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2026 has started off with strikes on Venezuela, the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, and a brazen slew of threats from President Trump against Greenland, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Iran. This week, Alex speaks to Venezuelans about what their hopes and fears are for the future of their country. Then she’s joined by Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau and Pod Save the World’s Ben Rhodes to break down the absolute insanity of Trump’s imperial ambitions.

TRANSCRIPT

 [AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Happy 2026, everyone! This year, the first week of January has been 153 days long, which is really weird. But for those of you whose resolutions include nation-building and American imperialism, congratulations. You are really kicking this one off right.

[clip of Donald Trump]: Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer and it’ll be very controversial. What does that mean? We’re in charge. We’re gonna run everything. We’re going to run it.

Alex Wagner: That was President Trump on Air Force One this week, delivering an update on his version of ill-conceived Republican regime change when Trump ordered the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an operation that involved 150 military aircraft and left over 80 people dead. Maduro and his wife are now being held in detention in New York City, where he faces four U.S. Federal criminal counts, including narco-terrorism. But just a little refresher here. There was no imminent threat posed to America. There was not congressional authorization for any of this. There was real legal argument underpinning it, except for the very flimsy excuse that this was a law enforcement operation and not a regime change. Just to be clear, Maduro is a dictator and he is a criminal. Under his command, Venezuela has jailed thousands of political dissidents. Hundreds of people have been killed at peaceful protests, including children. 8 million Venezuelans have fled their country, fearing for their safety. [people chanting] And so much of the Venezuelan diaspora is celebrating Maduro’s seizure. But Trump is not even pretending that this is about democracy.

[clip of Donald Trump]: We’re going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil because we have to have we’re sending our expertise.

Alex Wagner: Trump isn’t waging a humanitarian mission. And he’s not stopping with Venezuela. [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, we are talking about whether anyone should be optimistic about the situation in Venezuela, what Trump’s real motivations are, which country is next on his list, and whether we might be seeing the beginning of a radical reorganization of global power. We’re talking to Jon Favreau from Pod Save America and Ben Rhodes from Pod Save The World about whether imperialism is back and what the hell the Donroe Doctrine is. But as we do on the show, first we are starting with the personal. We are talking to two women from Venezuela about what is happening in their homeland, whether there’s any cause for hope, and if they see similarities between the authoritarian regime they fled and the one they live under today.

Adelys Ferro: We have been waiting for Maduro to be held accountable for more than a decade, and we have been living with Chavismo for 27 years.

Alex Wagner: Adelys Ferro is the co-founder and executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, a grassroots organization supporting Venezuelans’ participation and engagement in U.S. Politics. Adelise is relieved that Maduro is being brought to justice, but she believes her homeland is a long way from being freed.

Adelys Ferro: Whenever we heard the news, obviously there was a sense of joy, of relief, of justice finally being served. And then after the press conference that President Trump gave the next morning, every emotion got mixed with despair because he announced point blank that they were already negotiating with Delcy Rodríguez because Delcy Rodríguez is just another head of this monster of several heads of which Maduro was probably the main one or the biggest one. But there are many other heads that now are in power and Delcy Rodríguez is not much better than Maduro. Actually, it could be at certain levels worse than Maduro. Regarding repression, regarding persecution, regarding torture, regarding political prisoners.

Alex Wagner: Niurka Melendez an activist and founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid in New York City, says that people in Venezuela are so desperate for change that they will abide the American imperialism as long as something changes.

Niurka Melendez: After the Saturday morning, the reactions were, we became, my husband and I, we became their eyes and their voice because they didn’t know what was happening. They hear, they knew it was something here, something there, people speculating, you can tell. So they start to ask in our WhatsApp groups and we were just checking and informing them about what was happened and then. Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, they start to delete, as usual, to delete all the message because it was done through the WhatsApp group with my family. Some of my family, my relatives back in Venezuela, one of the members of that group said a statement about the oil and the U.S. you know, here and there. And the feedback, because it’s an open group, you can tell the amount of message where like I don’t care. The desperation, tell me, help me be out of this. I can feel the anti-US imperialism from here and there. Sentiment is true, that is true. But it’s trying to be connected about what is happening in Venezuela. It’s like, okay, if you are ready to take a broken everything, I mean, we need help.

Alex Wagner: I asked Adelys, who lives in Florida, whether she feels safe speaking out about what’s going on in Venezuela given the Trump administration’s attitude towards immigrants, including people like her who are here legally. This is what she said.

Adelys Ferro: I don’t feel 100% safe. Sometimes I am afraid of something that can happen to me, but you know what? I have been an American citizen for many years now, and I know the constitution. I know my rights. I am so proud to be an American and for this country to have opened its arms to me and my son. In so many ways gave us an opportunity to flourish and to thrive in here. And because of that reason is why I am speaking out and I am not going to be quiet while I see what is happening in this great country that is mine too. So. Yes. Fear, of course. I never felt it before, I have to tell you. Never before, not even on his first presidency. But this time, yes, sometimes I said, wow, God protect me, please. But we cannot go back. What is on the line is our freedom, our democracy, the opportunity of every single one of us for all of those reasons. We have to keep going even. If we feel fear.

Alex Wagner: When we come back, we are gonna put all of this into context with the great Ben Rhodes and Jon Favreau.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Okay, I’m doing something we’ve never done on this show, and I think hasn’t been done in America yet. I mean, that’s not true. But we have, for the first time on Runaway Country, Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes on this program. Thank you for joining me, guys.

Jon Favreau: Thanks for having us.

Jon Favreau: It’s very exciting. Very exciting.

