Maddow calls out the real reason Trump invaded Venezuela

The Rachel Maddow Show

Rachel Maddow, MS NOW

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4.5 • 34K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachel Maddow runs through the litany of excuses and justifications the Trump administration has presented to explain the military invasion of Venezuela, and points out that none of what has been floated holds up under scrutiny. Every principle the Trump administration claims to be defending comes with examples of the administration not caring at all about that principle. Even the popular idea that it was all for oil doesn't really make sense upon closer examination. But there is one reason that is consistent with Trump's behavior through the first year of his second term in office.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Right off the bat here, I'm going to go out in a limb and say that I think I know the name of the person who, arguably,
0:07.0	um, is the biggest beneficiary of Donald Trump starting an inexplicable war in Venezuela this weekend.
0:14.0	Um, and again, I do think it's arguable, but there is a good case to be made, I believe,
0:20.0	that the single biggest winner in this whole situation is a person who is a good case to be made, I believe, that the single biggest winner in this whole
0:23.0	situation is a person named Karen Bud Phelan.
0:30.0	And the reason you can tell she is the biggest beneficiary of the Venezuela invasion is
0:34.5	because no one within the sound of my voice right now has any idea who that is.
0:40.3	Karen Bud Phelan.
0:42.3	Who?
0:43.3	Who?
0:44.3	Have you ever heard this name before?
0:45.3	Has anybody ever heard of this person?
0:47.3	No?
0:48.3	No, nobody knows who this person is.
0:50.3	Karen Bud Phelan is the number three official in the interior department under Donald Trump.
0:55.5	She also served in the same department during Trump's first term.
0:59.8	Karen Bud Phelan's family has a ranch in Nevada, and there's a company that wanted to build a huge mine, a huge lithium mine in that part of Nevada. And lithium mines,
1:13.4	among all of their other many splendid things, they do take a ton, a ton of water. So during
1:21.4	Trump's first term, while Karen Bud Phelan was working at the Department of the Interior,
1:27.0	Karen Bud Phelan's husband sold the water rights from their ranch in Nevada to the mining company that was going to build this big mine.
1:35.5	They said, we're going to pay you $3.5 million for the water from your ranch. The only catch, the only contingency is that the full deal only goes ahead if our mine gets approved by the interior department.
1:49.9	If our mine doesn't get approved, then the deal's off.
	...

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