January 5, 2026 • 40 mins
What really prompted the United States to move against Venezuela—and why now? In today’s episode, Todd Huff breaks down the headlines, strips away the knee-jerk reactions, and walks through the deeper geopolitical realities behind America’s response to the Maduro regime. This isn’t just about ideology or oil. It’s about narco-terrorism, state-enabled crime, authoritarian power, and national security in our own hemisphere. Todd explains how Venezuela became a criminal state, the role of drug trafficking networks, foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran, and why this situation directly impacts the United States. If you want context, clarity, and conservative perspective—this episode delivers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Attention. You're listening to the Todd Huff Show, America's Home Poor, Conservative,
not Bitter Talk and education. Be advised. The content of
this program has been talking about it. Two prevents and
even cure liberalism and listening may cause you to lean
to the right. And now coming to you from the
(00:29):
full suite Wealth Studios, here is your conservative but not
Bitter host Todd Huff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, my friends, I hope you had a happy New
Year and that twenty twenty six is off to a
good start for you. We had a nice New Year's here.
Of course, there's news that broke over the I guess
holiday weekend with what happened with Venezuela Nicholas Maduro. We'll
(00:56):
talk about that today, my friends. That's what we're going
to focus on. You know, it's interesting to me, interesting
to me, how again, it's fascinating in this culture where
you are. We collectively are given about two seconds to
decide what we think about an issue, something that happens
(01:18):
in the news, something that a particular politician said, or
he did or she did something whatever. We're supposed to
come up with our opinions instantaneously. That's one of the
things I fight on this program. I don't want to
have knee jerk reactions. You've heard me tell you before.
I remember distinctly the day the Supreme Court ruling on
(01:42):
the ACA Affordable Care Act to Obamacare was released. Wow,
that was probably I don't know, that was a while ago.
That might have been. It wasn't quite probably fifteen years ago,
but maybe twelve, I don't know. I remember people outside
the court being handed the ruling and people getting it
(02:05):
wrong because, of course, something that Justice John Roberts did,
which or he changed his vote, they believe. Anyway, The
point is I would rather be right and clear thinking
on an opinion versus first because I'll tell you I
didn't know. I still don't know exactly all that I
think about this. Hopefully someone that'll be worked out today
(02:29):
as we talk about it here on the program. But
my wife and I we were actually out of town
for just a couple of days. We do this on occasion,
take a couple of days to just to recharge and
just get away from all the busyness and so forth,
get rid of those crazy kids for a couple of days.
We love our kids, but you know, just to get
some time and just to relax a little bit, and
(02:52):
we were out of town when my wife actually said,
had had I seen the news yet in the morning,
I said, no, I hadn't. Then of course she could
fill me on what was going on. So I still
don't know entirely what I think about this, but I'll
tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go through
this and give you as much background and perspective on
this that I can to explain what's really going on
(03:15):
here to the best of my ability. Now, I will
tell you off the top here that there is the
I guess you could say, the public facing side of this,
the part of this about narco terrorism and being a
criminal state and all that sort of stuff, And there's
also a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and that's
(03:37):
where you get into Look, some of this stuff is straight, yeah,
just probably not true, but other parts of this are
probably really some mitigating factors behind the scenes, the circumstances
and so forth. This, of course probably has layers and layers,
and we're gonna do our best to talk about it today,
my friends, as we get here and hit the ground
(04:00):
running in twenty twenty six. So you know, one of
the biggest challenges that we as conservatives have is finding
ways to ensure our values align with everything that we do,
the way that we live our lives. And look, I'm
not saying overly politicize everything. I'm just saying coming to
the realization that the things that we believe in can
(04:23):
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and that includes the way that we invest our money.
It's what I love about what the team at four
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(04:46):
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(05:08):
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eight financial. Because our money should be working, my friends,
for our values. All right, So let's kind of set
the stage here as to what happened, what's happening or
what happened I guess in Venezuela, and I guess the
(05:28):
fallout and what happens next. All this stuff, so Venezuela
is not just a foreign policy story. This is oh boy,
There's layers to this, and I would say, at one layer,
this is a discussion of liberty versus authoritarian power, because
(05:49):
at its core we know that Venezuela is a leftist regime.
Venezuela is, I mean, a socialist Marxist nation. Manduro is
a bad guy. Chavez before him was a bad guy.
(06:10):
This is not simply American American meddling in the affairs
of another nation around the world. This is what happens
when centralized power hardens a nation into an outright criminal state.
And the United States is responding to a problem, responding
(06:33):
to a problem that is rooted in security, rooted in
our national interests, not just ideology. So while this is
in one sense the leftist ideology operating in Venezuela, it's
(06:56):
not just about an ideological difference. This is about when
that ideological difference leads to a hardened criminal state. So
Venezuela has become a state that has of course become authoritarian.
(07:18):
And as it is always the case, right, what's the
old saying, power corrupts absolute, power corrupts absolutely, and so
the more power an individual is given, the more authoritarian
and candidly mad, not angry mad, just crazy mad that
these folks become over the course of time. They're allowed
(07:42):
to do because they're authoritarians, They're allowed to do whatever
they want. In some extreme cases, they are worshiped. I'm
reminded of Kim Jung un and his father, Kim Jung
ill before him in North Korea. These lunatics actually in
some instances make themselves or try to make themselves a god,
(08:04):
which is patently ridiculous. It really is absurd that this happens,
but it does. It does happen. Almost part of me
thinks they almost want to see what they can get
away with. How much crazy stuff can we do before
these people are going to unite and overthrow our nonsense.
(08:25):
I almost wonder if that's the thinking. Sometimes. Now you've
heard me talk about left versus right and the political continuum.
The framework that I use when I talk about a
leftist I don't view or I don't use the traditional
political science ideological continuum. When I talk about these things,
(08:50):
I don't have at one end. I I reject the
continuum that has on one end communism on the far
left and on the other end fascism on the far right.
