Today on the Playbook podcast, the White House is grappling with how to message Venezuela.

The December jobs report is due and likely to show modest improvement.

And the Supreme Court has its first decision day of 26. Hello, I'm Megan Messerly. And I'm Mya Ward. It's Friday,

January 9th. Good morning, Maya. How are you doing this morning? Good morning. I'm good. How are you?

I'm good. We've made it through a long first week back, first week of January. It's been a long one, Maya.

It's been a doozy. It has been a dozy. Well, let us jump right in. The first story I want to talk about Maya is we have some fresh reporting on how the White House is approaching Venezuela messaging. The White House has been eager to drive home this message of affordability,

and we heard threads of it come up this week, whether it was health care, some new housing policy

the president is announcing. And yet, throughout at all, we have been talking about Venezuela.

So you and I talked around to some folks, tried to figure out how the White House is messaging this and how this topic of Venezuela meshes or does not mesh with this affordability message that the White House has been so focused on.

So tell me a little bit about what you found in our reporting.

Yeah, I mean, like you said, we talked with White House officials, Trump allies,

advisors, Republican operatives.

Our colleague, Alex Gangesa Tano, spoke with senators.

And, I mean, overall, Republicans are still really jazzed about how successful they

saw this operation in Venezuela.

And, you know, that comes even as there are all

these questions, right, about how long does this last? Where does it go next? Does it consume a midterms

year when, like you said, voters say they are worried about affordability and cost of living and other

domestic issues? And, I mean, you and I talked about this extensively.

No one can predict what is going to be the dominant storyline 11 months from now.

No.

But Republicans did tell us there is a risk here in voters seeing what's happening in Venezuela and wondering,

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