- 4 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The captured Venezuelan president makes his first appearance in an American court pleading not
00:05guilty to charges of narco-terrorism and insisting he is a prisoner of war. Then Trump makes his goal
00:12very clear. He wants to take Venezuela's vast oil reserves despite the enormous risks. Plus a new
00:19year brings skyrocketing health care costs and new controversy over the Epstein files as the 11th
00:24hour gets underway on this Monday night.
00:30Good evening once again. I am Stephanie Ruhle, grateful to be back with you this year
00:34and filled with news to share tonight. We are now 301 days away from the midterms and it has been
00:40almost three long days since the United States attacked Venezuela and captured its president,
00:46Nicolas Maduro. And there are still so many unanswered questions about what in the world
00:51comes next and what it means for the world. But one thing is coming across loud and clear.
00:56What was on Donald Trump's agenda when it came to this move? Watch.
01:00The oil business in Venezuela. Oil company is the biggest anywhere in the world. The oil
01:08infrastructure. Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil. Oil industry. Massive oil.
01:16Venezuelan oil. Rebuild the oil infrastructure. The oil companies. We're going to get the oil
01:21flowing the way it should be. They stole our oil. Oil is very dangerous. We're in the oil business.
01:26We'll be selling oil. We'll be selling large amounts of oil. We'll have the greatest oil
01:31companies in the world. Right there. That was all from just one press conference on Saturday morning.
01:39Hopefully there was not a drinking game going on where he had to take a shot. If you heard the word
01:44oil, he was there to talk about the attack and oil was on his mind. Here's what the president said
01:50last night on Air Force One about the role of oil companies in all of this.
01:58Have you spoken with the oil companies? Yes. I have. All of them. Yes.
02:04Any commitments from the oil companies? They want to go in so badly.
02:09These people then were in the operation took place? Yes.
02:12Will you maybe tip them off now? Before and after. And they want to go in.
02:16And they're going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela.
02:20So in case you didn't hear that, when asked, did you speak to the oil companies? He said,
02:25I spoke to them before and after the attack. But I want you to remember,
02:30the White House did not inform Congress before carrying out this raid. But yes,
02:36he said, he claimed, called the oil companies. Meanwhile, President Maduro and his wife,
02:41who is his top, top advisor, made their first appearances in an American court on narco-terrorism
02:46charges earlier today. They both pleaded not guilty. Maduro insisted that he is still Venezuela's
02:52rightful president and that he has been kidnapped. His next court date is set for mid-March. Well,
02:57tonight, the president told our colleagues over at NBC News that several of his top officials would
03:02now be running things in Venezuela. But when he was asked who was ultimately in charge,
03:07the answer was me. Me, as in Donald John Trump. The president has made multiple threats that he
03:15could order a second attack on Venezuela if the country's new leaders do not go along with what
03:20his team wants them to do. And that is not all. Right now, leaders around the world, well,
03:25they're obviously reacting to Trump's explicit and suggested threats that he could launch similar
03:30attacks on Cuba, Greenland, Colombia, and Mexico. You might think that sounds overdramatic,
03:36like the world is overreacting. But here's what the U.S. State Department put out on Twitter today.
03:42Quote, this is our hemisphere, our hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security
03:50to be threatened. End quote. All right, we're going to need some help on all this. So let's get
03:56smarter with the help of our lead off panel. It is a great one. Luke Broadwater joins us, Pulitzer
04:00Prize winning White House correspondent for The New York Times. Susan Glasser joins us, staff writer for
04:04The New Yorker, MSNOW senior national security reporter David Rode, and MSNOW legal analyst Christy
04:10Greenberg. She's a former federal prosecutor and SDNY criminal division deputy chief. Okay, Luke,
04:16a lot of different messages are coming out of the White House, but the president made it abundantly
04:21clear. This is about oil. Yeah, I mean, look, past administrations might have tried to argue it was
04:31about something else. But Donald Trump is pretty upfront about his ambitions. He believes and has
04:38said repeatedly that land and oil was stolen from American companies in Venezuela. That's not
04:46historically accurate, but he believes that. And so he thinks that this operation is at least in part
04:54about seizing Venezuela's land and oil for American profit. And he said it repeatedly. And, you know,
05:03he said similar things about Iraq. He said the Bush administration was stupid because they didn't
05:08take the oil during the Iraq war. So this is a long held belief of his. He thinks that, you know,
05:15America can just can just take other countries property through force. And he's been quite open
05:22about it. Susan, it has been less than 15 years since the last American troops left Iraq. How is the
05:30president going to sell voters on another potential very long term, very expensive mess? When the first
05:39time, the last three days when he gets up there and speaks, the only thing he's talking is about the
05:46big, beautiful oil we're going to get. How does that suit the American voter or the American military?
