Trump’s vexing Venezuela position

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

The Trump administration pressure campaign against Venezuela and strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the region are coming under increased scrutiny after reporting that caught the attention of bipartisan members of Congress. President Donald Trump offered cautious support for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s involvement. It comes after Trump’s controversial decision to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted in the U.S. of drug trafficking. Playbook’s Jack Blanchard and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns break down what to expect next, plus Trump’s next immigration crackdown.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the Playbook podcast, foreign affairs are going to dominate the day again with questions for the president about Venezuela and Ukraine.
0:13.8	Donald Trump and Mike Johnson are both focused on Tennessee tonight as the GOP sweats on a special election there.
0:20.6	And New Orleans will be the next city
0:22.4	poised for a crackdown from ice. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Monday,
0:28.6	December 1st. It's December, you guys. Oh my goodness. Open your advent calendar window immediately if
0:34.3	you haven't done it. Dash, do you have an advent calendar? Okay, no, but I'm like a Christmas addict. I've created a full on winter wonderland in my home
0:41.9	over the weekend. Oh, yeah, yeah, garlands everywhere. My husband's Jewish, so I got him some
0:46.8	little Hanukkah gnomes. I love it. I don't know that he appreciated the gesture,
0:51.0	but I'm trying to give him a little. Honokinom. I didn't know such thing existed.
0:58.6	Okay, let's talk about some actual politics, shall we? Because we started last week, very focused on
1:04.1	Ukraine and Venezuela. And I have to say, seven days on, they still feel like the biggest
1:08.5	stories in town to me this week. I want to talk about Venezuela because over the weekend, Donald Trump announced the airspace.
1:15.8	There is closed as far as he's concerned.
1:17.7	We know he had a conversation with Nicolas Maduro last week.
1:21.0	We don't know what he said, but there was some reporting that he may have issued some sort of ultimatum.
1:25.5	In the meantime, there's been a lot of conversation,
1:28.8	Dasha, about these strikes on ships in the Caribbean following a big Washington Post story on
1:34.2	Friday. I'm really interested in this. Now, if you guys didn't see the story that Washington Post
1:39.3	reported essentially that Pete Higgs at the Defense Secretary and one of the very first boat strikes in the
1:44.6	Caribbean issued an order that everyone on the boat be killed. The first strike did not kill everyone on
1:50.2	the boat and then the commanders issued a second strike when they saw there were some survivors that
1:54.5	took those guys out as well. That's a very important story because it's not allowed for America just to kill people in that
	...

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