What is Trump trying to do in Venezuela?

Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tensions are high after President Trump ordered a military strike on a boat in the Pacific Ocean this week. It’s the latest in a series of attacks on vessels the administration has accused of carrying illicit drugs out of Venezuela. The president says these attacks are intended to stop narcoterrorists, despite Venezuela’s minor role in the drug trade. Could the real driver behind this campaign be the type of regime change Trump often railed against?

An estimated seven million Americans marched across the country in the second round of the “No Kings” protest. Participants voiced their frustrations with the Trump administration and its policies. Some Republican leaders dismissed the protests and its anti-Trump messaging. Do they run the risk of making the same mistakes Democrats made as the Tea Party gained notoriety?

The nationwide redistricting push is the motivating force behind California’s Proposition 50. The ballot measure could completely reshape the state’s electoral maps. Our panel answers one listener’s question about how to approach the measure, and the “moral confusion” the redistricting fight has introduced.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being an American right now is a wild ride.
0:03.8	The headlines come fast, but what do they actually mean for people's lives?
0:08.3	I'm Alex Wagner, and on my new crooked media podcast, Runaway Country,
0:12.6	I'm talking to people across the nation to uncover how political chaos is shaping their everyday realities.
0:18.9	Join me in some of the smartest thinkers in politics to ask how we take back the
0:23.6	reins of a runaway nation.
0:25.7	Listen to Runaway Country with Alex Wagner every Thursday, wherever you get our podcasts
0:30.3	or watch full episodes on YouTube.
0:35.6	Welcome to left, right and center, everybody.
0:38.3	I'm David Green. You know, for some time, I think it has been easy to see President Trump as kind of a reluctant participant in global affairs, right?
0:48.3	After all, he promised that he was committed to America first.
0:52.3	But then there was the conflict in Ukraine and then the war in Gaza and he had to intervene. Still, it was reluctantly, though, right? Or not? President Trump is not showing much reluctance these days. He leaned into being the Supreme peacemaker in Gaza. Some voices in his party said, hey, what about Americans at home, struggling farmers,
1:12.4	elderly Americans dealing with health insurance costs? President Trump just leaned in, even saying
1:17.4	this week that if Hamas does not abide by a peace deal, quote, we're going to go in and straighten
1:23.2	it out. Could that mean U.S. forces in Gaza? Who knows? The president keeps embracing his role as
1:29.7	potential peacemaker in Ukraine with great political risk, I would say. He certainly doesn't want to be
1:34.7	seen as getting played by Russian leader of Vladimir Putin, and maybe that's why he just canceled a summit
1:40.0	with Putin, saying he didn't feel it was going to get anywhere. But maybe the most shocking
1:45.0	development has been Trump's outright aggression against Venezuela. The president has ordered a
1:51.0	series of deadly military strikes targeting boats, some in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela,
1:56.4	but now also the Pacific Ocean, saying he's going after what he describes as narco-terrorists coming from Venezuela.
2:02.4	The administration says that these vessels are part of a drug trade and that this is all about self-defense protecting Americans who are suffering in a drug epidemic.
	...

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