I reject that continuum, and the continuum I think that
is correctly, I know is correct. It has it views
(09:11):
politics through left versus right. On the continuum, the left
end of the continuum is authoritarian, the centralization of power,
that sort of thing, government control. On the right end
of the continuum, truly, at the far right end, you
have absolute anarchy where there's no control, there's no law
(09:33):
and order, it's every man, woman, and child for himself
sort of thing. And the place that conservatism falls is
on the right end of that spectrum, but not obviously
to anarchy. So what conservatism says, look, we want the
smallest government we can have that allows us to have
(09:57):
the rule of law and order and safety and structure
for people to be safe and to be able to
operate and to live with some level of a functioning
government without without giving up their liberty. And so power
is centralized on the far left end of that spectrum.
(10:20):
And when power centralizes to centers must be suppressed, they
must be silenced. They're often abused, they're often oppressed. That
is what happens. The resources must be controlled, because here's
what happens in these heavily authoritarian regimes where they have control,
(10:40):
they want to control everything. What happens is what happens
is you have a controlled economy, which a controlled economy
is bad for prosperity, it's bad for liberty, it's bad
for having enough. It always leads, it always leads to
their being not enough resources. The resources are controlled and managed,
(11:04):
and they're viewed as something that must be kind of
divvied up by the state. Each person gets this much
of this, that we're going to control that instead of
instead of allowing simply allowing the free markets to go
out and find ways to provide more resources so that
it's not a fixed, controllable, kind of metaphorical pie here
(11:30):
that we're talking about. And so that's what happens. The
first when you go to the left on the political continuum,
as Venezuela has, and at some point the opposition on
that continuum, if you're well, if you're far left on
the continuum, if there's someone in the opposition party, it
(11:52):
becomes a criminal activity. And this is what happened effectively
in Venezuela. So who is Nicholas Maduro. Maduro is, of
course the leader of Venezuela. He was until the United
States raided and captured him here a couple of days ago.
(12:15):
But he's the ruler, the leader of Venezuela. But the
United States does not treat him obviously, based upon what
happened here as a normal head of state. The allegations
are that he is a well, either the leader or
(12:35):
at least a protector of a state enabled criminal enterprise.
So it's not just that Venezuela is a bad government
that's being run by leftists who in many cases are
starving their people terrible things like that, things that are internal.
Now it's becoming it has become something that is affecting
(13:00):
law and order outside of its borders. Now suddenly that
becomes a problem for the rest of the world, and
particularly in the United States, because we have this is
in our hemisphere. There's a lot that stems from this. Right,
You've got, of course, drugs and violence, and you've got,
(13:23):
of course you've heard Trump talk about when he's talked
about illegal immigration, the number of people that are here
in this country illegally who are from criminal gangs in
Venezuela or they are from Gi Whiz. Sometimes Maduro released prisoners,
violent prisoners that were allowed then to come into this country.
(13:47):
It's gone from just a mismanaged state with a bad
ideology to what is referred to as a narco state
narcotics drugs criminal enterprise. So what does it mean to
be an international narco trafficker, Because that's the allegation here
(14:08):
narco state narco trafficker for Maduro. That's not just a slogan,
that is actually a classification in the world of legalities.
That means someone someone who, in the case of Maduro,
either knowingly enables or protects drug trafficking. They use state power,
(14:34):
government power that can involve the military, the police, the courts, whatever,
to help in enabling and protecting these drug traffickers. They
facilitate cross border narcotics movement. That is of course a factor.
You will remember some of these boats that the United
(14:54):
States has struck coming from these waters in Venezzuela, and
this of course all impacts United States security. This becomes
at some point it's not just it's not just that
you're mismanaging your own country. You're now actually impacting the
(15:17):
sovereignty the security of other states in your region. Now,
this doesn't necessarily mean that Maduro was personally trafficking the drugs.
What it means is that he was using his power
to make it easier for drugs to be trafficked by
(15:37):
some really bad people. Now, there were indictments from the
United States Department of Justice. The date back to twenty twenty,
back to the end of Trump's first term in Washington,
d C. In the White House, there have been Treasury
(15:58):
sanctions described being state linked trafficking networks. There have been
guilty pleas by Senior Maduro. Well, folks on Maduro's side,
they have pled guilty to crimes in this of this
(16:19):
type that these types of crimes, so they're developed a
type of evidence here, evidence that suggests that there were airstrips.
There are airstrips in Venezuela that have been protected by
the military that are being used to traffic drugs, that
there are corridors that are controlled and protected by the
(16:41):
Venezuelan military in order to get drugs trafficked outside of
their nation, and of course fast tracking here to the
United States, there were orders, allegedly, according to evidence, that
the Maduro regime had told other senior officials not to
(17:01):
interfere with these activities. So that being said, there's not
a single piece of evidence or a document that exists
that's a smoking gun here. There's a heavy reliance on
witnesses who are cooperating with our government. There are intelligence
(17:24):
assessments you've heard reference to the CIA. Of course, we've
got military operations now, and there's a corroborated that they
have corroborated the way that this network has been operating
in Venezuela in South America, and I say South America
because it actually it actually expands extends beyond just Venezuela.
(17:50):
In fact, if you look at the documents, you'll see
a reference to an organization called FARK. Now, I'm not
going to read that's an acronym for a Spanish named
organization that is a Marxist guerrilla organization that was founded
(18:10):
in Colombia. This organization funded revolution, funded the revolution through
the sale and distribution and trafficking of cocaine. They have
been designated a terrorist excuse me, organization and they are
(18:30):
now involved in well they have been involved for some
time organized crime. Now there was a I guess what
do you want to call it, a negotiated agreement within
Colombia in twenty sixteen that officially demobilized the criminal supposedly
(18:51):
the criminal element of FARC. In fact, FARC became a
political party within Colombia. I don't know what it's name
there is, but basically the way that it was operating
in Colombia to fund revolution there has been stopped from
the official organization, but there were people in the organization
(19:15):
who didn't want to stop. Just like anything else, right,
you have the group that they they come to a
negotiated settlement, you know, end of their official existence as
a internal terrorist organization, this guerrilla organization in Colombia that's
pushing Marxism. They say, fine, we'll get into politics, we'll
(19:36):
stop that operation. But there were dissidents, there were people
within that group when they disbanded that said, listen, we
still believe in this revolution. We still believe we're highly
committed to the cause of Marxism. And so there's these
these factions, these people that still exist, they formed criminal
(19:59):
enterprises groups, they're same people exist looking to have these
same routes, drug routes protected and so forth, and they
have the same drug economy, and so the drugs are
actually I've done a lot of research here. From what
I can understand, the drugs are actually being grown and produced.
