0:01

1 second

The war had barely ended before a consensus about it had already been reached. Assan [ __ ] and the head of the CIA both agree.

0:08

8 seconds

The reality of the matter is we do it because we can. We do it because we want their oil. We do it because we want their gold.

0:15

15 seconds

And it's clear with the comments that coming out from Donald Trump was that it's all about oil and wealth. If Venezuela did not have its oil wealth,

0:22

22 seconds

I'm sure nothing like this would have happened. The attack on Venezuela was about oil. I mean, what else could it be? The alternatives are all silly. I

0:31

31 seconds

think it's safe to say it's not about a principled opposition to anti-democratic governments that shoot protesters. Maduro is not in fact an arot terrorist.

0:40

40 seconds

In fact, if you read the indictment, the act of terrorism in question appears to just be selling drugs, which feels a

0:47

47 seconds

little Kafka-esque. And Venezuela was not about to become the launch pad of a Chinese takeover of South America. Well, I say all the alternative theories are

0:56

56 seconds

silling. Tucker Carlson seems to have hit on a plausible one. In Venezuela, gay marriage is banned.

1:02

1 minute, 2 seconds

Abortion is banned. Sex changes for transgenderism are banned. It's one of the very few countries in the entire

1:09

1 minute, 9 seconds

hemisphere with those policies. It is on social policy not defending the regime.

1:13

1 minute, 13 seconds

Just saying. So to those of you who thought this whole project was global homo, not crazy, actually. But I'm still not convinced. Even with the president's

1:22

1 minute, 22 seconds

insistence, it's just the story doesn't add up with the actual history. The thing I find fascinating about Venezuela is how the stereotypes of South American

1:31

1 minute, 31 seconds

history have so thoroughly overpowered the actual history of the country that you can simply lie about basic facts.

1:38

1 minute, 38 seconds

And so long as a lie comports with what sounds vaguely familiar about the history of like Argentina or Chile, no

1:45

1 minute, 45 seconds

one will question it. The US government has long had its hand in [music] Latin American politics, trying to prevent left-wing governments from cementing

1:53

1 minute, 53 seconds

their grip on power. And in the process, over the years, they installed [music] and supported brutal dictatorships that served US interests. But they've been

2:01

2 minutes, 1 second

especially bitter towards Venezuela since Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, seized the assets of US oil companies in 2007.

2:09

2 minutes, 9 seconds

And in doing so, Venezuela spiked gas prices and stole billions, really trillions of dollars, uh, from the US.

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2 minutes, 16 seconds

That's not to mention an invaluable strategic resource.

2:18

2 minutes, 18 seconds

So 70% of the oil coming into America, which it needs to basically keep its economy going, is heavy [music] crude. And where does heavy crude come from?

2:27

2 minutes, 27 seconds

Well, here are some of the big countries where you find most of it. It's Canada and Venezuela. The only problem is this

2:34

2 minutes, 34 seconds

didn't happen. In reality, Venezuela nationalized its oil in the 1970s. But this didn't damage Venezuela's relationship with the US [music] for

2:42

2 minutes, 42 seconds

three reasons. For one, in the 70s, every country in the third world was nationalizing its natural resources. So trying to go to war with all of them at the same time wasn't exactly practical.

2:54

2 minutes, 54 seconds

For two, Henry Kissinger, who was running American foreign policy at the time, didn't really understand or care about economics, and so didn't really

3:02

3 minutes, 2 seconds

understand the significance of every country nationalizing their raw materials at the same time. To him, the only thing that mattered was a country's

3:09

3 minutes, 9 seconds

diplomatic stances. And third, and most importantly, the Venezuelans didn't steal anything. The president of Venezuela simply took out a loan and

3:17

3 minutes, 17 seconds

bought out the Venezuelan branches of each of the major oil companies and then paid the loan back with the ensuing profits. But there is one sort of

3:25

3 minutes, 25 seconds

exception. In the '90s, a cashstrap Venezuela agreed to sign over access to some of Venezuela's ultra thick, lowquality oil for a project that would

3:34

3 minutes, 34 seconds

use cuttingedge technology to refine it into something usable. In the 2000s, when oil prices shot up, Venezuela's new