Alex Wagner: You may wonder, can we talk about this then? The fact that you’re not with us because you’re on a silent retreat, know that you were recovering from the flu, is that okay?

Jon Favreau: I am. I am, I am. I am recovered, I feel like, but I don’t want to bring my contagion into the headquarters of crooked media and disable progressive media for the battles—

Alex Wagner: Someone who still believes in viral transfer.

Jon Favreau: What a guy, what a guy. We appreciate you.

Alex Wagner: Okay you guys, let’s just get right to the meat of, can you believe it’s only January 7th? I can’t. It really has been—

Jon Favreau: And it’s still 2026?

Alex Wagner: It’s still 2026. This year has been 2000—

Ben Rhodes: And Trump still has not been president for one year.

Alex Wagner: Oh my god. Okay, anyway, just set that on the table and just say, we’ll look at that, we’ll polish that stone as we go on. So this morning, White House officials trotted up to Capitol Hill to pretend that they have a plan for what happens in Venezuela. And I wanna play you the comments made by Viceroy of Venezuela, AKA Secretary of State Marco Rubio, explaining what’s going to happen now that our law enforcement procedure is complete. Let’s take a listen to what he said.

[clip of Marco Rubio]: Well, there’s a lot of operational details that can’t be discussed publicly, obviously, for obvious reasons. So as we move forward, we’ll describe our process, which is a threefold process in Venezuela. I’ve described it to them now. Step one is the stabilization of the country. We don’t want it descending into chaos. Part of that stabilization, and the reason why we understand and believe that we have the strongest leverage possible, is our quarantine. As you’ve seen today, two more ships were seized. We are in the midst right now and, in fact, about to execute on a deal to take all the oil. They have oil that is stuck in Venezuela. They can’t move it because of our quarantine and because it’s sanctioned. We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. We’re going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is dispersed in a way the benefits to Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime. So we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front. The second phase will be a phase that we call recovery and that is ensuring that American, Western and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market a way that’s fair also at the same time begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released and from prisons are brought back to the country and begin to rebuild civil society and then the third phase of course will be one of transition. Some of this will overlap I’ve described this to them in great detail we’ll have more detail in the days to follow but we feel like we’re moving forward here in a very positive way.

Alex Wagner: Okay, that is a really extra long law enforcement operation if it sounds like to me. I want to quickly just play comments from Senator Chris Murphy who speaks for all of us I think in his just like, I don’t know, incredulity. This is what he had to say shortly thereafter.

[clip of Chris Murphy]: I mean, this is an insane plan. They are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gun points for a period of time undefined as leverage to micromanage the country. I mean the scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning. So we learned a lot. I’m glad we had the briefing, but. This is going to be a very, very rough ride for the United States.

Ben Rhodes: I feel better already.

Jon Favreau: Yeah.

Alex Wagner: Totally, right? Insane. He didn’t use the word bonkers, that’s where I would have, that would have been my chosen word. But Jon, how are you feeling this morning as we get the full explanation from the Trump White House?

Jon Favreau: I feel like it’s completely insane. I’ve been saying it’s insane for the last couple of days. And I’m just like, I don’t, I realize that, um, narrowly, if you ask people like, okay, Maduro is a bad guy. We got Maduro, you know, he’s going to be on trial. Yeah, fine. Either people don’t care. Like, yeah, that’s good. Good, good for us. I guess everything else about this, everything else we’ve learned has only reinforced Senator Murphy’s, uh, belief that this whole thing is insane the more we learn. Also, Marco Rubio is out there continually trying to put lipstick on this pig that then Donald Trump quickly wipes off immediately when he says, no, no we’re taking the oil. We’re taking oil and we’re doing it because, you know, we run the Western Hemisphere.

Alex Wagner: We’re in charge.

Jon Favreau: And that’s it. And so like, there’s so many things that, I mean, you know, I’m sure Ben, you’ll get into it, but like, there’s still many things that seem just at first reaction could go completely wrong with that plan. Like. We’re going to micromanage the country and otherwise we’re going to threaten them with the oil. So what if they say, no, we’re gonna do what we want and then they just don’t get their oil and how are they getting, how are they distributing the oil funds to the Venezuelan people around the corrupt government? How has that working? What are they doing about all of the other forces in the country that remain loyal to Maduro? And so it’s either like boots on the ground in there. And if we don’t do boots on ground, then how are we fucking expecting everything to go well? With a country that doesn’t necessarily, you know, have like stable leadership that the whole country is? I don’t understand at all.

Alex Wagner: I mean, this is happening, Ben, so we’re taking 30 to 50 million barrels of oil and we’re selling them at market prices, not those cheap discounts, FYI, right? In case anybody was worried that we’d have sale problems with the 50 million barrels of oils that we were going to seize through what means. This is happening as Ben, the U.S. is installing, if you will, Delcy Rodríguez, who is Maduro’s protege to run the country. And effectively lead the military that remains loyal to Maduro and is literally stopping Venezuelans at checkpoints to make sure they’re not texting or saying anything positive about the United States of America. Like it is an inordinately complicated situation on the ground, and yet Marco Rubio talks about like this, like it’s, okay, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z, rebuild the country, you know, get our oil out and yaddy, you know. Bing, bang, boom, we won.

Ben Rhodes: Yeah, I have some questions, Alex. [laughter]

Alex Wagner: I’m sure.