(20:20):
I guess in Colombia. Where Venezuela comes into this is
that Venezuela the government protects basically the passage of these
drugs from Colombia out to ultimately here in other places
I guess in Central America and so forth, the distribution
the trafficking of these drugs outside of South America. And
(20:44):
if you look on a map, you'll see an extreme
northern South America. You'll see the nation of Colombia the
nation of Venezuela. They share a pretty large border and
so it's it's jungle terrain. But they've been working these
farc revolutionaries, these Marxists that are still kind of operating
(21:05):
that way. They're working with the Venezuelan government because I
initially thought, wow, is Colombia are going to be someone
who's next. Well, Colombia is a little bit different. Colombia's
relationship with the United States is one of cooperation and
they are fighting. They are trying to identify and stop FARK,
whereas Venezuela has been enabling them to traffic and move
(21:29):
the drugs through the networks that are allegedly protected by
the Venezuela military. So a lot to unpack there. That
kind of gives you a little bit of a framework
for where we got to on whatever that was the
morning of January second, I guess, or third, second or
(21:49):
third anyway, So I got to stop there because I'm
up against the clock, my friends, before i take that
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my friends, time out for me back here in just
a minute. Welcome back, my friends, to the Full Sweet
Wealth Studios. It's again my pleasure to be back at
it today. We've had two short weeks, you know, really
quickly before we get back into this. We've had two
(23:17):
short weeks. Of course, Christmas Week we were here Monday,
Tuesday Wednesday. New Year's Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday, we took
off Thursday Friday, both of those weeks, and so we
are back at it here, my friends. It reminds me
as I think about the holidays. I didn't talk about this.
This is a little bit off topic, so hang in
there with me. I'll just talk about this for a moment.
(23:39):
But for those of you who have listened to this
program for some time, you may have pieced together if
you've listened to me talk about some of the teams
I like, you may have noticed or may have figured
out that I had a crisis on my hands on
New Year's Day because I'm a fan of the Alabama
(24:02):
Crimson Tide and I am I grew up a fan
of the Indiana Hoosiers as well. I'm not far from Bloomington.
I'm gonna say thirty five minutes. I guess I'm something
like that from campus, and you know we've been to
football basketball games there. IU is not has not been
(24:23):
a football school until some guy strolls in that he says,
Google me, I just win and name is Kurt Signetti.
Fantastic football coach turned a program around in ways I
did not think possible. IU football is one of the
worst programs. And I'm not saying this to be mean,
just as a matter of fact, based upon the data,
(24:45):
IU football is one of the most uh it was.
It was at one point it had the most losses
in Division one football history. I think because of their success,
someone has passed them, so there may be second most
loss all time or something like that. So I was
in a bit of a crisis. Now I'll be kenned
(25:06):
and I was always more of an IU basketball fan
growing up. Bobby Knight being the coach, Steve Alford, Calbert Cheney,
all those folks back in the back in the day,
Keith Smart hitting the jump shot to beat Syracuse in
the nineteen eighty seven National Championship Game. I mean, take
your lots of Alan Henderson, lots of who's your greats
(25:29):
Isaiah Thomas in the early eighties. But anyway, it was
tough for I didn't know. I truly didn't care who
won the game. I you thumped him, I you looked
I didn't. I've watched Alabama football pretty consistently for twenty
some years, and I have never I don't. I am
not aware of a single game that looked like that. Now,
(25:51):
there's other problems at Alabama, but that program. It was
interesting to watch what has historically been the worst college
football program Indiana University, literally take out the most dominant
college football program for the past roughly twenty years in
the Alabama Crimson Tide. Of course, Nick Saban's gone. We
(26:12):
were in the era of nil and all that stuff.
But the bottom line is it was a remarkable game,
and I was pleased to see the Hoosiers. I'm pulling
for the Hoosiers. I told folks, whoever won that game
between my Crimson Tide and my Hoosiers, that's who I
was going to root for. So it's a remarkable thing
here to witness, and I enjoyed it. But they thumped
(26:33):
the Crimson Tide over the weekend, and I was really neutral.
I really was. I think maybe slightly wanted to see
it for IU Alabama's been there, but you know, I'm
a guy who's I've loved Alabama football my grandpa. It
was a team that he had, you know, interest in,
(26:53):
and so I just kind of picked it up that way.
But regardless, I just wanted to mention that go Hoosiers
go in this national championship here. That would be a
phenomenal story, absolutely phenomenal story. But let's get back to
it here. Let's get back to this discussion about what's
happening Venezuela and why Trump sent in well the military
(27:16):
to capture and bring Maduro and his wife to the
United States. So I mentioned before the break the cocaine
production is primarily coming from Colombia. Colombia is the world's
largest cocaine producer. I mentioned to you, Fark and the
people who are still down for the cause, who are
(27:39):
still exporting the drugs and they partner with Venezuela. Venezuela
is not the factory producing the drugs. Venezuela is the
I guess you could say, the hallway through which the
drugs travel to get from the metaphorical kitchen out the
front door of the house and then of course delivered
(28:03):
or trafficked wherever else those drugs are headed. So Venezuela. Again,
just to kind of quickly go through this, the cocas
grown in Colombia. There's armed groups like FARC or the
dissidents that remained as part of that Marxist revolutionary group
(28:25):
in Colombia that are still working to traffic these drugs,
this cocaine. It's it's you know, very expensive. They're trying
to protect their products, so they're looking for safe routes
to export the stuff and they move the drugs east
from Colombia into Venezuela. That's where Maduro's regime kicks in. Allegedly,
(28:49):
they protect the airspace, they protect the ports, they give
them blind spots on radar. They tell basically the government
not to or fear from there, and then from that
point the drugs can move north into the Caribbean, to
Central America, Mexico, and of course here in the United States.
