00:00Welcome back to the committee.
00:01We'll hear what you have to say.
00:03I'm just going to talk to you guys for a few minutes.
00:05All right, here we go.
00:10Suspend.
00:10You know the drill.
00:12Off to jail.
00:12That's a war crime.
00:14That's a one-year ban.
00:15I want to be clear and I'll share with you what I've shared publicly.
00:20We made multiple attempts to get Maduro to leave voluntarily.
00:25To avoid all of this because we understood that he was an impediment to progress.
00:28You couldn't make a deal with this guy.
00:30Okay, this guy has made multiple deals.
00:32He's broken every one of them.
00:33As a point of example, they end for three.
00:35So, I don't know whether the guy falls in that category.
00:37It looks like it.
00:38I hope after three years.
00:40He's just simply not a guy you can make a deal with.
00:41He had no intent of keeping it.
00:42What he wanted to do was tap us along.
00:45And by three years of time until he could deal with a new administration that he thought
00:48may be more favorable, etc.
00:50He was an impediment to progress.
00:51I was incredibly impressed with what you told me.
00:55And so, we've been able to create a short-term mechanism.
00:58This is not going to be the permanent mechanism.
01:00But this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met
01:04through a process.
01:05This is a process that we've created where they will submit every month a budget of
01:08this is what we need funded.
01:09We will...
01:10We'll provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for.
01:13And they've been very cooperative in this regard.
01:15In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine.
01:20and equipment directly from the United States.
01:23As in fact, one of the things they need...
01:25Do you agree with that?
01:26And if you do...
01:28Look, we can talk in more detail...
01:30about all of these things.
01:31Suffice it to say, I'm not here to claim to you this is going to be easy or simple.
01:34I am...
01:35I am saying that in three and a half, almost four weeks, we are much further along on this
01:39project than we thought.
01:40we would be given the complexities of it going into it.
01:42And I recognize that it won't be easy.
01:44I mean, look, at the end...
01:45One day, we are dealing with people over there that have spent most of their lives living
01:48in a gangster paradise.
01:49So...
01:50It's not going to be like from one day to the next, we're going to have this thing turn
01:53around overnight.
01:54But I think...
01:55I think we're making good and decent progress.
01:56It is the best plant and we are certainly better off today in Venezuela.
02:00than we were four weeks ago.
02:01And I think and hope and expect that we'll be better...
02:05We're off in three months and six months and nine months than we would have been had Maduro
02:08still been there.
02:09So thank you.
02:10Thank you for being here.
02:11So, some of the comments from my colleagues on the other side...
02:15I'll see you next time.
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