What is the U.S's agenda with Venezuela?

NBC's Rory O'Neill reports on what's next with a country that Trump has deemed a "Foreign Terrorist Organization"

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six, Wednesday Morning, Columbus Morning News. It's Mike Elliott with
Rory O'Neil on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line.
Rory from NBC News Radio. And the squeeze on Venezuela continues,
as we have this military just sort of presence in Venezuela,
off the coast of Venezuela. Now the latest is the

(00:22):
blockade preventing the sanctioned oil tankers from entering Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, sort of flashback to the Cuban missile crisis, right,
and that kind of blockade in that part of the world.
Pretty remarkable. But the President going on truth Social last
night saying that the US military would stop any oil
tanker into or out of Venezuela, and that oil business
is really the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. So it

(00:47):
really does turn the screws on President Maduro even more,
putting more pressure on him to step down. We also
heard from the Secretary of Defense Pete hegsept yesterday confirming
that that video of the second strike on that boat
that was taken out back on September second, that video

(01:07):
will not be made public, even though some members of
Congress have seen it. Democrats they have. Republicans have called
for its release. President Trump said he had no problem
with it being released, but deferred the decision to the Secretary.
It looked like that video will remain sealed.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
This is all about the Maduro regime and their ties
to you know, terror organizations and using that oil to
fund terrorism, human trafficking, and you know things of those
of that nature. So you know what, what what's next?
I mean, we're going to cut them off or cut

(01:43):
their their energy supply off. We're blowing the drug boats
out of the water. What happens next?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, and it's also by the way, it relates to
Cuba as well. Venezuela and Cuba sort of have their
economy sort of rely on one another. And of course,
with Secretary Rubio being of Cuban descent, he used to
Senator from Florida, which has the largest Venezuelan diaspora population
in the US. Venezuela and Cuba are front and center
for Marco Rubio as well. So that may also be

(02:11):
a factor here in putting so much focus on this.
And we haven't said the three letter word that could
be overarching all of this oil and the rich reserve
that Venezuela has, and exactly what our agenda is there
for Venezuela. Maybe we suspect President Trump will lay out
more of this case when he speaks to the nation

(02:32):
tonight at nine o'clock Eastern