Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Tuesday, January 6th., it's been five years from the day that will forever

provide the images that define the Trump era, or at least that set of images. Who knows what

we got ahead of us the next three years? Bill Crystal and Tom Jocelyn have a retrospective on that.

Over on the Bullock takes feed, you should check out. Do go send some love to my pal Michael

Fanon and the other January 6 cops if you get the chance on their various social media feeds.

But today's show, we're going to focus on what's happened in the present day, our current troubles.

We've got a double header in segment two.

I talked to a man, the Trump administration is trying to detain and expel from the country and separate him from his American family because they don't like his

speech. But first, Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's also the author of the

book. Everyone who is going is here, the United States, Central America, and the making of a crisis.

Welcome to the show. What's up, man? Hey, good to see you. Thanks for having it. Good to see you.

I don't know if you know this, but your book has been invoked by three guests, maybe, two or three guests, Peter Hamby. It makes me very, very helpful. I mean, Frank Foer. I don't remember all the people that mentioned them. I just think that how you got into that with everyone who's gone is you tell this very complex story through individual

narratives, you know, in a way that I think is really compelling to people because, man,

you know, it can get, it can become a slog to read about the Northern Triangle and all of our

troubles that's led to the border. But I want to talk about the book in a little bit, but I want

to start with Venezuela, which you've been reporting on more recently, of course. So let's just dial it back like a month before that, you know, the coup that we just engaged in with, with Maduro, and talk about the lead into this, the bombing of the drug boats. You were writing about this for the New Yorker, right, about how there's this bigger agenda at play, which has obviously come to pass. Talk about just like what was happening

in that period and how you think it ties to where we are now. Well, basically what we started to see

was in the beginning of September of last year, the U.S. started bombing these boats that were

allegedly transporting drugs

through the Caribbean Sea, and then later eventually the bombings began in parts of the Pacific

Ocean. And the logic, anyway, that the administration put forward was that this was a matter

of national self-defense, that drugs are a scourge in American life, that overdoses have been

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