Ben Rhodes: This is completely fucking insane to just put a finer point on it. I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start with inside of Venezuela, right? There has been no indication from the Venezuelan government, which is still the Maduro regime, it’s just they decapitated the top of that regime, that they’re on board with this plan. And I will remind you, these words like stabilization, you know, reconstruction, transition, these are the buzzwords of like a major regime change war. [overlapping voices] Well, here’s the thing. When we had 150,000 troops inside of Iraq, we couldn’t make that country do everything that we wanted to do with its politics with its oil. So the idea that having these kind of permanent, I guess deployment of US forces in the Caribbean, is going to somehow for years to come compel heavily armed ideological factions in Venezuela to do every single thing that we say is utterly bonkers and flies in the face of any lived experience that the United States has had and any of its other military inventions. That’s one point. The second point is, how exactly is this East India oil company imperialism going to work, right? Like, where are they going to [overlapping voices] we have to extract the oil, you have to refine the oil. You have to put the oil on tankers. Where is it going to be sold from? Where’s the money coming in? They say the oil is going to get to the Venezuelan people. They’re going to disperse it through the Chavista communist government—[laughter] Motorcycle gangs that are currently rounding up any remaining opposition elements are going to distribute the money for the good of the Venezuelan people Like what how is this happening? How are these oil fields gonna be rebuilt? Like are they gonna be US troops to defending Chevron down there like that? That’s question I have how much is this costing now? It’s not like free to have like this armada station permanently in the Caribbean So they keep kind of inventing plans after they take actions and hoping that you know they can stay like a half a step ahead of events but like the reality is uh… What you did the language you get not just a Murphy but from everybody watch has briefings is kinda like even if you know public answer on the talking points look a little like days confused here about what they’re even defending because nobody can explain coherently how this is going to work.

Jon Favreau: Look, look, you libs, here’s the deal. [laughter] Everyone’s been saying, oh, Trump’s gotta focus on affordability. Well, how about this? Because now, if we take enough oil, then maybe years and years from now, gas prices will go down by a couple pennies. And you guys see this quagmire, I see a job opportunity for college graduates. Maybe their jobs being taken by AI, but now they can go to the Southern colonies and pump some oil.

Alex Wagner: Totally.

Jon Favreau: Maybe be part of the infrastructure that hands it out to the Venezuelan people. We got all in, you know, unless you’re working in Greenland, you got you got job opportunities in Venezuela and the Caribbean as well.

Alex Wagner: You’ve got to know how to run a dog sled.

Jon Favreau: I think it’s a jobs program for America.

Alex Wagner: It totally is, under the leadership of Generalissimo Miller. What is stunning to me is this plan is no plan stance that we are getting from the White House this morning comes on the heels of White House officials, including the President and his deputy chief of staff saying, Greenland, Colombia, watch your back because we’re coming for you next. This is Stephen Miller speaking, not ironically, on television earlier this week.

[clip of Stephen Miller]: Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake. The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region. To protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States. And so that’s the conversation that we’re going to have as a country. That’s the process we’re gonna have as… So you… … A community of nations— [reporter asks question] I understand, Jake. I understand you’re trying very hard to, which again, is your job, I respect it, it’s great to get exactly the headline, right, that catchy headline that says, Miller refuses to rule out. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. Nobody’s gonna fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.

Alex Wagner: Oh, boy.

Ben Rhodes: Is that how you guys pronounce United States?

Alex Wagner: When you’re a fascist, the pronunciations are slightly in the accent, too,  the fascist intonation.

Ben Rhodes: The anxious intonation is big for him. It makes up for the poor rhetoric.

Jon Favreau: He sounds like he’s eating the word states. United Shtates?

Alex Wagner: That’s because he’s actually eating metaphorically the United States and all of its democratic principles. Jake Tapper, you smarmy fucking journalist and your headlines, you’re getting—

Ben Rhodes: You want answers to your questions.

Alex Wagner: Oh, you want answers to whether or not we’re gonna try and annex Greenland. Fuck you and cable news while I’m at it. Yeah, the real deal here is that, as I and I have, I mean, we’ve all spent like a lot of time. I think trying to laugh at the notion earlier this year when it wasn’t when the Greenland thing sort of was floated in the national dialogue but this would not really happen, but there is no fucking way to witness the events that we did in the last week and the rhetoric coming out of this White House and not react with quite a bit of alarm about the very real potential prospect that the United States will go after Greenland and it is something European leaders have sort of been reluctant to address And then we can talk about why for a while. But we’re now at the stage where it’s like, oh shit, is this happening? Like, do we all need to learn how to ride dog sleds so that we can repopulate an Arctic mass a couple of miles to the north, Jon?

Jon Favreau: Again, that’s another job opportunity. [laughter] There’s a lot of minerals up there. And so if you want to go for the minors, um, it’s, it’ fucking crazy. And what are the benefits of us? Um, for the American people. Let’s just talk just pure politics at home. What are the benefits of taking over Greenland? We potentially break up NATO because Denmark is a NATO ally. We’re gonna trigger an article five response by the United States taking action in Greenland. So we’re gonna piss them off. Denmark has already said, like we have a military base there already. Denmark has said, oh, if you want more presence there to defend the Arctic as one of their bullshit excuses. We need to defend the Arctic from Russia and China. Denmark’s like, you’re happy to, we’re happy to have you have more military assets there. We’re happy to work with you on sort of development and economic stuff. They don’t want any of that. They just want to take fucking Greenland. So how much more money is that going to cost us? And what kind of benefits are the American people going to see from that? Other than Donald Trump. Feeling like, you know, he just has controlled more of the Western Hemisphere.