05:52Yeah, I don't think Donald Trump cares too much about the American voter in the sense that, A,
05:56he's at least said that he's not going to attempt to run for an unconstitutional third term. But
06:01putting that aside, Steph, I think the bigger picture question here that you raised is a very important
06:07one about Iraq. The invasion of Iraq, which I covered as a journalist for The Washington Post,
06:13looked very different on week one or 30 days in or when George W. Bush hailed mission accomplished
06:21and when the country unraveled into years of civil war instability and, you know, terrible destruction.
06:29And so we're having a conversation when, A, we don't really know who is in charge fully. The
06:35president of the United States continues to maintain, despite his advisors, that he is actually
06:40running Venezuela, which is in and of itself a remarkable statement. His advisors say that's
06:46not the case. He appears to have made basically a bet on continuing the Maduro regime without Maduro.
06:55But we don't know if that's going to be the case. There are many potential scenarios that involve
07:00military unrest, a coup, civil uprising, the Democratic opposition, which I should remind
07:07people, actually won the last election. So are we looking at an Iraq-like scenario of instability
07:13for a long term? We don't know the answer to that yet.
07:17David, if this is mainly about oil, what does that mean for other countries in the region or
07:23elsewhere who have desirable resources?
07:27So Greenland comes to mind. They have mineral resources there. And I spoke to a European
07:32official today and they they just don't understand this. They don't they can't believe that Trump is
07:37serious about doing this. But he certainly talks this kind of game. He's talked. He's criticized
07:43Colombia's president. That's a very different situation. He is a democratically elected president.
07:48President Petro. There's an election coming up next year in Colombia. He's not a drug dealer.
07:53As President Trump has claimed. So it's it's a strange issue there. And then I worry a lot about
07:58Mexico. Trump has had this focus on carrying out drone strikes there against cartels. Mexican
08:04nationalism is very, very strong. So all of these countries, though, face these threats from Donald
08:09Trump. And as we've seen in Venezuela, they're not empty threats. But is it that they don't understand
08:14it or they just can't believe it's happening? Because I think it's easy to understand.
08:18It's it's easy to understand in some cases, I guess, the minerals in Greenland. But again,
08:26his factual claims about Colombia are false. The Democrat. They're not facts.
08:30President is are false. And then Mexico is extremely complicated. One of the problems here
08:36is that he thinks that just drone strikes and special forces raids will achieve what he wants.
08:41will cow the Venezuelan, the regime that's left in Venezuela. You do a few drone strikes against
08:46cartels in Mexico. That ends the drug smuggling problem. That's not going to work. We did drone
08:51strikes for years in Yemen and Afghanistan and Pakistan. And you just don't eliminate criminal
08:57groups or insurgents with a few drone strikes. Christy, no one is arguing that Maduro is a good guy.
09:06He is an awful, oppressive dictator who has wreaked havoc on his country for years. Venezuelans around
09:13the world are cheering in the streets, praising Donald Trump for removing him. But he is not on trial
09:20for any of that. He's on trial for narco terrorism. How strong is the U.S. government's case against
09:26Maduro for that?
09:27It looks pretty strong. There is a lengthy speaking indictment here that sets out that he essentially
09:37was using his country's resources, his country's military, his country's law enforcement,
09:45you know, country's, you know, financial resources, everything to essentially further the drug
09:51trafficking that was going on in Venezuela. Now, remember, the cocaine that he is accused of
09:56forming into the United States wasn't produced in Venezuela. It's produced in Colombia, but it was
10:02transmitted through this Central American route through Venezuela. And he enriched himself and
10:08lined his own pockets in doing so. So the indictment also talks about the fact that he's ordering
10:14beatings. He's ordering murders. He's ordering anything possible for anybody that would potentially
10:21undermine his drug trafficking operation. So these are very serious charges. That said, we just saw essentially
10:29these same charges against former President Hernandez in Honduras. And Trump just pardoned the former
10:37President Hernandez. And it was essentially the same conduct as we have here. So it is really hard to
10:46understand how this administration can say we are taking international drug trafficking seriously.
10:52And this case matters. And also stand by the pardon of Hernandez, especially when Trump's argument for
11:00why he pardoned Hernandez was that it was a setup from the Biden administration. And essentially,
11:06this man was persecuted. It's the same office. It's my old office, SDNY. It's actually the same unit.
