You know, first and foremost, I mean, Venezuela already has one of the most capable militaries in Latin America beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And, you know, all you have to do is look at it.

They just had a big police operation in the south of the country to take on this prison mafia, I guess, that they had like a zoo in this prison and all these other things.

So, I mean, they sent 11,000 people there to, you know, break this up.

So they obviously have a lot of military force and things like that. So the idea that somehow if they got more money, they would be like buying more weapons as if now the sanctions are preventing them from doing so. But I guess I would also say I don't think they're using those weapons to repress people. But even if I was to accept that premise, it obviously is just not the case in terms of what's actually happening in the

country. You really also have to look at the fact that what have they actually been mainly

spending their money on. I mean, again, five million houses that they're building for people,

the mass expansion of health care and education that exist inside of the country, the attempt

to try to empower different industries. They don't just have to rely only on oil.

The attempt to also not just empower industries in general, but things that are run in cooperative and communal fashion so that the economic aspect of it isn't just accruing to a small number of people. I mean, that's what the majority of money is being spent on and has been spent on in the Chavista period. It's not that they haven't improved their military because they certainly have because they're concerned about, you know, the U.S. and for a long time, Colombia, but most of the money has not been spent on building up the military. It's been built up on social programs. And when you look at the things that have been hit the most by the collapse of the oil industry, it's exactly the social programs that I don't know your guest, so I can't speak to it, but I think this is when I hear that narrative, the hypocrisy, because you can see programs like Klapp, which are community-based programs to distribute low-cost food to the poorest people so that they can have some basic food security. I mean, that's one of the number one things that's affected by the sanctions, and they're spending huge sums of money to bring this food in from abroad because all of it, they can't grow there in Venezuela. You know, if you don't have that, then people, of course, are going to go hungry. So if you're saying, what are they going to use the money for? We can already see the things that they haven't been able to use the money for because of the sanctions. So to think that somehow that's all the smokescreen makes no sense to me when you can see that they were already doing it, if that

makes sense. Yeah. I mean, part of because of the sanctions. So to think that somehow that's all the smokescreen makes no sense to me when you can see

that they were already doing it, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, part of what's frustrating about this and watching the immigration narrative overall

is that it seems to me like there's a fair case that Democrats could make that this is Trump's

immigration crisis provoked by his sanctions, also Obama sanctions,

I'm happy to blame both of them, but that the Republicans have to own the role that they played in

this. If they're going to complain about the 500,000 work permits that Biden has issued to these

Venezuelan migrants, then maybe you should consider which of Trump's

policies provoked the migration in the first place. It does feel like part of why the left

struggles to claim that narrative is there aren't very many people among the ranks of the

Democratic Party who seem especially interested in lifting said sanctions. Apparently,

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