Alex Wagner: Well, I think he wants to rename it Trumpland. I mean, you know what I mean? It’s just, I do, I want to get to the political costs because the political benefits seem non-existent then, but when it comes to the way in which the alarm that you hear from Europeans, the Atlantic was reporting this week that a lot of, you know, when Trump was initially dallying with this idea of taking over Greenland, Europeans were kind of like trying to brush it aside, not trying to talk about it because they thought it actually, if they came down hard on Trump’s Greenland dreams, he might punish Ukraine and U.S. Security measures to support the Ukrainians. Now they seem genuinely alarmed that, you know, he’s real about Greenland. This could be a real threat to NATO. And I don’t know, I guess Ukraine and U. S. Support for Ukraine gets caught in the middle of all of this?

Ben Rhodes: Yeah, I believe this Greenland thing ever since he started bringing it up after the election. And the reason why is it’s kind of what you said, Alex, you mentioned naming it, but it’s more like the psychology of an aging autocrat, right, is I need a legacy, you know? And Trump is not the kind of guy who’s measuring his legacy in like legislative victories for the American people you know.

Alex Wagner: No?

Ben Rhodes: No. [laughs] It’s it’s the wealth that he is able to acquire it’s a power that he’s able to acquire and it’s i think increasingly evident it’s that territory that he was able to acquire and Greenland is a big chunk of territory a big chuck of real estate uh… And that’s how Trump looks at it in the same way that putin as he got older uh… Unless interested in domestic affairs in Russia. Well that’s when he was started looking for territorial acquisition too first in Georgia and then in Ukraine it’s very much the same psychology the national security argument is complete and utter bullshit because first of all as a NATO member we have access to Greenland for whatever national security purposes we need we actually currently have a military base there. Stephen Miller’s arguments about NATO make no sense because every other single member of nato would be against the united states doing this because what is the point of an alliance? If one member of the Alliance can fucking invade another member and steal their territory, right? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Alex Wagner: With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Ben Rhodes: But the reason I think it got quiet after the inauguration for a bit and has come back now is because he kind of had to set the table. He had to get Pete Hegseth in there. He had kind of to MAGA-fy the top of the Pentagon so that they would follow orders. He had the kind of normalize this new form of farm policy where we act without any rules. And now he’s kind of coming back at it and I talk to europeans including Danish officials from time to time and they they’ve taken seriously but they’ve made the mistake of thinking that if they kind of you kissed up to Trump that he would get their back in ukraine and they like everybody else it’s kissed up the Trump whether you’re an American university or law firm or whether you are Maria Machado in Venezuela has learned that that doesn’t get you anywhere.

Alex Wagner: Nope. Ass kissing will only just get you ass in the end. [laughter] I just made that up right here

Ben Rhodes: Did you really make that up?

Alex Wagner: I’ve literally just fucking made that up. You can have it for your other shows—

Ben Rhodes: Merch. Merch idea.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, ass kissing will only get you ass. Maybe a pair of underwear that say that.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Jon, there is the aging autocrat and the impulses of an aging autocat, and then there’s the fact that he’s the president of the United States and the head of the Republican party. And there are a lot of people beneath him that are going to have to play clean up on all of this. And I do not understand the political calculation here at all, right? We have some early polling. One in three Americans expressed support for the capture of Maduro. Four in 10 approve of sending the military in to capture Maduro to me. These are all kind of like very initial responses to your point at the beginning of the show, like. He was a bad fucker, he’s gone. There’s gonna be some happiness about this. I say this as someone whose mother comes from a military dictatorship. It’s great to see bad people go away as long as they’re replaced by better people. He’s not being replaced, as far as we can tell, by better people. And the plans that we’re hearing this morning suggest American boots on the ground, certainly some American money being spent on this, for the dude who literally rode back into office and whose whole raison d’être is America first. Isolationism, fuck the rest of the world. Like, how does this not cost the Republican Party dearly? Just, I mean, how can this not be a violation of the thing they hold most sacrosanct?

Jon Favreau: Yeah, so I think Trump no longer gives a shit about the political calculation. He spoke to the House Republicans, I believe, this week and said, like, I don’t, like what’s wrong with the voters?

Alex Wagner: I think we do have that piece of sound. Can we play it? It’s a choice. It’s it’s choice incredulity.

[clip of Donald Trump]: But I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public. You got to win the midterms because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be, I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.

Jon Favreau: But now notice that the most interesting part of that is you got to win the midterms.

Alex Wagner: You gotta win the midterms.

Jon Favreau: Cause they’re, you know, and they’re on the ballot and his view is I’m doing whatever the fuck I want. I’m getting rich. I’m taking territory. I’m making everything Trump. I’m the emperor of the Western hemisphere. You got to do your shit. Otherwise I’m going to be embarrassed and guess what? I’m gonna blame you if it goes wrong.

Alex Wagner: Totally.

Jon Favreau: And then they’re going to have to impeach me and whatever. I’ve gotten impeached a couple of times before, so who cares? He doesn’t care about the politics. I really don’t. Not to the extent he has in the past. Not that he ever has a lot. I do think the Republicans in Congress are probably doing what they’ve done for the last 10 years, which is like gritting their teeth, trying to get through this by pretending not to have a real answer or dressing up what he’s doing, and then hoping that it just goes away and we’re on to the next news cycle. I think the challenge is, what he can’t run away from, what they are not going to be able to run away from is if the economy does not improve, people’s financial situations do not improve, the things they care about, if their needs are not met, the American voter, then even in a best case scenario where Trump wasn’t trying to take over the Western hemisphere, people would be pretty pissed. In a scenario where they say, OK, well, my health care costs are going up. I still can’t buy a house. Prices are still high. And what’s the president and his party that controls Washington up to? Well, he’s slapping his name on the Kennedy Center. He’s talking about the marble armrest that he’s building. He’s building his new ballroom. We got a whole bunch of troops in Venezuela, either boots on the ground at risk or just we’re paying for a bunch of military there, an armada, to get some oil that I’m not the benefits of, where now we’re invading Greenland. Every time I turn on the TV, he’s with some other foreign leader who’s kissing his ass and giving him a foreign gift. Like, people will be really pissed about that. And I don’t know how Republicans run away from that. I don’t think they can, because they’re not going to want to piss Trump off because they can’t, because they can’t win elections that way. And, but at the same time, they can’t break with him because he’s going to be really pissed. So they’re just going to try to run their own races, I think, and pretend that what he’s doing isn’t happening.