11:14It is the same prosecutors, the same DEA unit that brought the case against Hernandez that are now
11:20working on this case against Maduro. So if I'm Maduro's lawyer, I'm bringing up Trump's own
11:26allegations. And I'm saying, hey, if these people are corrupt, like Trump says, how are you bringing
11:31this? How are you letting them bring this case against my client? Again, there's no evidence that
11:36anybody is corrupt. I don't think that's why Trump pardoned this former President of Honduras at all.
11:42I think it must have been something entirely different. I don't think there's any evidence
11:47of corruption. He hasn't cited any. But nevertheless, he has said it. So while this case may stand up in
11:54court, I think that issue is going to raise serious questions and a cloud around this prosecution.
12:00It may be the same prosecutors. But of course, the head of that office is Jay Clayton,
12:05a close Trump ally who was head of the SEC during Trump's first term. Luke,
12:09we heard from Stephen Miller, who is one of the architects of all of this about U.S.'s control
12:15of Venezuela. And I want to share just a bit of it. But the president said it's true. The United
12:22States of America is running Venezuela. By definition, that's true. Jake, we live in a
12:27law or sorry, we live in a world in which you can you can talk all you want about international
12:33niceties and everything else. But we live in a world in the real world, Jake, that is governed
12:40by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. By definition, we are in
12:49charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms
12:56of conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So
13:02for them to do commerce, they need our permission for them to be able to run an economy. They need
13:07our permission. So the United States is in charge. United States is running. So the country during this
13:13transition period. OK, so the headline is we are in charge. But what's the plan? What's it going to look
13:20like? Well, you can see in those comments why there's so much concern presently at the United
13:26Nations about violations of international law. If, you know, the one of the top advisers of the
13:33president and the president himself are openly talking about not just a not just a law enforcement
13:39arrest of somebody who's been who's been indicted, but actually taking over another country and running
13:45it through military force. What is the plan for Venezuela? Well, it's been very much a moving
13:54target, I would say, in the administration. There's been debate over who they should back as the
14:03is the next ruler of the country. They've settled on the vice president. They believe that they can sort
14:10of bully her into doing whatever they want without actually having, I guess, legal occupation of the
14:18country of just sort of bully the the new president into adopting American positions. And then, you know,
14:26according to the president himself, he said that after they she adopts certain policies, including,
14:33I guess, allowing America to get control of oil reserves and profit off of the country's oil,
14:40then they would allow a Democratic election. So, you know, you can see exactly where there's so much
14:47concern right now at the U.N. over what's going on.
14:50David, the opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize, much to Donald Trump's dismay, he's not backing
14:57her. Luke just laid it out. He's backing Maduro's number two, assuming she gives U.S. oil companies access
15:04to the oil reserves. So you're essentially getting Maduro without Maduro. I mentioned it a moment ago,
15:10Venezuelans around the world are crying tears of joy. But is this what they want? Maduro without
15:18Maduro or Donald Trump in charge? Is that what Venezuelans want? I think Venezuelans like Americans,
15:24like all people in all countries want to govern themselves. And so what's so unusual here,
15:29and there was huge mistakes in Iraq and George W. Bush made many errors, but he talked about
15:34trying to spread democracy to Iraq. And what's so unusual about what Trump is saying is that this
15:40has nothing to do with democracy. It's all about oil. There was essentially an assessment. This was
15:43more great reporting from the New York Times that the administration concluded that the opposition
15:48didn't have the strength to take control of Venezuela without U.S. troops being present on the
15:54ground. So essentially what Stephen Miller is talking about is gunboat diplomacy, threatening more
16:00airstrikes, and that this will lead the Venezuelan regime and the Venezuelan people to just let Chevron
16:07come in and get all the oil they want. And so they're trying to kind of do this on the cheap. We're not
16:12going to actually put any soldiers on the ground. We're not going to take any real political risks here.
16:15We're just going to bully the Venezuelans into doing what we want. And will that work? It's it's
16:22we're stepping back a century in terms of international law and how countries are expected to act.
16:27Let's talk about that international law and world order, because as soon as this happened Saturday
16:33night on social media in China, there was one topic, one topic trending above all else, Luke,
16:39and it was could we be next? Right. So the world is watching this. And is this an invitation for China
16:46to say, knock, knock, knock? I guess it's our time for Taiwan.
