much of the left is just entirely fake and manufactured.
00:39:20.000While Venezuelan Americans were celebrating in the streets, while families who fled Maduro's tyranny were crying tears of joy, you know what some of the leftists in America were doing?
00:39:32.000They were paid protesting against the operation.
00:39:47.000And they have no idea what they're actually talking about.
00:39:50.000Now, they're protesting for the cause, but they can't tell you a thing about it because they're just paid to show up, to make it seem like they're doing something, to make it seem like they care so that the media will use them, try to show how terrible this is.
00:40:48.000You know, Nicolas Maduro is responsible for almost 8 million people leaving Venezuela, like a quarter of their population over the last decade.
00:40:56.000I mean, he's contributed a lot, right?
00:41:30.000You're certainly not going to find actual Venezuelans there.
00:41:33.000The Democrat Party is in a state of complete delusion.
00:41:37.000Tim Waltz, by the way, now isn't even running for re-election after Nick Shirley was on the show last week, exposed Waltz's Somali daycare fraud scandal because he doesn't want to be bothered with running an election.
00:41:51.000He wants to really focus on the work at hand, which probably means funneling more of your taxpayer dollars into the hands of crooked Somalis who are operating vacant daycare centers.
00:41:59.000That's probably what he wants to focus on.
00:42:01.000He'll probably run a super PAC for them.
00:42:04.000They'll put him on CNN and MSDNC and the usual suspects.
00:42:08.000He'll have a great life for defrauding the American public.
00:42:11.000Hopefully the FBI, the DOJ gets their act together and actually does something about it.
00:43:48.000Some great ones came over because they fled because they lost their businesses and everything and they built in America, but the ones that the regimes were sending us, not awesome.
00:43:58.000Democrats spent four years telling us that America couldn't be energy independent, that we needed to beg OPEC and Maduro for oil, that we had to be responsible global citizens, you know, responsible global citizens and let dictators walk all over us.
00:44:17.000Record high gas prices, 100,000 fentanyl deaths a year, millions of illegal immigrants pouring across our border, crime, human trafficking, and a world that didn't respect us.
00:44:31.000In less than a year, my father has completely reversed that.
00:46:40.000You're not going to see this on the mainstream media.
00:46:42.000They're going to show you the Ukrainian protester that turned into a Palestinian protester that now turned into a Venezuelan protester that was one of the guys protesting back in, you know, the deal.