from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, January 6th.

It's our first call your senator segment of 2026. It's with New Jersey Senator Andy Kim. As a former State Department and Pentagon

employee, someone who served the U.S. government in Afghanistan, and a member of the Foreign

Relations Committee when he was in the House will certainly get his take on the U.S. military

action in Venezuela. Also on today as the fifth anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Riot. Kim was a

member of Congress at that time. We'll ask him to look back, but probably more important, the impact

of that January 6th to life and democracy in the U.S. on this one. And we'll talk about other things

too. Senator Kim, thanks for renewing call your

senator for 2026 and welcome back to WNYC. Yeah, happy new year and thanks for having me on.

So Senator Kim, President Trump says the action in Venezuela was a law enforcement operation,

not an act of war. Your reaction? Well, I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. We have a

carrier strike group. We have a nuclear-powered sub. We have seven destroyers. We have so many

assets. And honestly, it's costing us millions of dollars a day just to have it there. And if it was

just about law enforcement, why does he say that

he has the ability to do a second strike is that going to also be about apprehending and indicted

someone who is indicted absolutely not that's not what he's talked about when he's talking about

Cuba or Columbia or Greenland is he talking about that in terms of enforcement? Is there a reason why Pam Bondi was not at the

press conference when they announced the attack? If it was law enforcement, shouldn't they put the

Attorney General up front? This is all a ruse. This is all that's just them trying to find any and

all possible ways to justify what they ultimately wanted to do. The goal of this was

not about law enforcement. It was what I call an extortion foreign policy. These are just mob boss

tactics that President Trump is using to use our military and our foreign policy for his own

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