3:40

3 minutes, 40 seconds

leftist president, Ugo Chavez, tried to buy those projects out. Two of the oil companies tried to hold out for more money. So, Chavez got mad and

3:48

3 minutes, 48 seconds

expropriated them without any compensation. So, those companies, Exxon and Kico, sued, something they could do now because Venezuela had signed

3:57

3 minutes, 57 seconds

multiple international treaties allowing companies to sue for damages if treated unfairly. This petty contract dispute is what people sometimes point to as the

4:05

4 minutes, 5 seconds

critical moment that Venezuela nationalized American oil and gained the eternal emnity of the United States. But this is not the greatest theft in the history of America.

4:15

4 minutes, 15 seconds

It was a petty contract dispute. The project wasn't even worth that much money after oil prices dropped again.

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4 minutes, 20 seconds

But for neither side was it really about money. It was about sticking it to the Yankees for Venezuela and sticking it to the socialists for the oil company.

4:29

4 minutes, 29 seconds

Exxon won eventually and was able to claw back a decent chunk of money by seizing Venezuela's overseas assets. Now they don't care about opening the

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4 minutes, 37 seconds

country up, something Exxon helpfully confirmed a few days later.

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4 minutes, 40 seconds

If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, uh today it's uninvestable

4:48

4 minutes, 48 seconds

and so significant changes have to be made and the Trump White House is actively blocking them from collecting even more money. If any of that money touched the

4:55

4 minutes, 55 seconds

US bank, even if it was an account in the name of the Venezuelans, it would immediately be seized upon by a number of creditors who eventually will have to take care of, but in the short term that

5:04

5 minutes, 4 seconds

would impede the ability of the Venezuelan authorities to receive the funds they need to operate. So why did Trump bring up the oil theft?

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5 minutes, 12 seconds

Well, one reason may be cost. Whenever America fights a war of choice, the first complaint from lowinformation voters will be that the money being

5:19

5 minutes, 19 seconds

spent there would be better used at home. Promising to steal a natural resource preempts those complaints by implying the war will be a profit-making

5:27

5 minutes, 27 seconds

venture. But of course, to justify the stealing, you need a grievance to avenge. So, we all get a semi-fictional story about how Venezuela stole a

5:35

5 minutes, 35 seconds

bajillion barrels of oil from us. And our historically illiterate media just kind of goes, "Yeah, that sounds right." There is unfortunately with such a media

5:44

5 minutes, 44 seconds

not much alternative to shopping around until you can find something you can trust. But fortunately, there is one thing that can help. Ground News is a

5:52

5 minutes, 52 seconds

website and app developed by former NASA engineer Harleen Carr, hoping to give readers an easy datadriven way to read the news. Ground News gathers related

6:00

6 minutes

articles from more than 50,000 sources around the world into one place so you can compare how different outlets cover the same story. Every story comes with a

6:09

6 minutes, 9 seconds

clear visual breakdown of the political bias, factuality, ownership, and headlines of the sources reporting, all backed by ratings from three independent

6:16

6 minutes, 16 seconds

news monitoring organizations. Take for instance this story on a new boat strike on alleged drug traffickers. Ground news

6:23

6 minutes, 23 seconds

found 107 articles and using the bias distribution panel. You can see there is zero interest from the left. The right on the other hand sees it as a winner.

6:33

6 minutes, 33 seconds

You can also compare headlines to see which sources still have the integrity to insist on using the word alleged or suspected before the word narot

6:41

6 minutes, 41 seconds

trafficker and which do not care. You also get the blind spot feed, which highlights stories that are disproportionately covered by one side

6:48

6 minutes, 48 seconds

or the other. For example, if you lean right, you might have missed the story on the crackdown against protesters in Iran. To make videos like this one, I

6:56

6 minutes, 56 seconds

need a way to quickly browse a diversity of news content, and Ground News makes that easy. So, go to ground.news/sarcasmatron

7:04

7 minutes, 4 seconds

or click the link in the video description to subscribe today. If you sign up through my link, you'll get 40% off the Vantage plan, which is what I

7:12

7 minutes, 12 seconds

use to get unlimited access to all their amazing features. I think Ground News is doing important work, and by supporting my sponsors, you're directly supporting

7:20

7 minutes, 20 seconds

me. So, once again, ground.news/sarasmatron or click the link in the video description. So, if that's the cover

7:27

7 minutes, 27 seconds

story, what is the real reason? Well, let's go back to the beginning of Chavez's reign.

