Trump’s Standoff with Venezuela; Potential for Peace in Ukraine

Fareed Zakaria GPS

CNN

News

4.3 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on the show, tensions between the US and Venezuela are reaching a boiling point, as President Donald Trump warned that US strikes on land targets in Venezuela could come "very soon." Fareed speaks with two former top officials on Venezuela: former US ambassador to Venezuela James Story, and former special representative for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams about what’s likely to happen next, and the potential fallout if Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is ousted.Then, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week about the war in Ukraine for a lengthy five hours session — and in the end, there's still no peace deal. Fareed is joined by Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk for a conversation about what Ukrainians make of the impasse, allegations of corruption in that country, and Witkoff’s relationships with the Russians. Finally, the Trump administration intensified its immigration crackdown after last week’s attack in Washington that left one National Guard member dead and another critically injured. The shooter was an Afghan national who had worked with the CIA and had come to the US in 2021 through a visa program designed to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the wake of the US withdrawal. Fareed talks with The New York Times’ Thomas Gibbons-Neff—a former Kabul bureau chief who had twice deployed to Afghanistan as a US Marine—about the role Afghan allies played in America’s war, and the challenges of resettlement. GUESTS: Elliott Abrams, James Story, Nataliya Gumenyuk (@ngumenyuk), Thomas Gibbons-Neff (@Tmgneff) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is GPS, the Global Public Square.
0:03.6	Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world.
0:06.8	I'm Farid Zakaria, coming to you from New York.
0:09.6	Today on the program, President Trump's vendetta against Venezuela.
0:16.2	We consider Venezuela to be not a very friendly country.
0:19.6	Should the United States try regime change one more time?
0:24.9	Do we know what the day after would look like? I'll talk to James Storia and Elliot Abrams,
0:30.7	top officials on Venezuela and Trump's first administration. Also, as diplomats shuttle around the globe to try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine,
0:40.9	how do the people of Ukraine feel about all this? I'll ask Ukrainian journalist Natalia Gumenyuk.
0:49.3	Then an Afghan national who worked with the CIA stands accused of shooting two National Guard members
0:56.1	on the streets of D.C. last week. President Trump has since embarked on a crackdown on
1:02.2	immigration across the board. Is that warrant? We'll explore. But first, here's my take. One of the differences between Donald Trump's second term compared to his first has been a full-blown attack on the expert class. J.D. Vance urges that we trust our common sense over the ideas of the experts. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is actively overruling the views of the medical establishment
1:31.0	on issues like vaccines.
1:33.5	Pam Bondi forces out Justice Department officials who prize professionalism over personal loyalty.
1:40.4	Stephen Miller has declared war on NGOs.
1:43.6	It is part of an American cultural revolution designed to discredit the credential elites who in their view run America.
1:52.0	It's true that over the last few decades, America has spawned a meritocracy, armed with Ivy League degrees and specific skills and training that has come to dominate
2:02.4	business, government, media and culture.
2:04.6	And it is also true that it can morph into a group of smug technocrats who lose touch with
2:11.6	the society they come from.
2:13.6	But before we join the pylon, let's keep in mind that the rise of a merit-based elite is a
2:20.8	historic shift in the right direction.
	...

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