16:49Yeah. And you can I mean, you can see what's happening here. Right. If if President Trump truly
16:57believes in this Don Roe doctrine where the United States will do whatever it wants in the Western
17:06hemisphere and China can do whatever it wants around its sphere of influence and Russia can do whatever it
17:12once. Well, now we're dividing up the world into sort of fiefdoms for the great powers. And you know,
17:20this is actually a proposal that Russia supposedly made some time ago to the United States saying you
17:26can do whatever you want in Venezuela if you let us do whatever we want in Ukraine. So this actually
17:33stems from a Russian proposal some time ago, according to Fiona Hill's testimony. So look,
17:39this is not the way the world has been run in any in any recent memory. This is, you know,
17:46throwing it back centuries ago to the old way of doing things. And it's extremely concerning. You
17:51know, you have speech after speech at the U.N. today talking about violations of international law.
17:58And that's where we are. Well, Stephen Miller, when he was asked about violating international law,
18:04his response was we are relying on a world governed by power. This is 2026. This is our president,
18:13David Christie. Thank you so much. Luke and Susan, I want you to stick around.
18:17Coming up later in the show, the president says American oil companies are going to spend
18:21billions to help rebuild the industry in Venezuela. But to the oil companies, is that what they actually
18:27want? They've been burned not long ago. It was very expensive. But right after the break,
18:32though the fallout from Maduro's capture has dominated the headlines, Americans are still
18:37facing skyrocketing health care costs. And Congress, they're still demanding the rest of the Epstein
18:42files. That's not going away, not for the American people, even if the administration wants you to
18:46look away. The 11th hour is not looking away. We're just getting underway on a Monday night.
18:51Well, there are cracks in MAGA. The situation in Venezuela is just the latest issue to challenge
19:00the MAGA coalition. But it is not the only issue they are facing. After months of fighting and failed
19:05deals, the Affordable Care Act subsidies have officially expired, leaving millions of Americans
19:10to face skyrocketing health care premiums. Meanwhile, Congress is still waiting for the DOJ to
19:15explain its big redactions on thousands of released Epstein documents. Luke and Susan are still here.
19:22Susan, America first is rooted in ending forever wars and not sparking foreign intervention. How
19:30does this square with Trump's original tried and true base? Yeah, I think Trump's view of his
19:37original tried and true base is that they're loyal to him personally and that he's shown again and again
19:42that when there's a conflict between the Republican Party's ideology at any given moment and what Trump
19:48wants to do, that he's going to get these people to follow him. And that started from his very first
19:52campaign in the 2016 election when he basically challenged core Republican orthodoxies on things like free
19:58trade and the benefits of that to American corporations when he basically said, well, let's find a way to get
20:06along with Vladimir Putin to the party of Ronald Reagan. And here we are a decade later and Donald
20:12Trump thinks America first is what I say America first is. And he has said that out loud many times,
20:18Steph, and I think that's exactly what he believes when it comes to this Venezuela thing. And you'll notice
20:23the extremely transactional nature of the way in which he's framing this. We talked in the previous
20:29segment about oil, oil, oil as being the rationale behind it. And the bottom line is that he thinks
20:36that what MAGA likes is the naked displays of performative macho powerism, you know, Stephen
20:43Miller screaming on television in imitation of his best, you know, sort of gangster thug routine.
20:51And I think that's, that's what we're seeing here is that MAGA is in Donald Trump's mind,
20:56whatever he wants it to be. We'll see, you know, does that have a cost politically this year? I
21:01think healthcare is probably a bigger deal when we come to vote this fall than Venezuela, but it's
21:08three days into the new year. Yes, I saw Stephen Miller and I don't know, I'm from New Jersey.
21:14That's not the kind of macho alpha man role that I grew up with. Luke, beyond just the MAGA base,
21:20let's talk about the MAGA coalition in Congress. Midterms are 11 months away. This move,
21:25against Venezuela, against Maduro, excuse me, doesn't end now. We're about to spend billions
21:32of billions in resources when we have a ballooning deficit and people living paycheck to paycheck.
21:38How is this going to square with Republicans in Congress? Yeah, well, I mean, if, if, if, uh,
21:45past is precedent, uh, the Republicans in Congress will likely agree to go along with whatever
21:52Donald Trump says, right? There'll be some people that break off. There'll be some people like a
21:56Thomas Massey who will speak out against it. But for the most part, you know, we've seen this movie
22:02before. They always fall in line. I think the bigger question though, is whether the electorate falls in
22:09line. Um, and all indications that I'm looking at in terms of polling and how people are responding to
22:16this are not good for the Republicans in the midterms. Um, the economy is not where people
22:22want it to be. They're largely blaming the party in power, which is Trump and the Republicans. Um,
22:28the Epstein files, the handling of that has been very unpopular. Um, it is causing some cracks in the
22:35MAGA coalition. And then I, I can't see any way where the, the, the, the ousting of Maduro. And if
22:43we do actually take control of Venezuela and start acting as some sort of occupier there, how that
22:49becomes popular with the American people headed into the midterms. So, so you have a sort of a
22:54checklist of things where if you were trying to win a midterm election, you wouldn't do, but, uh,
23:00uh, the administration is doing them anyway. And so, you know, Donald Trump may, may very well
23:05wake up after the midterm elections to a democratic controlled house and a ton of investigations heading
23:11his way and a ton of subpoenas heading his way. And that's where I see this heading currently.
