Monday, January 5, 2026
The Briefing with Albert Mohler
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
4.8 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Part I (00:14 – 05:33)
Trump Wasn’t Bluffing: The Apprehension of Former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro
Part II (05:33 – 15:37)
The Historic Complications of Venezuela and Its Politics: There is a Long History Here
Part III (15:37 – 22:22)
This Action in Venezuela Raises Big Questions: Was It Lawful and Constitutional for the U.S. to Take This Action in Venezuela? What About International Law?
Part IV (22:22 – 26:20)
Where Do We Go From Here in Venezuela? It Is Not At All Clear What “Running Venezuela” Means
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Monday, January 5, 2006. |
| 0:07.2 | I'm Albert Moller, and welcome to a new year for the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events |
| 0:13.2 | from a Christian worldview. |
| 0:15.3 | The world never seems to have a shortage of issues it throws at us, but in particular, |
| 0:20.0 | today I thought we'd be talking about |
| 0:21.7 | Mayor Mom Doni. That is to say, Zohran Mom Doni, now the new mayor of the nation's most populous |
| 0:27.5 | city. He began with a bang, but we're going to have to talk about that tomorrow because of |
| 0:32.7 | international developments. And of course, the big story that demands our attention is that Nicholas Maduro, |
| 0:38.6 | the former strongman of Venezuela, is now sitting in an American jail. So is his wife. This takes |
| 0:45.3 | us back to last Friday night, early Saturday morning, when it turns out American military forces, |
| 0:51.1 | special forces, in this case specifically, the Army's famed Delta Force, |
| 0:55.2 | went into action and without losing a single American life, U.S. forces arrested, |
| 1:01.1 | apprehended, and then extricated the former president of Venezuela. In just a matter of hours, |
| 1:07.9 | he went from taunting the United States, which had amassed a massive |
| 1:11.7 | military presence around Venezuela, including the USS Gerald Ford, the world's largest |
| 1:18.1 | aircraft carrier. The fact is that President Trump wasn't bluffing. Trump had warned Maduro |
| 1:24.5 | that he needed to get out of Venezuela as far back as 2017 in Trump's first term. |
| 1:31.2 | When Trump came back into his second term, there were a couple of things that were very clear. |
| 1:35.3 | Number one, Venezuela's problem was considered to be an American problem. |
| 1:40.5 | And when it came to President Trump, he clearly had set his aim at removing Nicholas Maduro. |
| 1:46.3 | And it was also true that Maduro's fate was at least partly set by the fact that President |
| 1:51.5 | Trump nominated then Florida Senator Marco Rubio to be the nation's next Secretary of State. |
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