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7 minutes, 33 seconds

It is my privilege to present you to this distinguished audience, ladies and gentlemen. the distinguished president of Venezuela, Lugo Chavez.

7:41

7 minutes, 41 seconds

It's worth remembering that for the first 15 years, the feud between Venezuela and the United States was entirely verbal and in America, a mostly

7:49

7 minutes, 49 seconds

partisan affair. Chavez didn't actually represent a national security threat to the United States. He didn't want to. He

7:56

7 minutes, 56 seconds

relied on the US for money, but he wanted to be seen as one.

8:01

8 minutes, 1 second

The president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as at the devil, came here talking as if he owned the world.

8:11

8 minutes, 11 seconds

Chavez at the end of the day was playing a role. He was a farcical second coming of Fidel Castro, but he had the good fortune to come to power right as the

8:20

8 minutes, 20 seconds

White House was to be occupied by a farcical second coming of Ronald Reagan.

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8 minutes, 24 seconds

The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule.

8:30

8 minutes, 30 seconds

They voted for democracy. Chavez was perfectly positioned to raise his profile by playing his role. And the conservative media obliged him by striking back.

8:39

8 minutes, 39 seconds

And it seems to me it's there's a come to Jesus moment. Maybe that moment's right now where the left has to admit, you know, we were wrong. We supported this fascist all these years. We're

8:47

8 minutes, 47 seconds

guilty. We repent. I mean, why aren't we hearing liberals admit that this guy's a really bad guy?

8:52

8 minutes, 52 seconds

And in and the paranoia, especially from uh Yugo, um what kind of what kind of leverage does this guy have with us other than the oil itself? Well, that's

9:01

9 minutes, 1 second

a huge leverage, isn't it? I mean, the guy supplies 60% of the oil to this country that we import. And you've got Donald Rumsfeld back in February

9:09

9 minutes, 9 seconds

comparing him to Hitler. I mean, talk about paranoid. I mean, that's ridiculous.

9:12

9 minutes, 12 seconds

Well, you know, Pat Pat Robertson may have actually been on to something when he suggested possibly assassinating Hugo Chavez.

9:18

9 minutes, 18 seconds

Well, there you go. I mean, that's where the paranoia stems from to [music] a certain extent.

9:21

9 minutes, 21 seconds

What is this impulse to defend the enemies of America every time? Well, I'll tell you something.

9:25

9 minutes, 25 seconds

No, literally, it's every time. He's not so bad. Robert McGabe, he's not so bad.

9:30

9 minutes, 30 seconds

pleaded each other's narrative, but they weren't fighting over anything material.

9:34

9 minutes, 34 seconds

They were just relitigating the Cold War for their own self arandisement. But as Chavez passed the torch to Maduro and Venezuela backslid into dictatorship,

9:43

9 minutes, 43 seconds

the stakes got more real for at least one group of Americans, the Cuban diaspora. In the mid200s, Chavez had worked out an oil for doctors deal with

9:51

9 minutes, 51 seconds

the Cubans. Venezuela would send cheap oil to Cuba. And Cuba would send its doctors to Caracus to work in free clinics for the poor. But in addition to

9:59

9 minutes, 59 seconds

doctors, Chavez had also invited a secret contingent of trainers to create a secret police force that would spy on the Venezuelan military in order to

10:07

10 minutes, 7 seconds

preempt any possible coup. The CubanAmerican lobby, which was still reeling from Obama's decision to normalize relations, became convinced that this anti- coupoo force was the

10:16

10 minutes, 16 seconds

lynchpin to political stability in Venezuela and that the oil sales to Cuba was the lynch pin of political stability in Cuba. So when the Venezuelan economy

10:24

10 minutes, 24 seconds

started unraveling in 2012, they started lobbying for the overthrow of the Maduro government as a means to overthrow the Cuban government. They were then joined

10:32

10 minutes, 32 seconds

by the swelling ranks of refugees coming directly from Venezuela itself, who were increasingly coming to see an American intervention as their only hope. That

10:40

10 minutes, 40 seconds

lobbying paid off with the election of Donald Trump.

