I'm Shirley Sykes. Welcome to the first podcast that we're recording in 2026. We're just a few days in.

And the United States is already threatening military action or some sort of aggression against Colombia, Greenland, Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Venezuela. I think we bombed Nigeria in the last few weeks. And meanwhile, we are coming up on

the anniversary of January 6. That was five years ago today. So welcome to 2026.

What a welcome. You've made it sound like it's going to be a great year.

You know what? I was clinging to the hope that 2026 would be a better year than 2025, but I mean, it has begun quite literally with a bang.

And really, we're very fortunate to be joined by the Atlantics in Applebaum,

by the way. And a podcast, Autocracy in America is set to be released this Friday morning.

Keep an eye out for it. And obviously, you know, we want to talk about the events of the weekend and then put it in the context, including your piece

where you warn us that Trump's global dominance may leave Americans with nothing. But can I

just start with this very, very strange moment, the sort of the defining moment of the weekend

after the attack on Venezuela and the seizure of President Maduro of Venezuela,

one of the world's genuinely horrible bad guys.

But Donald Trump said at the press conference, and I want to play this because it was such a remarkable moment where he's talking about how we're going to be running Venezuela.

For anyone who thought this was about democracy or about anything other, let me just play the audio of this for you.

We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.

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.

So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious

transition.

And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about.

Yeah, judicious, because that's what Donald Trump is all about.

I mean, if Donald Trump is about anything, it's about being judicious, isn't it?

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