Alex Wagner: Well, a military adventurism, Ben, I mean, you wrote a great, in your flu-like haze, the brilliance still shines. You wrote a great op-ed in the New York Times this weekend about American military adventourism and how we have learned nothing or we keep trying to forget history from, I think, a policy-making standpoint. The American people fucking remember Iraq. The American people remember the cost of those wars and how little we got in return. I mean I think to Jon’s point, the Republican party can try and whistle past the graveyard, but like I don’t think that from MAGA on down, they’re going to forget what this actually is, especially given the fact that the administration is being so weirdly transparent about it.

Ben Rhodes: The great irony of this is that it would have been completely impossible for Donald Trump to take control of the Republican Party without military adventurism, because it was the absolute catastrophic debacle of the war on Iraq and the broader war on terror launched by the Bush administration that caused, I think, a complete collapse in confidence among Republican voters in their own elites, right? And some of those voters, by the way, are veterans of the War on Terror, too. Uh… And their critiques we’re not wrong that essentially the wars made no sense they cost trillions of dollars uh… They led politicians and elites to focus on things that were not of concern to americans and that’s how donald Trump was able to take control of the party and now as president he is kind of poised to repeat the same playbook potentially on steroids if he keeps going past Venezuela Because what they know is He’s not even trying, Alex, to describe a benefit to them for what’s happening in Venezuela, right? He talks about, like on the press conference he gave after the operation, he talked about the great American oil companies. They’re the greatest oil companies in the world, right. Sure, if you can get down there and somehow get the American oil company’s in on the, you know, cornering the Venezuelan oil market, like the oil company profits will go up over time But there are no jobs created by that. The jobs are in Venezuela, where the oil is pumped and refined. To Jon’s point, the amount of time it would take for Venezuela and oil to make a significant difference in global markets is not going to do a single fucking thing for affordability, certainly before the midterms. So he’s not even trying to say that this military intervention is on behalf of the American people. It’s kind of on behalf of his own aggrandizement. And he kind of likes the TV president thing. And we all know, if I can offer a bit of media criticism here, like the American media seems to love the first day of a regime change operation. You know, they get the complex special forces raid and then they get the TikTok story of how it was all planned and you get the images of Maduro and cuffs coming off the helicopter. And Trump loves all that stuff. But what’s so telling to me, Alex, look, I’m not a pollercoaster. Like, I don’t know as much about this as Jon and Dan. But the high point is when you have those images, and if only 3 in 10 Americans support this, and all they’ve seen thus far is a dictator who is a bad guy, as you say, being hauled in cuffs because he got apprehended in a special forces night raid that seems like a Netflix movie, that’s the high watermark for this thing, right? I don’t know what else they can do that would make people like it more over time.

Jon Favreau: The Washington Post did a poll where it was like a little bit closer on, do you support getting rid of Maduro or not? It was like, you know, 42-40. But in that same poll, they asked like, do you the United States government managing Venezuela and like choosing essentially the government for them? And that was at 23, 24%. YouGov just had a poll out this morning on Greenland and they asked, how many people support taking Greenland by force? And that number is seven, seven.

Alex Wagner: Seven as in a single digit.

Jon Favreau: Seven in the single digits. And then they said, what about taking it, but not by force? And then you add another 21 to that.

Alex Wagner: So 29.

Jon Favreau: So 28%. All together are in favor of taking Greenland, either by force or I guess by negotiation. So no one wants this. I think if you were to try to assign some sort of political calculation to the broader White House. I do think part of it is like, aren’t you proud of America now?

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Jon Favreau: We’re kicking ass again and that we have been, we’ve been bullied and humiliated by the rest of the world [overlapping voices] because of our leaders like Biden and Obama and all that stuff. And they walk all over us. And now every time you turn the news, there’s Pete Hegseth and helicopters over Greenland and Maduro’s in handcuffs and there’s memes everywhere. So I think they might be thinking that that’s going to sort of you know, you have this like jingoistic pride in the country. I just think they’re fucking crazy. I don’t think that that matters much to anyone beyond the intensely online base that they already have.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, as people are like watching their health care premiums skyrocket to a thousand dollars a month and can’t afford fucking bacon. Yeah, cool. No, but definitely Pete Hegseth in a fucking dog sled in Greenland is gonna change all that. So Ben brings up a critique of the media, which I think we could extend to the Democratic Party and not a critique but a question to ask of how Ben’s chiming in—

Jon Favreau: We’re chomping at the bit on this one. [laughter]

Alex Wagner: We need to talk about this. Axios has a piece this morning that quotes anonymously, of course, centrist Democrats in the House who think, you know, that the party is mishandling this, that they need to give more credit to Trump. Quote, Maduro is bad. Glad he’s gone. You can’t have it both ways. Um, but the base thinks that everything Trump touches has to be bad and vulnerable house Democrats tells Axios as Democrats, we can’t just condemn what happened. I wish the democratic party would be a little bit more measured on this. I think it looks weak, said another Democrat. If you don’t acknowledge that when there’s a win for our country, then you lose all credibility. I can hear your eye rolls, Jon, but could you talk a little bit more about whether or not this is flawed thinking on the part of the opposition party that’s not interested in American imperialism and military adventures?