23:18Susan, just before the Christmas break, Republicans in Congress, we're all about,
23:21we're working on a healthcare plan. We're going to have a solution, you know, framework of a plan that
23:26I feel like that was the last thing I heard from the likes of Mike Johnson before they broke for
23:31the holiday. Now Congress is about to be back in session and it is going to be all about Venezuela,
23:36Venezuela, Venezuela, but that doesn't change the issues facing healthcare costs for the American
23:42people. What's going to happen there? You know, Steph, I think the safe thing at this point in time
23:48is to, uh, expect that Congress will do nothing. It is a do nothing, Donald Trump Congress. And
23:54unless Donald Trump orders them to do something, they're not going to do anything. And, uh, I think
23:59they somehow have, have made their peace with it. Uh, it's an ungovernable, very small majority of
24:05Republicans in the house of representatives. They're increasing concerns and questions among
24:09the Republican Reagan file about whether Mike Johnson is the right long-term leader for them on
24:14the Hill. He governs essentially, uh, only, uh, at the will and pleasure of Donald Trump at this point,
24:19Congress has taken itself functionally speaking out of business. And I think this goes actually
24:25to Luke's previous point in part, that's why we're seeing, uh, Donald Trump essentially unconstrained,
24:30even the threat possibly of losing control of, uh, one chamber of Congress in the upcoming elections,
24:36no longer seems to be a meaningful constraint on Donald Trump in the way in which the founders
24:41envisioned. And it strikes me that this is a consequence of course, not only of Republicans being,
24:47uh, marching in lockstep to Donald Trump, but the fact that Democrats tried not once,
24:51but twice to impeach Donald Trump. And essentially what they've proven is that impeachment is a dead
24:56letter when it comes to serving as accountability or a check on the actions of this president who
25:02asserts as Stephen Miller said that the law of the jungle, uh, and raw power politics are all that
25:08matters. And I think, uh, so the answer is a simple no here, Steph, when it comes to,
25:12are they going to reinstate these, uh, uh, subsidies for millions and millions of Americans
25:18who need them to make healthcare affordable in this new year? The answer is no, let's be honest.
25:24It's no, I don't know. When we talk about Congress being at peace with it, the Congress
25:27person who seems to be at most peace with it is Marjorie Taylor green. And tomorrow she's going home.
25:34Thank you both so much for joining me tonight. When we come back,
25:37the president has said that U S oil companies are central to his plan for Venezuela's future.
25:42So why haven't we heard from them? We're going to discuss when we come back money, power politics.
25:51It is time now for money, power politics in an exclusive interview with NBC news. President
25:56Trump says, and I want you to stop room scrolling. Just really pay attention for a second. He says,
26:01the United States government could reimburse us oil companies that rebuild Venezuelan infrastructure.
26:08The president did not say how much money that could cost, but I'm going to tell you it's a lot.
26:13He believes that the oil industry could get operations quote up and running in fewer than 18
26:20months. Oil experts would tell you a decade. So I just want to level set for a moment about exactly
26:26what's happening here. Nicolas Maduro is obviously no friend to the United States,
26:30but by sending our troops to Venezuela to overthrow him, Trump may have violated international law,
26:35sidestepping Congress and threatened the world order. And while Maduro is locked up here in New York,
26:40his regime is still largely in place and they will be as long as their oil reserves are open to us
26:46companies. We do not know whether us oil companies actually want to invest big in Venezuela again.
26:53Remember that oil is not American oil. It is Venezuela's. Many years ago,
26:58US oil companies made a bunch of very risky investments in Venezuela and they got burned
27:03badly by Maduro's predecessor who basically kicked him out. That history is still fresh in executives'
27:09minds. It is why Trump is dangling the carrot of big reimbursements if they buy into his plan.
27:15But for fact's sake, as I said, it could take a decade and billions and billions of dollars for
27:20U.S. oil companies to rebuild infrastructure and get that oil pumping on Russian and Chinese oil
27:27fields, no less. And Trump, don't forget, he's leaving office in less than three years.