(29:10):
And now that becomes becomes our problem, right, or at
least you can see the argument. Now, it's Venezuela. I
hit on this initially, but just let me make this
point clear. It's Venezuela, not Colombia that's the target. Colombia,
as I said, actually tries to fight the traffickers. They
cooperate with the United States, they extradite criminals. Venezuela doesn't
(29:34):
do any of that. They shield traffickers allegedly, they don't cooperate,
and they align with our adversaries. Now that's where this
gets even this gets even deeper because when you look
at the power struggle and the problems in Venezuela, you'll
(29:57):
also see some American adversaries being introduced into the story.
So China, China gets involved with Venezuela. China's of course
a geopolitical foe here, or at least a threat to
US geopolitically. They provide loans to the Venezuelan government, who
(30:20):
is of course absolutely mismanaged. It's a disaster because of
the Marxists socialist policies they've enacted there. They give them
loans that Venezuela then basically gives us collateral oil. The
loan is backed by oil, and so this gives China
(30:44):
long term leverage and it gives them control over oil
experts from Venezuela, who, according to reports, has the most
known oil reserves in the world. So this key Venezuela
dependent upon the Chinese. When you're dependent upon the Chinese,
(31:05):
they can begin to exert influence and control and that's
not good, especially in this hemisphere. For the United States,
You've got Russia involved. Russia has some sort of military
alliance or partnership with Venezuela. And then of course when
(31:25):
you have that sort of thing, this, you know, you
go back to the Cold War era where remember the
USSR the Cuban missile crisis. Now that was closer to
the United States back door. Cuba is ninety miles from
Key West. Venezuela's further south. But Venezuela, heaven forbid, if
(31:45):
the Russians, if this got really dicey here and you know,
there's a conflict, we could face a missile strike from
Venezuela much more quickly than we could face a strike
coming from from Russia. So there's that again, not that
that's anywhere near happening. It's just these are the threats,
(32:10):
and the people protecting this country take those things very seriously.
But not only is there a Russian and a Chinese
influence in Venezuela, there's also an Iranian influence in Venezuela.
The Iranians have helped teach the Venezuelans how to avoid, well,
(32:32):
how to do things on the down low, I guess,
how to evade sanctions. They've provided them with some additional
logistical support, They've given them some insight into how to
manage sanctions and so forth, and how to do some
(32:53):
of these things behind the scenes. And of course we've
got Cuba as well, who has a partnership or relationship
with Venezuela. They have basically shown the Venezuelan government how
to do communism correctly, I guess in the sense, excuse me,
in the sense of controlling what happens in when it
(33:17):
comes to your people in opposition and so forth. So
got to take a time out. My friends running along
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back here in just a minute. Welcome back, my friends.
(34:07):
Time flies when you're having fun, doing our best to
set the stage for what's happening in Venezuela. Why the
United States decided to go in and capture Maduro. Of course,
there's all sorts of problems, and of course there's this fury,
this I guess, emotional outburst about Trump's comments saying that
(34:28):
the United States is going to effectively run Venezuela for
a period of time, which again, if you take its leader,
I mean, you're gonna have to figure something out here.
There's gonna have to be some sort of a transition.
This is just not something that is no big deal.
So obviously that doesn't come as a surprise to me
(34:50):
at all. I was surprised to see that we did this,
and I'm still not entirely sure all the things I
think about this, but I'm trying to paint the picture
so that we understand what's going on here. And friends,
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so you hear a lot of people say this is
(35:58):
about oil, and this can be so deceiving or misleading.
Let me tell you what that doesn't mean. This isn't
about United States stealing oil. This isn't about us, the
US going down there with the intentions of simply taking
over the oil and profited profiting from it. This is
(36:19):
about again I painted the picture as to what the
legal justification is here, So we're not We don't just
have a government that is mismanaged. We have a government
that is acting like a criminal rogue state that is
putting other nations at risk because it refuses to act
(36:42):
in a way that protects protects the people of other countries.
These are real problems. People die from this. This creates
all sorts of crime and problems in these other nations.
And Venezuela has simply allowed it to happen because it's
(37:03):
it's a financial benefit to them. So this the degree
that this is about oil, is that the strategic leverage
that this could have. And again we mentioned China, China
and their partnership with Venezuela and the way that this
(37:24):
whole entire scenario has kind of gotten to this climax
that's not good having Chinese influence over over the oil. Now,
these are other factors that had to be discussed and considered,
and candidly, there's probably others that we don't know about.
Oz mentioned to me. Election interference that could certainly be
(37:44):
a factor here. There could be other there could be
other things happening that we don't know that may have
moved this to the top of the list to be
addressed immediately. But who controls the production and the exports
the exporting of oil is a big factor. And where
that money goes and what it's being used for. Certainly
(38:08):
if it's used for things that are directly opposed to
us interests, can be something that our government can and
should have a concern about. This is it's a good
thing if we stop oil from funding authoritarian government survival.
(38:30):
There's a lot of problems that stem from authoritarian governments,
not just within their borders, but you think about things
like illegal just migration in general, people trying to flee
from that, human rights, all those sorts of things. So
why is this a direct risk to the United States?
(38:51):
Number One, you can't have a state enabled situation circumstance
where drug flows are protected by a nation, by the
government that gives them stable routes that allows them to
send more higher volume, and it's harder to stop that.
(39:13):
Number One, you need cooperation from other governments, not the
provision or the allowance of these things to happen. A
criminal state aligned with hostile powers. When those converge, that
creates a problem for the United States. Organized crime, combined
with geopolitical factors can be a big, big deal and
(39:40):
creates an environment that creates real threat to the United
States of America and her citizens. Now, when you have
a safe haven, you have all sorts of things that
are allowed to happen, like protection of these groups, these
drug runners, intelligence and cover. There can be the creation
(40:02):
of false documents, money laundering, I mean, the list goes
on and on there. It destabilizes the region we talked
about in migration, people wanting away from this stuff. Corruption
within the nation, It begins to corrupt the area. The cartel,
which is a big, big threat, begins to spread. You
(40:23):
normalize criminal sovereignty. If states can do things like run drugs,
should they still be treated as legitimate states or as
something else? And at some point international order begins to collapse.
So that's all the time. I had some other things
that I want to get to. I just am out
(40:44):
of time, my friends. I hope this helps frame the
issue what's going on there, But I got to run.