Jon Favreau: The President of the United States has told us all that he has bombed a country in an attack that left 80 people dead to decapitate a regime that he otherwise left in place to steal their oil and now he will be managing the country indefinitely as he sets his eyes to the north on another country that is our NATO ally that he also wants to invade

Alex Wagner: Don’t forget about Colombia.

Jon Favreau: But you know what? You know what, you should be fucking measured in your response, you fucking cowards. Like what, it’s just [laughter] if you can’t say that that’s bad, or you think that saying that is bad is Trump derangement syndrome, you may have the derangements syndrome.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, totally. TDS is something you may want to look into. Ben?

Ben Rhodes: I read this and at first I thought that maybe the AI had become sentient and somebody had decided that an article should be written that was maximally designed to trigger Ben Rhodes. Like, I felt like…

Alex Wagner: It’s just your new flu medication.

Ben Rhodes: Yeah, I know. I was a little out of it on the flu, right? I was like, this can’t be real, right, because I don’t know where to begin. I’m just going to a couple points about this, right.

Alex Wagner: Just go, Ben. Just go.

Ben Rhodes: The first thing is, like, you’re supposed to be good politicians. Like, what fucking planet are you on where you think that this is what the American people want the president to be doing? Like, I remember when really good things would happen in our foreign policy too. And Dan Pfeiffer would be like, please don’t talk about them because even good things Americans don’t wanna hear about if it’s not dealing with their fucking problems, right? So like if people have told you again and again and again that affordability is what they care about and they are starting to reward Democrats at the polls, right, in the recent elections because Democrats are talking about affordability. And then the president United States is like, oh, I’m going to cancel my affordability tour to go try to conquer Venezuela. And you are not a capable enough politician to be like, you know what? I think he doesn’t care about you. He cares about himself. Like I, this is not hard people. Like I don’t understand this fucking mindset at all. These Democrats who are permanently stuck, like you have to be as old as us. To remember the fucking 2002 midterm elections when the Democrats lost because they were called weak on the war on terror. And there are some Democrats who have been running in the 2002 mid-term elections ever since then.

Jon Favreau: But also, I was gonna say that was such a tougher call for Democrats. You’re right, we just sort of let them get away with it. But yeah, our country was—

Alex Wagner: Attacked.

Jon Favreau: It was like a massive terrorist attack on our country. We lost a couple thousand people. Like, yeah, huge fucking psychic scar. The politics are tricky on that one. This is like, even I was saying, Ben, I think Pod Save America, even the strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities is a tougher on this because it’s like, do we want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? No, we don’t. Now do we know how much Whether they actually made a dent in them, we don’t. So we can argue about that. But like, yeah, the general goal is right. But taking over Venezuela, that’s that no one thinks that taking over Venezuela and stealing their oil was something that is going to protect the United States or make Americans lives better. No one thinks that.

Alex Wagner: Most people had no idea who the fuck Nicolás Maduro was until like literally Saturday. I mean, this is not someone who lives in the American imagination the way Saddam Hussein did or Osama bin Laden. I mean this is a fabrication of American threat launched by an insane octogenarian who takes too many blood thinners.

Ben Rhodes: But these were the same kind of Democrats, by the way, who were like the one, these are the kind of guys, and I’m sure these were guys, who were repeating the price of eggs thing in February. Is Nicolás Maduro in charge of the global fucking egg market? Like this is not hard for you people to understand that this is the thing that people care about. And I just, because this is a big hobby horse of mine. 2004 George Bush wins on this message, right, of being tough. Every single presidential election since. 2008, Barack Obama runs as the anti-war candidate, anti-establishment candidate. He wins. 2012, Mitt Romney runs as The Hawk, Obama wins. 2016, Hillary runs as The Hawk, Trump runs as this anti-forever war guy. He wins 2020. Let’s throw that one out. You know, everyone has COVID, Biden’s in the basement, whatever. 2024, like Trump runs to end forever wars, right? Like, so the American people keep telling. They’re politicians that they don’t care about the fake weak tough frame that plays well on cable news. Or on axios or political playbook tip sheets and yet these people keep diving back into that pool. It’s it’s astonishing to me.

Alex Wagner: It’s almost as if they haven’t learned anything since 9/11. It’s always as if they’ve just forgotten history.

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Alex Wagner: I have to say, as we talk about how this plays out domestically, there’s also, I mean usually it’s Democrats who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but here it’s like, even with the Venezuelan population in the United States, so you’re Trump, you win a disproportionate, I mean compared to other elections, share of the Latino vote, and then you thank them by establishing immigration dragnets in cities across the country, stoking fear among brown people literally fucking all over the United States. And maybe for like a hot minute, on Saturday night, you get a little reprieve, right? You get a lot of reprieve, you get Latinos and specifically Venezuelans saying, hey, he got Maduro out. And how do you respond to that? How do you response to the increasingly somewhat warm temperature or warm reception you may be getting in otherwise pretty chilly corners of the Latin American population? You issue a statement from US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson, Matthew Tragesser, who says, President Trump’s decisive action to remove Maduro marks a turning point for Venezuelans. Now they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future. It’s all good now. Sure, there may be, you know, checkpoints to ensure you don’t do or say anything that we think is untoward or unsupportive of the dictatorial regime that very much remains in power. And sure, nothing on the ground has meaningfully changed for you. You may get thrown in jail or killed or have one of your loved ones thrown in jail are killed. But now it is time for you to self-deport and go back home of Venezuelans. You’re welcome, signed the United States of America. It’s amazing to me, Jon, that the posture here, given how much trouble they are in with a key voting block, especially ahead of 2026, is to say, we unfucked your country, now fuck you.

