4.9 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Cilia Flores’ Role: Far from being a symbolic first lady, Flores is a mastermind behind corruption and drug trafficking. She was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury and linked to major criminal activities, including her nephews’ cocaine smuggling.
Western Hemisphere Strategy: The discussion emphasizes the Monroe Doctrine and its modern interpretation under Trump (“Donroe Doctrine”), asserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere to counter Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence.
Military Operation: The arrest of Maduro was a highly precise Delta Force mission, compared to past U.S. interventions like Noriega’s capture in Panama. The podcast praises Trump’s decisiveness and military success without U.S. casualties.
Regional Impact:
Future of Venezuela:
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.4 | Welcome, it is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. |
| 0:08.9 | It is nice to have you with us as we are doing part two of our in-depth conversation on Venezuela. |
| 0:14.8 | What has happened since Maduro is left? |
| 0:16.7 | What is next? |
| 0:17.5 | And Senator, we've got three different things we're going to talk about. |
| 0:19.9 | And if people miss episode one, it's one that really went viral. So make sure you go back and listen to it. But we're |
| 0:25.9 | going to go in depth again in this episode on three major different aspects of this story. |
| 0:31.8 | Well, listen, episode one, which came out Monday, we did a deep dive into number one. What happened? |
| 0:37.3 | What happened in Venezuela? |
| 0:39.1 | What, what President Trump did sending in the military to capture and arrest Nicholas Maduro and his |
| 0:45.3 | wife? We secondly discussed why Venezuela matters. What are the geopolitical consequences of |
| 0:52.0 | Venezuela, the massive oil reserves, the massive gold reserves and other |
| 0:55.4 | minerals. We talked about why Russia and China and Iran and Hezbollah were all in Venezuela. And |
| 1:02.6 | finally, we did a very careful explanation of the legal basis, the legal authority for why |
| 1:08.4 | President Trump had the authority to order this attack, to order this |
| 1:12.4 | arrest. We laid it out in detail. We're seeing a lot of Democrats and the media and law professors, |
| 1:19.0 | all of which are coming from exactly the same place, claiming this is illegal, this was a kidnapping, |
| 1:24.3 | all of that is nonsense. And if you didn't listen to Monday's podcast, you should go |
| 1:28.5 | back and I lay out the legal basis. And in fact, the opinion from the U.S. Department of Justice |
| 1:34.6 | for the January 3rd, 1990 arrest of Manuel Noriega in Panama under very similar circumstances. |
... |
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