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10 minutes, 43 seconds

As we restore

10:45

10 minutes, 45 seconds

[applause]

10:46

10 minutes, 46 seconds

American leadership throughout the world, we are once again standing up for freedom in our hemisphere. That's why my

10:54

10 minutes, 54 seconds

administration reversed the failing policies of the previous administration on Cuba. Trump replaced a smattering of

11:02

11 minutes, 2 seconds

minor sanctions on a handful of Venezuelan officials with a blanket sanction on any company doing business with Pavvesa, Venezuela's state oil

11:10

11 minutes, 10 seconds

company. Venezuela, for all its talk of fighting Yankee imperialism, almost entirely relies on the US for refining capacity, and its most profitable asset

11:18

11 minutes, 18 seconds

is its American subsidiary, Sitco. The Trump sanctions amounted to an almost 10% cut to Venezuela's GDP overnight.

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11 minutes, 26 seconds

But at first, the sanctions actually ended up stabilizing the regime. By making it loud and clear that he was pursuing a regime change policy, Trump

11:34

11 minutes, 34 seconds

scared the Russians and Chinese into giving Venezuela badly needed aid and debt relief and military advisers. That aid didn't just free up financial

11:42

11 minutes, 42 seconds

resources. It also gave Maduro protection from his own generals, which freed him up to reform the industries damaged by their corruption. It was after the sanctions that the inflation rate really started going down.

11:53

11 minutes, 53 seconds

Venezuela is now pursuing the same kind of austerity and privatization that the US would have imposed after a hypothetical regime change. But [clears throat] a crisis created by

12:02

12 minutes, 2 seconds

overspending can't necessarily be fixed by austerity. Chavez didn't just underfund Venezuela's infrastructure. He gutted them of qualified personnel in a sort of selfdebathification.

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12 minutes, 14 seconds

I'm firing the following people. Mr.

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12 minutes, 16 seconds

Juan Fernandez, you are fired from Petroleum of Venezuela.

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12 minutes, 21 seconds

Eddie Ramirez, thank you very much. You are fired.

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12 minutes, 25 seconds

Between the purges, the underfunding, and the corruption, the country has entered a state of semianarchy with crime bosses and mid-level bureaucrats

12:32

12 minutes, 32 seconds

running their own fftoms. None of that can be fixed without getting the country's public finances in order, which is impossible without lifting sanctions.

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12 minutes, 40 seconds

Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracus on Saturday, banging empty pots to protest against chronic food shortages.

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12 minutes, 47 seconds

Electing Biden offered no relief.

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12 minutes, 49 seconds

Biden's first impulse on all foreign policy decisions is to hue to conventional wisdom as closely as possible. And conventional wisdom says you should never drop sanctions

12:57

12 minutes, 57 seconds

unilaterally or else the opponent will call you a sucker. How about we're buying oil from Venezuela.

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13 minutes, 4 seconds

When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over.

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13 minutes, 8 seconds

We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.

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13 minutes, 11 seconds

In Trump's second term, deporting Venezuelans became a top priority. But deporting a half million Venezuelans would be politically toxic in Florida

13:19

13 minutes, 19 seconds

without a solution to the Venezuelan crisis. So Trump found himself in a tricky trillemma. The Cubans and Venezuelans in Miami want regime change,

13:27

13 minutes, 27 seconds

but the only way to get it is through a boots on the ground American intervention that most Americans don't have the appetite for. Trump can't trade

13:34

13 minutes, 34 seconds

sanctions relief for a change in Venezuela's policies because sanctions relief is something only wimpy Democrats do. But the regime can't fix the economy

13:43

13 minutes, 43 seconds

without the sanctions relief. But Venezuelan migrants can't go back until the economy is fixed. So clearly this is

13:50

13 minutes, 50 seconds

an issue where it's impossible for Trump to win. I mean, unless explosions lighting up the hillside

13:58

13 minutes, 58 seconds

around Maduro's heavily [music] fortified compound in Karacas. Wow.