Jon Favreau: But it was actually, it’s not just some like crazy, hypocritical side effect. It was one of the goals of doing this. Stephen Miller thinks that he’s gonna be on firmer legal standing with the Alien Enemies Act by saying, oh, we really are at war with Venezuela now because we started it. And so we wanna, you know, there’s what? Something like, I think 500,000 Venezuelans that are either here because of uh… Parole is one policy that you can come into the country or uh… They have uh… Temperary protective status uh—

Alex Wagner: Which has been revoked by the Trump administration.

Jon Favreau: Yes. And I have a friend who was like, well, you know, a lot of Venezuelans like celebrating on the streets in Miami. I’m like, well, I hope they’re citizens.

Alex Wagner: Exactly.

Jon Favreau: Because the celebrations will be short-lived once ICE arrives in Miami!

Alex Wagner: Exactly, in vans.

Jon Favreau: And because this is what Stephen Miller wants to do. And they have been targeting Venezuelans more than other immigrants, or that’s one of the immigrant groups they’re targeting more because their recent arrivals, you know, they haven’t been here as long as a lot of other immigrants. And so their status is more fragile. And so yeah, this is part of the deal. And I don’t think they give a shit. I mean, again, Stephen Miller doesn’t care about the Latino vote.

Alex Wagner: No. He doesn’t care about, I mean, he doesn’t care about anything but the most sort of nefarious goals of recreating American greatness in the same way, like almost if you only spoke Russian, it’s so similar to what Putin is doing in Ukraine, restoring the sort of greatness of the empire at all cost and that things need to be taken by force and outsiders need to be thrown out of the country and the true pure blood of the natives needs to be, you know, sort of reseeded across the land, Ben.

Ben Rhodes: Yes. I mean, I felt a lot of Putin echoes in what we saw in Venezuela, what he’s talking about Greenland, where, you know, like I said, it’s like you reach that stage in the autocrats tenure, where inevitably, like if you look at any major power, right, not like a kind of smaller medium-sized country, but major power that has taken an authoritarian turn, there’s always a of power consolidation at home, and then at a certain point. There’s always then a spillover into military adventurism. And I think that the question for us, for Congress and for the American people is, and this is what I was kind of trying to get at in that piece, Alex, is that like, when those two things converge, right? Authoritarian creep at home and military adventurs abroad, they both tend to become an accelerant on the other. Right? So in Russia, once Putin kind of broke that seal, then the crackdowns on dissent at home started to pick up because we can have people criticizing the regime. And then, he’s losing support because people don’t like the iron fist at home. So then, we need to kind of keep the war machine moving, right? And this is the kind of un-virtuous circle that we need make sure gets arrested, right. This is why the midterm elections are really important because one of the things that worries me guys, and I know what you think about this, you both made this point. Neither Trump or Stephen Miller seemed to even bother to care about American politics. Right. You can read that as like he’s just he doesn’t have to run again. He’s selfish. He doesn’t give a shit or you can read that as people who might think that they don’t need to Play American politics to stay in power, right? Because they’ll find other ways to say I mean, I’m just like raising questions here, right. That’s I’m not saying that’s likely—

Alex Wagner: We’re just asking a question—

Jon Favreau: No, but you asked about other countries, right? If we want to study other countries, then that is what happens in other countries if you want to look at like Putin in particular, right Once he started down war then you saw an extension of presidential terms, right against the Russian Constitution So that is the analogy. The question is does America and America does have more guardrails. We have a federal system with 50 states. We still have three branches of government So I’m not saying we’re destined to do that, but these guys are certainly talking like people who are not, like, concerned about politics.

Jon Favreau: And we’ve been focused on Trump. Like, is Trump going to run again at third term? Is he going to leave? But say Trump does just decide to leave and that’s it. And he’s already said that. That doesn’t have to be the thing that we’re most worried about. Like there’s, say a Democrat wins in 2028, there’s going to have to a transition of power. And if it’s like JD Vance on the losing end of the election and it’s close, do we all feel confident that we are not going to get another post 2020 scenario?

Alex Wagner: What happened five years ago?

Jon Favreau: Where Stephen Miller and and Pete Hagseth and all the rest of them are like well yeah Trump Trump doesn’t want to be president anymore he’s he’s riding off into the sunset but we’re still here I mean there’s there’s been a history in other regimes of the charismatic leader finally stepping aside or dying and then uh their number two comes in in fact that’s what happened in Venezuela yeah.

Ben Rhodes: And those people are in legal jeopardy too. Like, Pete Hegseth knows that, like, if the Democrats take charge, like you know, these boats that he blew up, right? I mean, I want to ask you guys, it’s interesting that JD Vance has not been out there—

Alex Wagner: Well, this is what I actually wanted to bring up as a positive note, maybe, before we go in this season of discontent and alarm. The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace Wells, who I am a big fan of, wrote about Vance’s absence here. And the fact that when he has made statements, they have been sort of anguished statements. Benjamin writes, the likeliest person to inherit the Trump mantle is the one who has been staying out of the frame. This is Vance, who’s noted that there is national anxiety over the use of military force. Now, I don’t think of J.D. Vance as a particularly principled person, perhaps some of it is driven by someone who served and believes that, you know, military adventurism is not in America’s interests. But I think it’s also political calculation, right? Like, and does that, is there some? Should we be optimistic about the fact that the vice president of the United States is operating with at least a little bit of caution around all of this, suggesting that he thinks it might be a bad move that could cost both him and his party in the near term? Am I being overly Pollyanna-ish here?

