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I thought i'd provide a quick addendum, if you will, to my first episode of twenty twenty six, the Chuck podcast came out.

I had Jonathan Martin and we actually talked about what could come next and sort of anticipated that something was going to happen sooner rather than later in Venezuela.

Well, little did we know when we were taping on Friday, January tewod that the sooner was even sooner than we thought.

So look, I just wanted to get a few thoughts.

These are the thoughts I would have shared had we take the episode sooner.

If you must know, I am traveling a bit this week.

When you have kids in college, you have a little extra time for vacation and time spent with the family, and it's as an empty nester, it's kind of nice to have my kids are out for an extra a week or two than we used to have back in the grade school in high school days.

But enough about my family, and let's stick to what we just saw.

Look, I think this is a I think the way to view this is is a few ways.

One is this is Donald Trump, with who's always been an ends justifies the maids kind of guy.

He's never been one that thinks that the rules apply to him, whether that's in business, whether that's in American culture, or whether that's in the American presidency.

He doesn't want to care about constitutional norms, separation of powers, advising, you know, getting the advice and consent of Congress.

He has always viewed that as as almost in his way and in some ways just getting Maduro, you know, in his there's no doubt in his mind he views it just go figure out a way to get Maduro and we'll come up with a legal justification after the fact.

And in some ways that's what this feels like, right you saw a Secretary State market Rubio out there saying, well, no, no, no, this is not a military operation.

This was a law enforcement operation, and the military was only being used in that.

So it's that the parallel that Marco Rubio kind of wants to draw here is more in line with what is how the US military was used to get Manuel Noriega back in nineteen eighty nine, and Panama was essentially extracted from Panama, brought to the United States to be brought to justice, rather than as a rock.

But of course I think the American political mind immediately a recency bias goes more to a rock than it goes to Panama.

And especially when the president over the weekend said we're going to run Venezuela for the time being, and the fact that there didn't seem to be a plan in place to either recognize the rightful winner of the last presidential election, which wasn't Maduro, but the fact that that is not the immediate decision that the United States made sort of raises some questions, what is our plan here?

Are we going to have is Marco Rubio the new Viceroy of Venezuela, Will it be somebody else?

Is They're going to be essentially a the way we ran a rock between the fall of Saddam and the holding of the first elections before there was a transition there.

These are questions that haven't really been answered yet and how they're answered.

I think it's going to have a lot of domestic political ramifications here, so and I think that's what you have to take this story in a couple of in a couple of ways.

First of all, you know, Trump arranged in syndrome is a real thing, and it is a virus that actually doesn't just infect the left, it infects the right.

Right.

Essentially, you have people that believe anything Trump does must be illegal and must be opposed on the left, and you have some on the right that anything Trump does, if Trump does it, it must be legal and it must be supported.

Act of the matter is, as we all know, the hell of a lot of nuance in between those two situations.

Madurero's a bad guy.

Maduro is somebody that the Biden administration wanted to figure out if they could get him arrested in some other way, and they It does sound as if we'll probably find out that there were at least some plans during the Biden era, at least on the table.

Maybe Biden decided not to say yes to them that looked a lot like this, this military extraction that took place, which was, by the way, tactically highly effective and pretty impressive when you look at it, because of how few casualties there were, how few blood was spilled.

I mean, that's not an insignificant outcome, and I think the Delta Force ought to be praised for its ability to do its job.

The question is whether this was done within the legalities of our constitution and whether, forget that, whether this is going to enhance America as leader of the free world or hurt the ability of America to advocate and spread freedom and democracy.

I think it's fascinating to see some of the Trump administration try to make an America first argument, essentially for Western Hemisphere imperialism, that, hey, the Western hemisphere.

You heard Marko Rubia say it, the Western Hemisphere is not the Middle East, and he all but seemed to say, if you know, we should be he seemed to advocate that America should be more involved in the in the politics of different countries in the Western hemisphere.