14:02

14 minutes, 2 seconds

As US war plananes blasted Venezuelan air defenses early [music] Saturday morning. I am still reeling a bit from

14:10

14 minutes, 10 seconds

this idea. I mean, I just completely failed to even imagine it as a possibility. That was my prize mistake.

14:19

14 minutes, 19 seconds

A failure of imagination.

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14 minutes, 21 seconds

It is genuinely brilliant. A pseudo regime change. If you actually wanted to change the nature of the regime in

14:28

14 minutes, 28 seconds

Venezuela, grabbing Maduro accomplishes nothing. Maduro isn't some ironwilled dictator who clung to power through Stalin-like ruthlessness. He's a hless

14:37

14 minutes, 37 seconds

bag holder who managed to hold office for 12 years primarily because no one else in the regime actually wants his job. I mean, would you want to be in

14:45

14 minutes, 45 seconds

charge of Venezuela right now? But if all you want is to create the illusion of a regime change, just kidnapping the president works perfectly for a media

14:53

14 minutes, 53 seconds

that's already inclined to reduce complex geopolitical issues into simple stories of individual heroes and villains. Evil dictator gone, the people

15:01

15 minutes, 1 second

cheer. For most Americans, those images will be the only thing that matters. For the Venezuelan diaspora, Trump can continuously lead them on with the false

15:09

15 minutes, 9 seconds

hope that he can fix Venezuela remotely by just vaguely threatening to murder the new president, Deli Rodriguez. For the Cuban diaspora, getting Venezuela to

15:18

15 minutes, 18 seconds

shut off oil to Cuba is simple. Just take the boats. And by stealing it, the president can award himself a little slush fund with no congressional

15:26

15 minutes, 26 seconds

oversight. But what about Trump's traditional MAGA base? Aren't they isolationists? Won't they hate this?

15:33

15 minutes, 33 seconds

Well, [clears throat] not exactly. In fact, this apparent paradox gets to the heart of Trump's foreign policy. And I have to apologize because I may have

15:41

15 minutes, 41 seconds

lied a little bit about whether or not the kidnapping is about oil. It is just not directly. Remember what I said about

15:48

15 minutes, 48 seconds

the 70s, how the third world was nationalizing everything and the US just didn't really have the wherewithal anymore to stop it. Well, that decade,

15:56

15 minutes, 56 seconds

that process whereby resource neoc colonialism really did start to come to an end was for a certain generation of Americans experienced as a massive series of humiliations.

16:06

16 minutes, 6 seconds

People are very desperate. They depend an awful lot upon their cars.

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16 minutes, 10 seconds

This is our this is a Pearl Harbor again as far as the United States is concerned.

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16 minutes, 14 seconds

Tell that goddamn governor he's going to police this goddamn gasoline situation.

16:18

16 minutes, 18 seconds

I will not take the blame for this. The fall of Saigon, the oil shocks, the inflation, the de-industrialization, all capped off by the Iranian hostage

16:25

16 minutes, 25 seconds

crisis, were all seen at the time by some Americans not as some inevitable shift, but as a failure of US foreign policy elites to engage in the necessary

16:34

16 minutes, 34 seconds

violence to put third world peoples back in their place. Those feelings intensified during the Carter presidency and then exploded with the hostage

16:41

16 minutes, 41 seconds

crisis. [music] Despite a police ban, up to a thousand Iranian and anti-Iranian demonstrators masked in Beverly Hills. think they need to go back to the land.

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16 minutes, 50 seconds

You raise oil prices. You come here, you go to school, you demonstrate, then you take the oil. What more do you want?

16:57

16 minutes, 57 seconds

Sick of being in stock. We're not going to take it anymore. We're sick of

17:05

17 minutes, 5 seconds

peace does not come from weakness or from retreat. It comes from the restoration of American military superiority. In the 70s, Reagan played

17:14

17 minutes, 14 seconds

on those feelings of humiliation and betrayal by portraying Democrats as simply too weak to discipline the Third World, most prominently by making lots of noise about the Panama Canal Treaty.

17:23

17 minutes, 23 seconds

As I talked to you tonight, negotiations with another dictator go forward.

17:28

17 minutes, 28 seconds

Negotiations aimed at giving up our ownership of the Panama Canal Zone.