Thanks for listening, SDG
Attention. You're listening to the Todd Huff Show, America's Home Poor, Conservative,
not Bitter Talk and education. Be advised. The content of
this program has been talking about it. Two prevents and
even cure liberalism and listening may cause you to lean
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(00:29):
full suite Wealth Studios, here is your conservative but not
Bitter host Todd Huff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, my friends, I hope you had a happy New
Year and that twenty twenty six is off to a
good start for you. We had a nice New Year's here.
Of course, there's news that broke over the I guess
holiday weekend with what happened with Venezuela Nicholas Maduro. We'll
(00:56):
talk about that today, my friends. That's what we're going
to focus on. You know, it's interesting to me, interesting
to me, how again, it's fascinating in this culture where
you are. We collectively are given about two seconds to
decide what we think about an issue, something that happens
(01:18):
in the news, something that a particular politician said, or
he did or she did something whatever. We're supposed to
come up with our opinions instantaneously. That's one of the
things I fight on this program. I don't want to
have knee jerk reactions. You've heard me tell you before.
I remember distinctly the day the Supreme Court ruling on
(01:42):
the ACA Affordable Care Act to Obamacare was released. Wow,
that was probably I don't know, that was a while ago.
That might have been. It wasn't quite probably fifteen years ago,
but maybe twelve, I don't know. I remember people outside
the court being handed the ruling and people getting it
(02:05):
wrong because, of course, something that Justice John Roberts did,
which or he changed his vote, they believe. Anyway, The
point is I would rather be right and clear thinking
on an opinion versus first because I'll tell you I
didn't know. I still don't know exactly all that I
think about this. Hopefully someone that'll be worked out today
(02:29):
as we talk about it here on the program. But
my wife and I we were actually out of town
for just a couple of days. We do this on occasion,
take a couple of days to just to recharge and
just get away from all the busyness and so forth,
get rid of those crazy kids for a couple of days.
We love our kids, but you know, just to get
some time and just to relax a little bit, and
(02:52):
we were out of town when my wife actually said,
had had I seen the news yet in the morning,
I said, no, I hadn't. Then of course she could
fill me on what was going on. So I still
don't know entirely what I think about this, but I'll
tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go through
this and give you as much background and perspective on
this that I can to explain what's really going on
(03:15):
here to the best of my ability. Now, I will
tell you off the top here that there is the
I guess you could say, the public facing side of this,
the part of this about narco terrorism and being a
criminal state and all that sort of stuff, And there's
also a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and that's
(03:37):
where you get into Look, some of this stuff is straight, yeah,
just probably not true, but other parts of this are
probably really some mitigating factors behind the scenes, the circumstances
and so forth. This, of course probably has layers and layers,
and we're gonna do our best to talk about it today,
my friends, as we get here and hit the ground
(04:00):
running in twenty twenty six. So you know, one of
the biggest challenges that we as conservatives have is finding
ways to ensure our values align with everything that we do,
the way that we live our lives. And look, I'm
not saying overly politicize everything. I'm just saying coming to
the realization that the things that we believe in can
(04:23):
certainly be impacted by the way that we live our life,
and that includes the way that we invest our money.
It's what I love about what the team at four
to eight Financial is doing. They specialize in biblically responsible investing.
That means they screen out companies that do not align
with our faith with our values, so we're not funding
(04:46):
things that go completely against what we believe in. They
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investments with our purpose, with our goals. And the best
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It's painless, it's easy. I did it, you can do
it too. For eight financial dot com slash todd that's
(05:08):
the website for eight financial dot com slash todd for
eight financial. Because our money should be working, my friends,
for our values. All right, So let's kind of set
the stage here as to what happened, what's happening or
what happened I guess in Venezuela, and I guess the
(05:28):
fallout and what happens next. All this stuff, so Venezuela
is not just a foreign policy story. This is oh boy,
There's layers to this, and I would say, at one layer,
this is a discussion of liberty versus authoritarian power, because
(05:49):
at its core we know that Venezuela is a leftist regime.
Venezuela is, I mean, a socialist Marxist nation. Manduro is
a bad guy. Chavez before him was a bad guy.
(06:10):
This is not simply American American meddling in the affairs
of another nation around the world. This is what happens
when centralized power hardens a nation into an outright criminal state.
And the United States is responding to a problem, responding
(06:33):
to a problem that is rooted in security, rooted in
our national interests, not just ideology. So while this is
in one sense the leftist ideology operating in Venezuela, it's
(06:56):
not just about an ideological difference. This is about when
that ideological difference leads to a hardened criminal state. So
Venezuela has become a state that has of course become authoritarian.
(07:18):
And as it is always the case, right, what's the
old saying, power corrupts absolute, power corrupts absolutely, and so
the more power an individual is given, the more authoritarian
and candidly mad, not angry mad, just crazy mad that
these folks become over the course of time. They're allowed
(07:42):
to do because they're authoritarians, They're allowed to do whatever
they want. In some extreme cases, they are worshiped. I'm
reminded of Kim Jung un and his father, Kim Jung
ill before him in North Korea. These lunatics actually in
some instances make themselves or try to make themselves a god,
(08:04):
which is patently ridiculous. It really is absurd that this happens,
but it does. It does happen. Almost part of me
thinks they almost want to see what they can get
away with. How much crazy stuff can we do before
these people are going to unite and overthrow our nonsense.
(08:25):
I almost wonder if that's the thinking. Sometimes. Now you've
heard me talk about left versus right and the political continuum.
The framework that I use when I talk about a
leftist I don't view or I don't use the traditional
political science ideological continuum. When I talk about these things,
(08:50):
I don't have at one end. I I reject the
continuum that has on one end communism on the far
left and on the other end fascism on the far right.