And perhaps he's right.

Look, as somebody grew up in Miami, this is this is a front and center topic of conversation.

This is a front and center issue, which, by the way, I think is why perhaps Donald Trump got so sucked into the right.

Look, you can't ignore the oil part, right, if Haiti had oil deposits, would we be more involved with trying to find stability in Haiti?

I think we know the answer to that.

If there you know, if if there was oil off the coast of Cuba that was worth trying to drill for, would we have been more aggressive with Cuba years ago, decades ago?

I think that's also possible.

So it I don't think that can be lost on any of this debate.

But it certainly seems as if Marco Rubio sees this as as the beginning of something, not a one off decision.

And once you get Maduro, he seemed to all but threaten the leadership of Cuba, saying, you guys are next, even to a lesser extent you had you've had President Trump indicate that the president of Columbia ought to be careful there.

Now it is worth noting Colombia is actually going to be holding its own new presidential election.

I'll be electing a new president in June of this year, well June if there's a runoff, May if there's not, and it's probably going to be a close election.

I think what's going to be interesting is Columbia is going to be a fascinating bell Weather.

I think about American interventionism.

Before this, I think there was a lot of experts on Columbia's politics seem to indicate that the more pro Western, pro American side had the upper hand this time at the leftists led by the current president.

You know, the economy is not so great.

People don't feel a little bit less secure that they were waning.

Now, is there going to be a Trump boomerang effect?

You know, look at what happened in Brazil.

You know that the current president la its popularity was waning.

Then Trump went after Brazil over Bolsonaro and their banning of Bolsonaro ever from running in the next presidential election, which means Bolsonaro's son will be running against Lula in the next presidential election, which also, by the way, happens to take a plays in twenty twenty six, but Lula's popularity surged when Trump essentially put these huge tariffs on Brazil in response to the punishment of former President Bolsonaro.

Do you see a similar effect in Colombia or does the strengthened American presence in Venezuela strengthen the more pro American side in Colombia.

The point is is that I think if you're looking for a small b democratic bell weather on how American a more robust American presence in Latin America plays, the Columbia presidential election might be a pretty good bell weather to follow for what it's worth.

In the region, Actually quite a few interesting elections in twenty twenty six in Latin America.

You got Costa Rica in February, and if there's a runof it would be in April.

You have Peru holds its election in April and there needs to be a run off at June.

By the way, Peru, and you want to talk about Messi politics, they're going to be potentially electing their ninth president in ten years.

They've had an impeachment and now stay all sorts of mess.

Polarization isn't just an American product, either we've exported around the world or globalization has essentially helped fuel polarization around the world with a little bit of social media involved.

And then you have hate is going to potentially try to hold presidential elections in August, but it's unclear whether there's if it's even safe enough to do that, if there's enough stability, and if any election will even be accepted by the gangs, if you will.

That run quort of prints these days.

But I single out Haiti there for a second, because it's interesting to see America's interests in Venezuela and Cuba, but essentially America wanting to let every other country worry about Haiti.

Right, We've been trying to bring the Kenyans in to manage Haiti.

We kind of want to wash our hands of it.

And again, to be a bit starky if they were if there was a major oil deposit off the coast of Haiti, would we have a different wou the Trump administration have a different posture when it comes to Haiti's politics.

So look, I do think that the real political fallout from this, this is the twenty twenty six mid terms for Trump, right, it's a pretty simple campaign that Democrats can now run, which is he's off on these adventures overseas imperialism in Latin America, worried more about oil companies in Venezuela than fighting then fighting for lower electric bills here in the United States.

He's more worried about renaming the Kennedy Center after himself rather than in lowering the cost of living.

He's more worried about enriching his family businesses rather than helping your helping you find cheaper healthcare.

So in that sense, there's nothing about this that's going to be good politics for Donald Trump domestically outside of South Florida.