17:32

17 minutes, 32 seconds

Apparently, everyone knows about this except the rightful owners of the Canal Zone, you, the people of the United States. In Ronald Reagan's formulation,

17:41

17 minutes, 41 seconds

giving away the Panama Canal was the perfect symbol of the unwillingness of American politicians to stand up to the rabble.

17:48

17 minutes, 48 seconds

We bought it, we paid for it, we built it, and we intend to keep it.

17:53

17 minutes, 53 seconds

But when the Republicans took power, they couldn't actually roll back decolonization, let alone take the oil or the canal. But they could, to quote

18:00

18 minutes

one conservative intellectual, pick up some small crappy little country every 10 years or so and throw it against the wall just to show the world we mean

18:09

18 minutes, 9 seconds

business. Interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you an NBC news report. Grenade invasion late report.

18:15

18 minutes, 15 seconds

And here is the latest situation as we now know it on the island of Grenada, which is a tiny island as you know in the southern Caribbean. it has been

18:23

18 minutes, 23 seconds

invaded by and the strategy seemed vindicated when Reagan's presidency coincided with a global drop in oil prices. This was a

18:31

18 minutes, 31 seconds

formative period for not just Trump but a whole cohort of baby boomer conservatives. Those feelings of humiliation and libidal need for revenge

18:39

18 minutes, 39 seconds

are the glue that held neoonservatives and isolationists together before Trump finally pulled them apart. But now in Venezuela, the rift is starting to heal.

18:49

18 minutes, 49 seconds

I do not care one iota about the supposed international basis for this sort of activity. I do not. There is no such thing as international law. It is

18:57

18 minutes, 57 seconds

specious. It is a lie. It is stupid. We are in a great power competition with China and Russia for the alignment of

19:05

19 minutes, 5 seconds

middle powers for the alignment of resourcerich countries. And we're in a battle with Russia and China over supply

19:13

19 minutes, 13 seconds

chains [music] and the resources that fuel the supply chains. I had always seen this process as something that mostly happened subconsciously, but then

19:21

19 minutes, 21 seconds

I saw Steven Miller on CNN saying something very similar while trying to sound like Jack Nicholson and A Few Good Men, only to be undermined by the fact

19:29

19 minutes, 29 seconds

that he is a 40-year-old man with a Valley Girl accent. The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our

19:38

19 minutes, 38 seconds

hemisphere. We're a superpower and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd

19:46

19 minutes, 46 seconds

that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to

19:54

19 minutes, 54 seconds

us. Again, cannot emphasize enough that it was a Donald Trump policy to make Venezuela a supplier of resources to our

20:00

20 minutes

adversaries but not to us. And then he just tweeted out my theory completely unvarnished. So maybe it was never that

20:08

20 minutes, 8 seconds

subconscious. Trump has developed a formula for generating these spectacles of revenge and domination. First, you make a big stupid demand. Then, you make

20:17

20 minutes, 17 seconds

a big threat. Then, you accept a small, usually symbolic concession and use that to declare victory. What's important here is not the concession. What's

20:26

20 minutes, 26 seconds

important is the performance, the images. Since no one trusts objective media or experts anymore, no expose that the agreement doesn't do what it says

20:34

20 minutes, 34 seconds

will matter. What matters is how people talk about it. Perhaps the best way to understand it is through the lens of professional wrestling. In wrestling,

20:43

20 minutes, 43 seconds

when a move is performed, the move usually requires the cooperation of the victim and that they need to act like they're really being hurt in order to

20:50

20 minutes, 50 seconds

make it look like an actual fight is taking place. This acting is called angle with the ankle. What a kill.

20:58

20 minutes, 58 seconds

Here, for instance, is Donald Trump himself completely failing to sell the stone stone.

21:06

21 minutes, 6 seconds

What Donald Trump seeks in these geopolitical fights is that the victim countries agree to sell in lie of making actual concessions that would hurt their

21:14

21 minutes, 14 seconds

countries. The ideal model for this type of game is the USMCA, Trump's NAFTA replacement. On the campaign trail in

21:21

21 minutes, 21 seconds

2016, Trump promised to renegotiate NAFTA in such a way that it would bring back lost jobs. But that's impossible.

