Subscribe to The Spectator in our Black Friday Flash Sale and you'll get 12 weeks of the magazine, along with full access to all of our online content, for just £12. Not only that, but we'll also send you a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label Whiskey worth £30 on the shops, absolutely free.

Hurry though, this ridiculously good offer, ends on the 1st of December.

Go to www.

Spectator.com.uk.

Forward slash Friday.

Hello and welcome back to the Americano Show, a series of discussions in which we talk about American politics, power and prejudices.

Each week, we will do at least two possibly more episodes speaking to an American or an American expert about what is going on in America. We will cover the Trump presidency,

of course, but we will also be doing quite a lot of non-Trump related podcasts, because if you're

anything like me, the story of Donald Trump can get a bit overwhelming. Please keep listening

and enjoy.

I'm going to be joined today by the great Daniel McCarthy, who is of course a spectator columnist and editor of modern age.

And we're going to be talking about Venezuela because not in the latest issue, but in the issue before, Dan wrote a very good column about the Trump administration's increasing, it seems, belligerence towards the Venezuelan regime, which is, of course, an awful regime.

But Trump has, it seems, given authorization to the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela,

and there does appear to be a concerted attempt at regime change by the Trump administration in the country.

And of course, Dan, this doesn't sit very naturally with the Trump foreign policy that a lot of

people wanted back when he emerged as a presidential candidate in 2016. And yet at the same time,

this Western hemispheric influence, this Western hemispheric agenda, it does tie into that, doesn't it?

It does. And you know, even in the first term, Donald Trump had made various moves against Nicholas Maduro.

So at one point, the United States tried to declare that a rival political figure named Juan Guido was in fact the leader of the country.

And of course, that was, you know, you can make a claim like that, but it doesn't actually have any force

behind it. And so it achieved nothing. But even in the first term, there were signs that the Trump

administration, or at least people within it wanted to, you know, drive Maduro out of power

...