I reject that continuum, and the continuum I think that
is correctly, I know is correct. It has it views
(09:11):
politics through left versus right. On the continuum, the left
end of the continuum is authoritarian, the centralization of power,
that sort of thing, government control. On the right end
of the continuum, truly, at the far right end, you
have absolute anarchy where there's no control, there's no law
(09:33):
and order, it's every man, woman, and child for himself
sort of thing. And the place that conservatism falls is
on the right end of that spectrum, but not obviously
to anarchy. So what conservatism says, look, we want the
smallest government we can have that allows us to have
(09:57):
the rule of law and order and safety and structure
for people to be safe and to be able to
operate and to live with some level of a functioning
government without without giving up their liberty. And so power
is centralized on the far left end of that spectrum.
(10:20):
And when power centralizes to centers must be suppressed, they
must be silenced. They're often abused, they're often oppressed. That
is what happens. The resources must be controlled, because here's
what happens in these heavily authoritarian regimes where they have control,
(10:40):
they want to control everything. What happens is what happens
is you have a controlled economy, which a controlled economy
is bad for prosperity, it's bad for liberty, it's bad
for having enough. It always leads, it always leads to
their being not enough resources. The resources are controlled and managed,
(11:04):
and they're viewed as something that must be kind of
divvied up by the state. Each person gets this much
of this, that we're going to control that instead of
instead of allowing simply allowing the free markets to go
out and find ways to provide more resources so that
it's not a fixed, controllable, kind of metaphorical pie here
(11:30):
that we're talking about. And so that's what happens. The
first when you go to the left on the political continuum,
as Venezuela has, and at some point the opposition on
that continuum, if you're well, if you're far left on
the continuum, if there's someone in the opposition party, it
(11:52):
becomes a criminal activity. And this is what happened effectively
in Venezuela. So who is Nicholas Maduro. Maduro is, of
course the leader of Venezuela. He was until the United
States raided and captured him here a couple of days ago.
(12:15):
But he's the ruler, the leader of Venezuela. But the
United States does not treat him obviously, based upon what
happened here as a normal head of state. The allegations
are that he is a well, either the leader or
(12:35):
at least a protector of a state enabled criminal enterprise.
So it's not just that Venezuela is a bad government
that's being run by leftists who in many cases are
starving their people terrible things like that, things that are internal.
Now it's becoming it has become something that is affecting
(13:00):
law and order outside of its borders. Now suddenly that
becomes a problem for the rest of the world, and
particularly in the United States, because we have this is
in our hemisphere. There's a lot that stems from this. Right,
You've got, of course, drugs and violence, and you've got,
(13:23):
of course you've heard Trump talk about when he's talked
about illegal immigration, the number of people that are here
in this country illegally who are from criminal gangs in
Venezuela or they are from Gi Whiz. Sometimes Maduro released prisoners,
violent prisoners that were allowed then to come into this country.
(13:47):
It's gone from just a mismanaged state with a bad
ideology to what is referred to as a narco state
narcotics drugs criminal enterprise. So what does it mean to
be an international narco trafficker, Because that's the allegation here
(14:08):
narco state narco trafficker for Maduro. That's not just a slogan,
that is actually a classification in the world of legalities.
That means someone someone who, in the case of Maduro,
either knowingly enables or protects drug trafficking. They use state power,
(14:34):
government power that can involve the military, the police, the courts, whatever,
to help in enabling and protecting these drug traffickers. They
facilitate cross border narcotics movement. That is of course a factor.
You will remember some of these boats that the United
(14:54):
States has struck coming from these waters in Venezzuela, and
this of course all impacts United States security. This becomes
at some point it's not just it's not just that
you're mismanaging your own country. You're now actually impacting the
(15:17):
sovereignty the security of other states in your region. Now,
this doesn't necessarily mean that Maduro was personally trafficking the drugs.
What it means is that he was using his power
to make it easier for drugs to be trafficked by
(15:37):
some really bad people. Now, there were indictments from the
United States Department of Justice. The date back to twenty twenty,
back to the end of Trump's first term in Washington,
d C. In the White House, there have been Treasury
(15:58):
sanctions described being state linked trafficking networks. There have been
guilty pleas by Senior Maduro. Well, folks on Maduro's side,
they have pled guilty to crimes in this of this
(16:19):
type that these types of crimes, so they're developed a
type of evidence here, evidence that suggests that there were airstrips.
There are airstrips in Venezuela that have been protected by
the military that are being used to traffic drugs, that
there are corridors that are controlled and protected by the
(16:41):
Venezuelan military in order to get drugs trafficked outside of
their nation, and of course fast tracking here to the
United States, there were orders, allegedly, according to evidence, that
the Maduro regime had told other senior officials not to
(17:01):
interfere with these activities. So that being said, there's not
a single piece of evidence or a document that exists
that's a smoking gun here. There's a heavy reliance on
witnesses who are cooperating with our government. There are intelligence
(17:24):
assessments you've heard reference to the CIA. Of course, we've
got military operations now, and there's a corroborated that they
have corroborated the way that this network has been operating
in Venezuela in South America, and I say South America
because it actually it actually expands extends beyond just Venezuela.
(17:50):
In fact, if you look at the documents, you'll see
a reference to an organization called FARK. Now, I'm not
going to read that's an acronym for a Spanish named
organization that is a Marxist guerrilla organization that was founded
(18:10):
in Colombia. This organization funded revolution, funded the revolution through
the sale and distribution and trafficking of cocaine. They have
been designated a terrorist excuse me, organization and they are
(18:30):
now involved in well they have been involved for some
time organized crime. Now there was a I guess what
do you want to call it, a negotiated agreement within
Colombia in twenty sixteen that officially demobilized the criminal supposedly
(18:51):
the criminal element of FARC. In fact, FARC became a
political party within Colombia. I don't know what it's name
there is, but basically the way that it was operating
in Colombia to fund revolution there has been stopped from
the official organization, but there were people in the organization
(19:15):
who didn't want to stop. Just like anything else, right,
you have the group that they they come to a
negotiated settlement, you know, end of their official existence as
a internal terrorist organization, this guerrilla organization in Colombia that's
pushing Marxism. They say, fine, we'll get into politics, we'll
(19:36):
stop that operation. But there were dissidents, there were people
within that group when they disbanded that said, listen, we
still believe in this revolution. We still believe we're highly
committed to the cause of Marxism. And so there's these
these factions, these people that still exist, they formed criminal
(19:59):
enterprises groups, they're same people exist looking to have these
same routes, drug routes protected and so forth, and they
have the same drug economy, and so the drugs are
actually I've done a lot of research here. From what
I can understand, the drugs are actually being grown and produced.