27:32Talk about this. Ron Insana joins us now. He's a veteran financial journalist and publisher of
27:37The Message of the Markets on Substack and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership
27:41Studies at the Yale School of Management. He's also the author of the new book, Trump's Ten Commandments,
27:46which is available now for pre-order. Okay. First, I want you to talk about, Ron,
27:51Trump even floating this idea that he would reimburse companies. It will take a decade to
27:59rebuild this infrastructure. At best, yes. At best. And anywhere from $100 billion to a trillion
28:04dollars to get there. So he said, the president said that this would come either through some form
28:09of revenue, which we could assume would be borne by taxpayers or some government subsidy. Again,
28:15borne by taxpayers for an industry that is already subsidized by the federal government
28:20and by taxpayers. So it's there's only one way in which to do this, to reimburse them. I mean,
28:25if they're going to take oil out of the ground and sell it on their own overseas, they would,
28:28of course, have their own revenues and profits. He seems to be talking about something entirely
28:33different as if the government were going to profit from this and the companies would get a cut.
28:39Jeffrey, you talk to these oil executives all the time. Trump said he talked to them before,
28:46but the U.S. still has sanctions on Venezuela. The same government in Venezuela is still in place,
28:52except Maduro, and the country is politically unstable. Is he really convincing these executives
28:59this is a worthwhile landslide investment? It's the same people that seized private property,
29:04that seized U.S. assets, that are the accused drug traffickers, that are the murderers,
29:09the oppressors of freedom of expression. All the things that Trump is arguing against,
29:14it's the same administration. It's the same regime that's there. So no, no, no CEO wants to go back
29:20in. And let me tell you, I'm here to correct the record. Do it. President Trump said six times that
29:28it's not going to cost the United States anything. He's changed a little bit today, but he said on
29:31Saturday, it's not going to cost us anything. These companies will pay for it themselves. And then he said,
29:36I talked with them. I talked with, I talked with the CEOs, the exact CEOs. I won't name their names,
29:42but it doesn't take hard to figure out who they are. They told me they never heard from him. They
29:46had no advanced knowledge and they have no interest in this. Why would they have no interest in this?
29:50Well, part of it is they had won in many international tribunals billions of dollars
29:56that they never got paid. Well, they wrote them down. They don't have claim on it anymore. BP,
30:01when they wrote down their assets in Russia, they can't go back and claim them now. They're gone.
30:05They've already gotten the money for it for the by the write down. Secondly, there's a huge oil glut.
30:11And in the oil glut, it's kind of suspicious. Why? If we had more time, we try to figure out why the
30:15Saudis had cut production when prices were twice as high as they are. Now they cut production.
30:20Maybe to put U.S. frackers out of business.
30:21Well, I think they wanted to make Joe Biden look bad. And the Biden-Harris campaign to drive
30:26up inflation, it didn't work for them as a matter of fact. What they did was lose market share.
30:31And now they're trying to gain it back when prices are half of what they were. So it's not working.
30:35But the Saudis and seven other OPEC nations have added a lot there, but it's not drill,
30:40baby drill. Rigs are down in the U.S. We're seeing layoffs. Chevron,
30:45the one company that is still operating in, of course, down there right now. Now still,
30:51they've they've cut 26 percent of their workforce. ConocoPhillips has cut about 20 percent of their
30:57workforce. Baker Hughes says their rig count is lower than it's been all the way down since the
31:01COVID era. You know, it's it's historic lows. So the industry is no drill, baby drill. They're
31:07laying off. The prices are so the prices are, you know, $57, $58 a barrel. That's it takes $75 a
31:14barrel for there. Then if it's not for these oil executives, where does this whole idea come
31:19from? An episode of Landman that Trump liked watching on a Sunday night? It's delusional.
31:23And that's that's the kind of thing that is in this book that you nicely features. I'm so glad
31:27you have a copy of it. There you go. Look, Ron already has this. There you go. Focus, focus.
31:31Yeah, is that what we talk about in there is what he does is that he constantly it's called the sleeper
31:37effect. You keep repeating a false information and mass communications. People study this for years.
31:42You keep repeating a falsehood. It eventually takes on a life of its own. People start to believe it.
31:46And that's what he does. He also does something which is like the Phil Spector wall of sound.
31:50Phil and I were talking about the music producer. You create so much noise that people somehow just
31:55get distracted from the truth. What did Trump want to do here? Trump wasn't going after drug
31:59trafficking. You talked that in earlier segments of releasing Hernandez and stuff like that from
32:04Nicaragua or Honduras rather. He wasn't interested in restoring democracy. Maybe he wanted to do
32:10something about checking Russia and China's influence. Really, what he wanted to do was
32:14to distract. We wouldn't talk about the things you were talking about in your show earlier,
32:18talking about January 6th, talking about inflation, talking about affordability,
32:22talking about the health care coverage, talking about the Epstein files. And guess what?