And in fact, there's a part of me that thinks that that Trump has become, you know, because he spends so much time at Marta Lago, because Marco Rubio is such an important foreign policy advisor to him Secretary of State, national security advisor, but really did become his sort of unofficial Latin American advisor during the first term.

Your roub, you know, and if you have an agenda to try to overthrow Ma Duro, to try to overthrow the regiment in Cuba, getting to Trump at mar A Lago or getting too Trump at his golf club in Doral, which is essentially dereal Aezuela.

Doral is a community is within Miami Dade County, very close to the Miami International Airport, and this decision is being met with cheers.

People are ecstatic.

I mean, you see the South Florida Democratic politicians are trying very are not to be critical other than hey, it would have been nice if we're informed, and can you keep us more informed?

And what's the plan going forward?

One thing that many a great power in history has learned is it's easy to topple an adversary.

It is harder to replace one.

It is harder to replace a dictator with a democratic elected leader that takes I mean, look at Iraq today.

It is still not a very stable democracy.

It hasn't fallen yet.

Maybe it won't fall Maybe it'll get strengthened because Iran falls and the spring will and then we have actual democracy that percolates in Iran, and who knows what that has an impact in Iraq.

But the fact is Iraq has been a fledgling democracy now for some twenty years.

Will it be that long or more with Venezuela.

And if democracy doesn't take right away in Venezuela, how long are we going to oversee it?

I can tell you this, there will not be patients in Americans for this.

There never is.

And so ultimately, I think this is a case of we've got short termism versus long termism, and it's been the case of Latin America forever, which is what feels good in the short term usually costs us in the long term.

I could argue that we have had that we are still paying a price for bad interventions in Latin America that go back to the nineteen tens twenties, goes back to the Spanish American War the nineteen fifties.

And while perhaps our policy towards Latin America may change every four eight years, the resentments towards American either neglect or imperialism.

It's always been like one extreme or the other when it comes to the United States, those don't go away even when we have a new direction or a new president.

I hope this leads to a better debate about what our role should be leading though Western Hemisphere.

And I'm not sure we can count on a social media algorithm driven debate to create the space for that.

But we need to have this debate, and we need to be better leaders and better stewards of the Western Hemisphere.

A few other things to think about when it comes to this intervention.

If we believe the Western hemisphere is our sphere of influence, does this mean that Trump is tacitly sort of washing his hands of Russia's of Ukraine with Russia?

Does it mean we are not going to have the backs of Taiwan if China decides, hey, it's in our sphere of influence, leave us alone.

I think those are fair questions to ask.

It doesn't help our reputation around the world, doesn't help with our reputation with our supposed allies, that we aren't practicing what we're preaching when it comes to the Russians and the Chinese.

And I think that's that is something that again a short term victory could end up creating a long term problem.

But one thing is certain, this is going to be continue to be a very aggressive Trump presidency.

He is somebody that prefers to act, prefers to duo.

You know, he never seems to ask why, he seems to ask why not?

And I'll end with this thought.

The fact that this went so well tactically.

There are quite a few entities within the national security community that believe they can take out a leader, that believe they have a plan that could sort of maybe take out the supreme leader of a Rah or take out the leadership of Cuba, and they have a military plan to do it.

The fact that this went well, the fact that Solamani, the assassination a Haim did not lead to something that many people had feared.

The fact that American intervention in Iran this year didn't lead two bigger problems, is likely to embolden Donald Trump to take more risks.

And that's something it's you know, it's hard to price in at the moment.

But if he thinks this is easy and in his mind, dealing with Irana Maduro has so far, in his mind, been easier than all the armchair generals had said to him, then don't be surprised if we try something even more adventurous.

He gets tod talked into some things that are even more risky for the United States in the long term.

All right, So with that, I will have a full schedule of Chuck Podcast coming in the next few days, but I thought I would offer up this quick addendum since I happened to miss the taping window when this broke out.

Thanks for listening, and until I upload again.