Jon Favreau: I think so, unfortunately.

Alex Wagner: Okay. Never mind that’s the show. [laughter] Thanks for joining us

Ben Rhodes: I’ll take the other side on this one though. I’ll, I’ll take this.

Jon Favreau: I think that it’s early days. And I think JD Vance has already, you know, tiptoed out on Twitter where he writes all his best stuff and he’s done his Twitter essay being like [both speaking] Cocaine is still bad. And we just can’t have some commies be taking our oil and not do anything. So he’s like, he’s on the talking point.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Jon Favreau: He’s not out there in front. I also think it’s because he knows his buddy and potential running mate, Marco Rubio. This is his moment. But I think JD Vance has a larger problem on everything over the next couple of years, which is he is completely tied to Donald Trump’s political fortunes. And if Donald Trump becomes an even more unpopular president, JD Vance doesn’t have the option while he’s vice president of breaking with Donald Trump in any kind of way. I mean, most vice presidents—

Alex Wagner: See, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

Jon Favreau: Right, exactly. And that was like, for any vice president, you’re not out there criticizing the president. With Donald Trump especially, you can’t do that. So he’s in this weird liminal space where his political fortunes are tied to Donald Trump. And so if he doesn’t agree with something Donald Trump’s doing just from a political standpoint, the best he can do is throw out a Twitter essay and then sort of hide.

Alex Wagner: And say, Marco, you got this, man? Cool.

Jon Favreau: Right. But like, that’s not going to change the calculus of what happens if JD Vance becomes president and we are three years on into this quagmire where we are, you know, our adventures and imperialism aren’t going as well as we were told they would go. Like JD Vence is just going to have to own that either way. So it’s like, I don’t, I guess what I’m arguing is that I don’t know that it matters much either way.

Alex Wagner: Okay, well that’s sufficiently pessimistic, Ben?

Ben Rhodes: So yeah, my slightly more optimistic take is this, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with JD Vance because I agree with Jon about that. I think I’ve been fatalistic about the likelihood of further imperial adventurism, right? I mean, and we talked about, he’s threatened Colombia, he’s threaten Mexico, he threatened Cuba, he’s threatening Panama Canal, right, Like there’s a moving like roulette wheel of targets here. And the one thing that makes me optimistic that he might not be able to kind of go down the punch card there is I do think that this is a core issue for MAGA. Like there’s some issues that there are a lot of issues that they’ve been willing to chuck overboard on behalf of kind of fealty to Trump. But I actually think that this is deeper to the MAGA base than a lot of the other things that he’s had betrayals on. And so. Like your Greenland numbers, right, Jon, like seven. I actually think that that speaks to the fact that there’s not any Democrats who are gonna support this stuff and most Republicans aren’t either. And that at a certain point, there is a political, if you’re losing, Trump doesn’t mind if he’s losing issues 60 to 40 or even 65 to 35, but this feel like issues that could become 75, 25. And that’s when Congress. Because they actually want to save their skins. You know, start to become afraid about where Trump is taking the Republican Party brand. And so, I don’t know, like, how those guardrails manifest, you know, there was a bill, a war powers resolution that Thomas Massie co-sponsored with Joaquin Castro that came two votes short of literally preventing them from doing what they did in Venezuela. They probably would have done it anyway. It feels to me like there could be a MAGA tipping point here that that’s my only source of optimism on Kind of creating a big enough backlash to this imperialism to at least kind of stop it in its place

Jon Favreau: My concern is that the MAGA concern about foreign adventures is only real and only remains when there are troops, you know, thousands and thousands of troops abroad when Americans start dying overseas or when they know that we’re spending a crazy amount of money on all of this and, you, know, domestic conditions continue to deteriorate, which is a possibility for sure. But, the idea that… Donald Trump and his regime get to go bomb some shit and then we own it, we can slap America on it, and then maybe we get some oil. I think that’s fine. It’s either fine to the MAGA base or cool. They like it, you know? And I think where the base is gonna start getting upset is if this comes back to bite us in the ass, which it will at some point.

Ben Rhodes: Yeah.

Jon Favreau: Whether sure I mean Donald Trump’s betting that it’s long term yeah you know or maybe not betting at all maybe just think but like he would be lucky if it was a long-term thing that came back and bite him in the ass but um they what if we you know if Americans start dying if American soldiers are deployed if suddenly we’re just spending you know tens of billions of dollars on foreign adventures then they’re going to start getting pissed but if it’s this you know this kinetic action here and there and we’re just kidnapping—

Alex Wagner: Just 80 people killed here and there.

Jon Favreau: It’s a you know, they’re gonna memeify everything. It’s another fucking video game and they think it’s cool. Let’s keep going

Alex Wagner: Let me tell you something, Jon, those dog suds don’t drive themselves. That oil does not distribute itself

Jon Favreau: AI is going to do some amazing things with Pete Hegseth.

Alex Wagner: I don’t think this chapter is done being written and I would say word to the wise JD Vance, you kiss ass and you just end up with ass. [laughter]  So that’s our show for today. I think it was a humdinger a lot to discuss no two better gents to have with me. Thank you, Jon [overlapping voices] That is our show for this week. Can you believe it is the first one of this year? Oh yeah. As always, if you’ve been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies, send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to all of you guys who have written in already. Last but not least. Please, please, please don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. Thanks for listening. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.

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