32:27Everybody did wipe that off the newspapers and off the airwaves this weekend.
32:32OK, it may have been wiped off the newspaper or the airwaves, but it didn't get wiped out of the
32:36American people's lives. Absolutely. And when it comes to health care costs,
32:40when it comes to affordability, it matters to Louise rule much more than foreign policy does.
32:44Look at any election. Look at how people vote. They vote. They vote with their pocketbooks much more
32:49than they even think about foreign policy. And the cost of this could cost us billions and billions.
32:54So even if these oil companies are cautious for now, the market's booming today. What do you make of
33:00that? You know, I don't know what to make of it, Steph, with respect to the stock market,
33:04with the Dow hitting a new all time high, crossing forty nine thousand for the first time ever.
33:08Gold and silver both also rallied, which is a flight to safety type trade. So that's running
33:14in contradiction, if you will, to an equity market rally. Other than in the near term,
33:20nothing changes for the U.S. economy. It's not like we're suddenly pumping Venezuelan oil and driving
33:25the price down, which, by the way, hurts U.S. oil drillers if indeed the price were to continue to
33:29fall below fifty dollars a barrel with lower inflation. But there's nothing that happened
33:34over the weekend that changes materially the outlook for the U.S. economy, whether the Fed
33:40cuts interest rates, who gets put at the top of the Fed this year, what inflation looks like,
33:44what growth looks like. So the market's focusing on upcoming data. We get unemployment numbers this
33:49week. Well, the market is focused on the president isn't looking at the underlying economy. What the
33:53president is showing us in the last 11 months, he's focused on hooking up big business. Just ask
33:59the tech industry. Well, oil stocks were up. We have to see that. They helped drive the Dow up. I mean,
34:03Chevron was up. Halliburton was up. Valero Energy, which can refine Venezuelan oil, although not tomorrow,
34:10is one of the big beneficiaries. A lot of those Gulf Coast refineries had
34:15repositioned themselves to take on lighter fuel. It's very thick, heavy, viscous fuel that they get there.
34:20The crude from from Venezuela is good for asphalt, you know, and it's good for lubricants,
34:26not gas, but not for gasoline. And that's and that's the part of the problem. So there's not
34:30a lot of demand for that kind of fuel. And the price WTI, the price of oil is the same as it was
34:36on Friday. It is today. Wall Street always looking for new opportunities. They say today it's Venezuela.
34:42But don't forget, what can Wall Street do tomorrow? Sell it all. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
34:46When we return, as the dust settles with the new reality for Venezuelans who live there,
34:52the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nick Kristof joins us. He's in Taiwan, of all places,
34:57after a quick break. We have certainly heard a lot from the administration, as well as from
35:04foreign leaders about the U.S. military action in Venezuela. But what do Venezuelans inside
35:09and around the world think about this? MSNOW correspondent Alex Tabbit spoke to one man
35:14who fled the country for a new life in the U.S. Watch this.
35:17We're relieved, but there's also a lot of questions. What's going to happen? The reality
35:24is that the repressive muscle of the dictatorship is still there. They have a lot of guns and they
35:30have repression tactics and they have people in the street. And it will be very complicated
35:37to do a transition and make sure that everybody's going to be safe.
35:40What is the message to the Americans right now who are protesting against this military intervention?
35:48We can talk about the legality of it and whether it's fair or not. I believe the harsh truth is
35:54that Venezuela didn't elect Maduro. He stole the elections. He was not the legitimate. He's not,
36:01it will not be the legitimate president of Venezuela.
36:03Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist is with us. Nick,
36:09you saw firsthand what life was like in Venezuela under Maduro when you were there
36:15back in 2019. Tell us about that and how you see these celebrations around the world from Venezuelans
36:23thanking, you know, unclear and scared about what's to come, but thanking Donald Trump for the action
36:28taken this weekend. Well, I mean, Stephanie, as you know, one of the things you learned as a foreign
36:34correspondent is that the world is a really contradictory place and to beware people who
36:39are too ideological about it. And, you know, indeed, I totally understand how many Venezuelans are
36:46celebrating. Maduro was a brutal dictator whose forces tortured, raped and killed with impunity.