(20:20):
I guess in Colombia. Where Venezuela comes into this is
that Venezuela the government protects basically the passage of these
drugs from Colombia out to ultimately here in other places
I guess in Central America and so forth, the distribution
the trafficking of these drugs outside of South America. And
(20:44):
if you look on a map, you'll see an extreme
northern South America. You'll see the nation of Colombia the
nation of Venezuela. They share a pretty large border and
so it's it's jungle terrain. But they've been working these
farc revolutionaries, these Marxists that are still kind of operating
(21:05):
that way. They're working with the Venezuelan government because I
initially thought, wow, is Colombia are going to be someone
who's next. Well, Colombia is a little bit different. Colombia's
relationship with the United States is one of cooperation and
they are fighting. They are trying to identify and stop FARK,
whereas Venezuela has been enabling them to traffic and move
(21:29):
the drugs through the networks that are allegedly protected by
the Venezuela military. So a lot to unpack there. That
kind of gives you a little bit of a framework
for where we got to on whatever that was the
morning of January second, I guess, or third, second or
(21:49):
third anyway, So I got to stop there because I'm
up against the clock, my friends, before i take that
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(22:56):
my friends, time out for me back here in just
a minute. Welcome back, my friends, to the Full Sweet
Wealth Studios. It's again my pleasure to be back at
it today. We've had two short weeks, you know, really
quickly before we get back into this. We've had two
(23:17):
short weeks. Of course, Christmas Week we were here Monday,
Tuesday Wednesday. New Year's Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday, we took
off Thursday Friday, both of those weeks, and so we
are back at it here, my friends. It reminds me
as I think about the holidays. I didn't talk about this.
This is a little bit off topic, so hang in
there with me. I'll just talk about this for a moment.
(23:39):
But for those of you who have listened to this
program for some time, you may have pieced together if
you've listened to me talk about some of the teams
I like, you may have noticed or may have figured
out that I had a crisis on my hands on
New Year's Day because I'm a fan of the Alabama
(24:02):
Crimson Tide and I am I grew up a fan
of the Indiana Hoosiers as well. I'm not far from Bloomington.
I'm gonna say thirty five minutes. I guess I'm something
like that from campus, and you know we've been to
football basketball games there. IU is not has not been
(24:23):
a football school until some guy strolls in that he says,
Google me, I just win and name is Kurt Signetti.
Fantastic football coach turned a program around in ways I
did not think possible. IU football is one of the
worst programs. And I'm not saying this to be mean,
just as a matter of fact, based upon the data,
(24:45):
IU football is one of the most uh it was.
It was at one point it had the most losses
in Division one football history. I think because of their success,
someone has passed them, so there may be second most
loss all time or something like that. So I was
in a bit of a crisis. Now I'll be kenned
(25:06):
and I was always more of an IU basketball fan
growing up. Bobby Knight being the coach, Steve Alford, Calbert Cheney,
all those folks back in the back in the day,
Keith Smart hitting the jump shot to beat Syracuse in
the nineteen eighty seven National Championship Game. I mean, take
your lots of Alan Henderson, lots of who's your greats
(25:29):
Isaiah Thomas in the early eighties. But anyway, it was
tough for I didn't know. I truly didn't care who
won the game. I you thumped him, I you looked
I didn't. I've watched Alabama football pretty consistently for twenty
some years, and I have never I don't. I am
not aware of a single game that looked like that. Now,
(25:51):
there's other problems at Alabama, but that program. It was
interesting to watch what has historically been the worst college
football program Indiana University, literally take out the most dominant
college football program for the past roughly twenty years in
the Alabama Crimson Tide. Of course, Nick Saban's gone. We
(26:12):
were in the era of nil and all that stuff.
But the bottom line is it was a remarkable game,
and I was pleased to see the Hoosiers. I'm pulling
for the Hoosiers. I told folks, whoever won that game
between my Crimson Tide and my Hoosiers, that's who I
was going to root for. So it's a remarkable thing
here to witness, and I enjoyed it. But they thumped
(26:33):
the Crimson Tide over the weekend, and I was really neutral.
I really was. I think maybe slightly wanted to see
it for IU Alabama's been there, but you know, I'm
a guy who's I've loved Alabama football my grandpa. It
was a team that he had, you know, interest in,
(26:53):
and so I just kind of picked it up that way.
But regardless, I just wanted to mention that go Hoosiers
go in this national championship here. That would be a
phenomenal story, absolutely phenomenal story. But let's get back to
it here. Let's get back to this discussion about what's
happening Venezuela and why Trump sent in well the military
(27:16):
to capture and bring Maduro and his wife to the
United States. So I mentioned before the break the cocaine
production is primarily coming from Colombia. Colombia is the world's
largest cocaine producer. I mentioned to you, Fark and the
people who are still down for the cause, who are
(27:39):
still exporting the drugs and they partner with Venezuela. Venezuela
is not the factory producing the drugs. Venezuela is the
I guess you could say, the hallway through which the
drugs travel to get from the metaphorical kitchen out the
front door of the house and then of course delivered
(28:03):
or trafficked wherever else those drugs are headed. So Venezuela. Again,
just to kind of quickly go through this, the cocas
grown in Colombia. There's armed groups like FARC or the
dissidents that remained as part of that Marxist revolutionary group
(28:25):
in Colombia that are still working to traffic these drugs,
this cocaine. It's it's you know, very expensive. They're trying
to protect their products, so they're looking for safe routes
to export the stuff and they move the drugs east
from Colombia into Venezuela. That's where Maduro's regime kicks in. Allegedly,
(28:49):
they protect the airspace, they protect the ports, they give
them blind spots on radar. They tell basically the government
not to or fear from there, and then from that
point the drugs can move north into the Caribbean, to
Central America, Mexico, and of course here in the United States.