21:28

21 minutes, 28 seconds

The lost jobs are lost for good, and actually canceling NAFTA would just cause a different group of people to lose their new jobs. So he got together

21:36

21 minutes, 36 seconds

with the Canadians and Mexicans, made cosmetic changes, renamed it, and declared victory. That is until around 2023 when Trump started campaigning against his own trade agreements.

21:47

21 minutes, 47 seconds

Why do you want to renegotiate it?

21:48

21 minutes, 48 seconds

Because I want to make it a much better day. We've been screwed by Mexico and by China and by Canada and by

21:56

21 minutes, 56 seconds

This is why he's turned American aggression away from Russia, China, and Iran and towards South America and Europe. Our traditional adversaries are

22:04

22 minutes, 4 seconds

ready for us and they can't afford to even pretend to submit. Europe and South America, on the other hand, have made no preparations for random aggression

22:12

22 minutes, 12 seconds

coming from the United States, and they're more willing to play the game to buy time until the US gets a normal president again. People sometimes point

22:20

22 minutes, 20 seconds

to this as another sign Europe is decadent and weak, but it's not. It's just people are by necessity vulnerable to being stabbed in the back by someone

22:28

22 minutes, 28 seconds

they trust. When it comes to Venezuela, the first big stupid demand is that American oil companies should be allowed to invest in Venezuela. This put Maduro

22:37

22 minutes, 37 seconds

in the very confusing dilemma of needing to satisfy a US demand that he open up American companies while those companies were being prevented from investing in

22:45

22 minutes, 45 seconds

Venezuela by US imposed sanctions. But eventually, Trump became convinced that the only symbol dramatic enough to work

22:53

22 minutes, 53 seconds

would be for Maduro to step down. And when Maduro refused, he rolled the dice on the Delta Force.

23:00

23 minutes

You can't ask for a better spectacle than this. But I do wonder if this is sustainable. The euphoria that follows a military victory like this evaporates

23:09

23 minutes, 9 seconds

very quickly. 3 years is more than enough time for people to realize democracy is not actually on the menu.

23:15

23 minutes, 15 seconds

The White House will have to keep creating the illusion of reform with new spectacles or find a good distraction.

23:21

23 minutes, 21 seconds

This puts Rodriguez in the same dilemma as Zalinski. If she's too publicly defiant to Trump, she can't get sanctioned relief. But if she's too

23:29

23 minutes, 29 seconds

obsequious, she might get overthrown by other people in the country. She can try to square the circle by being submissive in English and defiant in Spanish. But

23:37

23 minutes, 37 seconds

you never know when media won't be too lazy to hire a translator. Let me tell you what Deli Rodriguez said the day after Venezuela was attacked.

23:46

23 minutes, 46 seconds

Governments around the world are simply shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the victim and target of an

23:53

23 minutes, 53 seconds

attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones.

23:59

23 minutes, 59 seconds

What the hell did Deli Rodriguez mean when she said this attack had Zionist undertones? The Democrats have no counter, of course. Even though the

24:08

24 minutes, 8 seconds

attack was a serious war crime, the idea that the US should be bound by international law is liberal elitecoded.

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24 minutes, 14 seconds

That's why they resorted to only criticizing the attack on grounds that it was illegal under domestic law.

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24 minutes, 20 seconds

Criticizing the attack for being illegal under international law would make them sound like unpatriotic globalists.

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24 minutes, 26 seconds

Unfortunately, it's much harder to make the case that Trump has violated the War Powers Act than it is to make the case that the war was an aggressive one. And

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24 minutes, 34 seconds

there's no real popular base for opposition to the war. The constituencies who matter are all satisfied for the moment. The diaspora is so desperate they're willing to take

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24 minutes, 42 seconds

half loaves. For the right, the fact that the war was a war crime and undermine the liberal international order is a good in itself since they see international law as something that

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24 minutes, 50 seconds

primarily restrains them from disciplining unruly third worlders.

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24 minutes, 54 seconds

[music] And the corporate media is just happy to see a socialist government taken down. The only people who don't win are the people of Venezuela. But how

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many electoral college votes do they control?