Special Episode: Is Trump now President...of Venezuela?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the dead of night, President Trump sent US forces into the Venezuelan capital Caracas and - after bombs and explosions - emerged with its kidnapped head of state, Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Trump claims they are extradited narco traffickers.
In a press conference to mark the operation, Trump revealed that America is "going to run" the Latin American petro state, and oil does appear to be at the centre of his motivations for striking. US oil companies, he announced, will be sent into Venezuela to fix its broken infrastructure and start making the county money - and presumably make America money too. He cited the Monroe Doctrine - now the 'Donroe Doctrine' - that sees America seizing assets of states it chooses and intervening where it pleases in the western hemisphere.
What will the world do now? Will Russia and China feel newly emboldened? Will the UK and the EU tell Trump what they really think? What about that promise of America First - "no more foreign wars" - is that now dead as a dodo? And how will that impact Trump's political fortunes at home?
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Global Player original podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. |
| 0:13.0 | So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. |
| 0:22.6 | So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. |
| 0:31.6 | Not satisfied with regime change and the arrest of the President Nicolas Murdouro, who's on his way now to America, |
| 0:39.5 | Donald Trump is now running Venezuela, as he seeks to make Venezuela great again. |
| 0:47.3 | Donald Trump has organized a coup in a foreign country and he has kidnapped a foreign head of state. Even for Trump, this is audacious. |
| 0:58.2 | What does it mean for Venezuela, for the United States and for the world? Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:08.8 | The news agents. It's John. |
| 1:11.3 | It's Lewis. |
| 1:12.1 | It's Emily from Patagonia, where even at the end of the earth, the news is still of what is happening right now in Venezuela. |
| 1:21.2 | Yeah, it has been the most extraordinary, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, head-spinning, 24 hours, well, 12 hours really, |
| 1:31.0 | since we first heard, that American troops had moved in, there had been strikes in Venezuela, |
| 1:37.8 | then the next jaw-dropper came, that Nicolas Maduro and his wife were in custody and they were on their US warship Iwojima |
| 1:49.0 | on their way to New York to face indictment. And then came the Donald Trump news conference |
| 1:55.7 | where, as you heard in that clip, that America is now running Venezuela. So is President Trump effectively, |
| 2:05.4 | de facto, the president of Venezuela as well? And it has been a stunning military operation in |
| 2:12.0 | terms of the way it's been laid out to us, not an American servicemen killed, all the military |
| 2:17.2 | equipment came back. |
| 2:19.0 | They managed to execute this seemingly flawlessly, but massive questions about what follows. |
| 2:26.7 | It is truly astounding that we, although there has been a long history which we can talk about |
| 2:31.6 | of the United States, getting involved in Latin |
... |
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