(29:10):
And now that becomes becomes our problem, right, or at
least you can see the argument. Now, it's Venezuela. I
hit on this initially, but just let me make this
point clear. It's Venezuela, not Colombia that's the target. Colombia,
as I said, actually tries to fight the traffickers. They
cooperate with the United States, they extradite criminals. Venezuela doesn't
(29:34):
do any of that. They shield traffickers allegedly, they don't cooperate,
and they align with our adversaries. Now that's where this
gets even this gets even deeper because when you look
at the power struggle and the problems in Venezuela, you'll
(29:57):
also see some American adversaries being introduced into the story.
So China, China gets involved with Venezuela. China's of course
a geopolitical foe here, or at least a threat to
US geopolitically. They provide loans to the Venezuelan government, who
(30:20):
is of course absolutely mismanaged. It's a disaster because of
the Marxists socialist policies they've enacted there. They give them
loans that Venezuela then basically gives us collateral oil. The
loan is backed by oil, and so this gives China
(30:44):
long term leverage and it gives them control over oil
experts from Venezuela, who, according to reports, has the most
known oil reserves in the world. So this key Venezuela
dependent upon the Chinese. When you're dependent upon the Chinese,
(31:05):
they can begin to exert influence and control and that's
not good, especially in this hemisphere. For the United States,
You've got Russia involved. Russia has some sort of military
alliance or partnership with Venezuela. And then of course when
(31:25):
you have that sort of thing, this, you know, you
go back to the Cold War era where remember the
USSR the Cuban missile crisis. Now that was closer to
the United States back door. Cuba is ninety miles from
Key West. Venezuela's further south. But Venezuela, heaven forbid, if
(31:45):
the Russians, if this got really dicey here and you know,
there's a conflict, we could face a missile strike from
Venezuela much more quickly than we could face a strike
coming from from Russia. So there's that again, not that
that's anywhere near happening. It's just these are the threats,
(32:10):
and the people protecting this country take those things very seriously.
But not only is there a Russian and a Chinese
influence in Venezuela, there's also an Iranian influence in Venezuela.
The Iranians have helped teach the Venezuelans how to avoid, well,
(32:32):
how to do things on the down low, I guess,
how to evade sanctions. They've provided them with some additional
logistical support, They've given them some insight into how to
manage sanctions and so forth, and how to do some
(32:53):
of these things behind the scenes. And of course we've
got Cuba as well, who has a partnership or relationship
with Venezuela. They have basically shown the Venezuelan government how
to do communism correctly, I guess in the sense, excuse me,
in the sense of controlling what happens in when it
(33:17):
comes to your people in opposition and so forth. So
got to take a time out. My friends running along
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back here in just a minute. Welcome back, my friends.
(34:07):
Time flies when you're having fun, doing our best to
set the stage for what's happening in Venezuela. Why the
United States decided to go in and capture Maduro. Of course,
there's all sorts of problems, and of course there's this fury,
this I guess, emotional outburst about Trump's comments saying that
(34:28):
the United States is going to effectively run Venezuela for
a period of time, which again, if you take its leader,
I mean, you're gonna have to figure something out here.
There's gonna have to be some sort of a transition.
This is just not something that is no big deal.
So obviously that doesn't come as a surprise to me
(34:50):
at all. I was surprised to see that we did this,
and I'm still not entirely sure all the things I
think about this, but I'm trying to paint the picture
so that we understand what's going on here. And friends,
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so you hear a lot of people say this is
(35:58):
about oil, and this can be so deceiving or misleading.
Let me tell you what that doesn't mean. This isn't
about United States stealing oil. This isn't about us, the
US going down there with the intentions of simply taking
over the oil and profited profiting from it. This is
(36:19):
about again I painted the picture as to what the
legal justification is here, So we're not We don't just
have a government that is mismanaged. We have a government
that is acting like a criminal rogue state that is
putting other nations at risk because it refuses to act
(36:42):
in a way that protects protects the people of other countries.
These are real problems. People die from this. This creates
all sorts of crime and problems in these other nations.
And Venezuela has simply allowed it to happen because it's
(37:03):
it's a financial benefit to them. So this the degree
that this is about oil, is that the strategic leverage
that this could have. And again we mentioned China, China
and their partnership with Venezuela and the way that this
(37:24):
whole entire scenario has kind of gotten to this climax
that's not good having Chinese influence over over the oil. Now,
these are other factors that had to be discussed and considered,
and candidly, there's probably others that we don't know about.
Oz mentioned to me. Election interference that could certainly be
(37:44):
a factor here. There could be other there could be
other things happening that we don't know that may have
moved this to the top of the list to be
addressed immediately. But who controls the production and the exports
the exporting of oil is a big factor. And where
that money goes and what it's being used for. Certainly
(38:08):
if it's used for things that are directly opposed to
us interests, can be something that our government can and
should have a concern about. This is it's a good
thing if we stop oil from funding authoritarian government survival.
(38:30):
There's a lot of problems that stem from authoritarian governments,
not just within their borders, but you think about things
like illegal just migration in general, people trying to flee
from that, human rights, all those sorts of things. So
why is this a direct risk to the United States?
(38:51):
Number One, you can't have a state enabled situation circumstance
where drug flows are protected by a nation, by the
government that gives them stable routes that allows them to
send more higher volume, and it's harder to stop that.
(39:13):
Number One, you need cooperation from other governments, not the
provision or the allowance of these things to happen. A
criminal state aligned with hostile powers. When those converge, that
creates a problem for the United States. Organized crime, combined
with geopolitical factors can be a big, big deal and
(39:40):
creates an environment that creates real threat to the United
States of America and her citizens. Now, when you have
a safe haven, you have all sorts of things that
are allowed to happen, like protection of these groups, these
drug runners, intelligence and cover. There can be the creation
(40:02):
of false documents, money laundering, I mean, the list goes
on and on there. It destabilizes the region we talked
about in migration, people wanting away from this stuff. Corruption
within the nation, It begins to corrupt the area. The cartel,
which is a big, big threat, begins to spread. You
(40:23):
normalize criminal sovereignty. If states can do things like run drugs,
should they still be treated as legitimate states or as
something else? And at some point international order begins to collapse.
So that's all the time. I had some other things
that I want to get to. I just am out
(40:44):
of time, my friends. I hope this helps frame the
issue what's going on there, But I got to run.
Thanks for listening, SDG
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