36:54And so, of course, they're happy to have him out. On the other hand, the Maduro regime seems to be
37:00surviving without Maduro. And, you know, it's unclear if the vice president, who is also surrounded
37:08by a bunch of really hardline thugs and Cuban gunmen, you know, whether that vice president is
37:15actually going to be able to or wants to move things in a more moderate direction. So, you know,
37:21I think people should be well advised to be really cautious before celebrating.
37:27What do you think it's like for Venezuelans there now? Right. Are they able to freely express their
37:33feelings about what happened? They have lived through watching friends and family be jailed or even worse
37:40for voicing any sort of opposition to Maduro. Yeah. And I mean, right now there is talk that there is
37:46actually a crackdown that what little freedom people had, which was pretty meager, is actually
37:53diminishing now as the regime tries to crack down even more on on dissent. And, you know, I mean,
38:00people are so frustrated both by the lack of political freedom, but also by the just the lack of health
38:08care, the lack of food, the sense that the government is just investing in these these gunmen
38:15who roam around and enforce these there or the their edicts. So, you know, it people hope that
38:21things may be different. But right now, it is not clear that removing Maduro will end the Maduro regime.
38:29Trump has said he is willing to put boots on the ground in Venezuela if the government doesn't cooperate with
38:35us. What do you think the reaction there would be, especially given how dire life is for the
38:39Venezuelan people? So in Venezuela and around Latin America, there is understandably a deep suspicion
38:51when the United States talks about sending in troops to liberate people. And there's a deep
38:56suspicion about, you know, taking Venezuelan oil. You know, on the other hand, I do think that there
39:00are plenty of Venezuelans who just, you know, who have seen their kids die and who might welcome
39:07that because they are so desperate. I mean, I've got to say for my part as an American, I think that
39:11would be a disaster. The idea that we would try to send boots in the ground to occupy a country that
39:18is twice the size of California, where there are multiple armed groups. You know, we should have
39:25learned something from Afghanistan and Iraq. And boy, I hope we don't go in that direction.
39:30There's two other things I want to talk about. In your column, you wrote, quote,
39:34barging into countries to arrest a foe, reportedly killing at least 80 people in the process is not a
39:40precedent we want others to follow. China and Taiwan come to mind. You are in Taiwan right now. What are
39:47people there saying? Well, people here in Taiwan have noted that on social media in China, there has been
39:55some talk about, well, you know, let's do what what Trump did and remove the president of Taiwan and
40:02some kind of a special military operation. Now, you know, I don't I think that people in Taiwan
40:07understand that that is not likely that what is constraining Xi Jinping about an operation against
40:14Taiwan is not some respect for rule of law or an example. The U.S. sets it simply the concern that if he
40:20attacks Taiwan, he might be defeated. But, you know, that said, I do worry that the intervention
40:26in Venezuela does help Beijing's position, both because it distracts the U.S., diverts attention
40:33and resources to a second order international problem, Venezuela, from a first ranking international
40:39problem, which is the Taiwan Strait. And, you know, second, if there were a conflict, we need friends
40:45to and allies around the world. We need soft power to impose sanctions on China to get support for,
40:51you know, blockading the Malacca Straits, for example. And I think when we do things like this,
40:55this gunboat diplomacy that undermines our capacity to respond to China.
40:58Before we go, we are also seeing growing protests in Iran set off by set off by an ongoing economic
41:06crisis there. The president, excuse me, Trump threatened to intervene if that government cracks
41:12down. Where do you see things headed? Because The New York Times is reporting that Iran's leadership
41:17is now looking to offer people seven bucks a month just to stop the protests.
41:23Seven bucks a month won't do anything that won't stop the protests. But, you know,
41:28fear and repression may. We've seen mass protests before in Iran and they've been crushed by brutal
41:36suppression of forces. But I've got to say, Stephanie, that I have rarely been to a dictatorship
41:43and reported in a country where there is so much frustration at the hypocrisy of the regime,
41:49at the corruption. And, you know, that is not just the young people who want to wear
41:55Western saw clothes in North Tehran. That is in conservative rural parts of the country where
41:59people are, you know, deeply faithful and yet just resent the corruption of the mullahs.
42:05And so I think that, you know, boy, I wouldn't want to predict it. But at some point,
42:13the running regime is going to topple and that will be transformative for the region.
42:18Will that happen now? You know, who knows?
42:22Nicholas, the goal of this program every night is to try to get better and smarter.
42:26And when you are here, we absolutely do that. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be right back.
42:30Thank you, Stephanie.
42:33I'm going to just say it. That was a good show. Those were good guests. We needed them tonight.
42:37From everyone here at MS Now, thank you for staying up late with me. I'll see you at the end of tomorrow.
Comments