Trump Says U.S. Is “In Charge” of Venezuela — But What Happens Next? | Pivot

Well, I think the obvious is that it's chaos. I mean, it's chaotic for the country. It's bad for the country. I think that I believe, and I think Kara, maybe you have said this as well, and I agree with you if you did say it, is that I think that Donald Trump has been surprised by how much he's been able to get away with. And every time he gets away with something, it emboldens him to do something else, to do something that's even worse. I was listening to a podcast over the holidays, and it had quotes from Barack Obama in there, and everything he said about what was going to happen in the second Donald Trump administration really came true. And he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, he said, 'We've seen this movie before, and we know the sequel is always worse.' And so the more Donald Trump gets away with, if he is allowed to pardon people and there's not enough uproar about it and nothing happens, and he's going to pick, he's going to arrest people without due process on the streets or detain them even if they're American citizens, or he's going to invade sovereign countries. Now I think everyone on this panel and everyone can agree that something needed to be done about Maduro. He's a bad person, but it's just the way that he did it. And look, how can a tyrant arrest or detain another tyrant? It doesn't make sense.

Rather easily. And just real quickly, what he's doing though, I believe, is setting a precedent because from what he said is that Maduro was this and that. He's a tyrant and he was a criminal and he did all these things. He tried to overturn an election or he influenced an election, which is the very same things that Donald Trump tried to do. And he's also a criminal. So why does Donald Trump get to get away with it and Maduro doesn't? It doesn't make sense.

Well, what it's not about is drugs, right? Donald Trump over a dozen times this weekend said oil. We heard Marco Rubio say this is about freeing oil for the people. What people? And to me, one of the biggest tells was on Air Force One when Donald Trump was asked, 'Did you speak to American oil businesses before?' And he said, 'I spoke to them before and I spoke to them after.' Okay? Congress was not notified, but businesses were. That's how autocracies run. That is not how a democracy runs. And it's important to remember that American oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, Venezuelan oil, years and years ago. Those deals were cancelled by the Venezuelan government.

Yes, correct. Before Maduro. What's happening now? We are now making an aggressive move that are going to, we're now going to spend an enormous amount of money and human capital, sending American troops down there for US oil businesses, who by the way, it's unclear if they actually asked the president for this or not because yes, they're all going to shuffle down there and figure out how we're going to make a whole lot of money out of this. But remember, it's not like Donald Trump saying today, 'We now control Venezuela.' They're not going to turn on the spigots and money is now going to pour into this country. This will now cost our government billions of dollars, right, to now go down there and to secure it. And now these companies are going to decide, are they going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars or at least a hundred billion dollars in the next decade because that's how long it's going to take to then get this oil business opportunity to come to fruition. My question is, who are the American people? We know in the last 10 months all that Donald Trump has done to please the tech community or all that he's trying to do to please Wall Street. And I think this is a quick important reminder when they say Wall Street loves this. I spoke to a bank CEO yesterday that said, 'We were positioned for this. We went long Venezuela. We went long PDVSA, which is the state-owned oil and gas company, a week ago,' and they were positioned because the market's going. Investors can sell everything tomorrow, right? There's a conflict. They can buy today, they can sell tomorrow. They're out. What hurts government and the American people? We can't make giant long-term, you know, we have to make giant long-term decisions as a government. We don't operate like day traders. And so when Wall Street says this works for me today, it works for them today until China tomorrow says, 'Oh, hold on. Are you ready for what we're going to do with Taiwan?' If this is Trump's strongman move, giddy up. Look what we could do here. And so that's where Wall Street, and I'll stop talking now, that's where Wall Street is sort of two minds. On one hand, they're like, 'Money's coming in. This is an opportunity. Great, we're going to unleash this.' But on the other, now that there's no rules in the jungle, right? Now that we're breaking international law and world norms, what could happen around the world? And that's what...

It becomes comedy. It's become kind of serious and it couldn't be less funny. Correct. The core of all of this, right? We can't, while we're criticizing what the president did or the way he did it, Maduro is a horrible, awful, awful man, an oppressive leader. And so Venezuelans and Venezuelan-Americans are thrilled to see this man out of power. But Kara, you're asking the most important question with now what? But the absurdity of him now being a fashion icon is so absurd in every way.

But that shows you where our culture is going. And I believe it shows you what the, just the grossness that the MAGA folks have just injected into society in the culture. And it's also social media as well.

Well, MAGA is morphing right now. Don't forget that MAGA, that TikTok is becoming MAGA. Remember who's going to take over the algorithm of TikTok? That's going to be the Ellisons. They are MAGA. If you are on TikTok... Yeah. Well, they're going to have... Well, Oracle will own 15%. Let me be clear. So, but let me say, if you are on TikTok and if you've noticed that your algorithm has changed and if there's more pro-MAGA stuff that gets elevated than stuff that is anti-MAGA or that just tells the truth about Donald Trump. So TikTok, I believe from my experience with TikTok, that it is MAGA.

Well, I think Congress will make a lot of noise and then do nothing as they always do, sadly. I mean, they need to do more. They could start some sort of procedure. They can just do hearings. They can demand something. You know, Chuck Schumer actually said the f-bomb. Well, that, you know, to hear that coming out of Chuck Schumer's mouth, but he should have had that energy a long time ago. He should have had this years ago before Roe was overturned. You know what I mean? Before Donald Trump got elected the second time, they should have had the balls, as you said, to do something. And they're not. So, I blame both the Democrats and the Republicans. I mean, obviously the Republicans are...

I think the Republicans, because if women were in charge, we know how to multitask, right? And when you think about, we know how to multitask, and while Venezuela is hugely important, it's going to occupy Congress. It's not occupying the daily lives of the American people. And the American people are about to wrestle with soaring health care costs, affordability problems, and we've got, I'm certainly not going to say a labor crisis by any means, but we've got a tenuous labor situation happening in this country right now. So lawmakers are going to go back. They've got to deal with Venezuela, the amount of effort and time and money we're going to spend there. And then the issues facing American people's daily lives, which are the reason Donald Trump's poll numbers were getting lower and lower in the months leading into year's end.

I mean, I think we're going to see more of the ridiculousness. I think we're going to see like, right now we're seeing the fact that he's in the prison that P. Diddy was in and Luigi. But then here's the question, Kara. Two weeks from now, in like truly two weeks from now in Davos when every world leader and business leader all gets together and talks about how are we going to collaborate and make the world better and stronger together. What's going to be the theme this year? Strongman who done it. I... Yeah. Yeah. Well, what is it? You're going...

I honestly think the people who attend Davos are sort of in on it, you know, that they want the money. So, yeah, I don't think there's going to be a theme where, you know...

I think they're going to sound a lot like Donald Trump on Air Force One with Lindsey Graham standing next to him about to drop to his knees and, you know, shine his shoes or whatever he's going to do. They said it out loud. They said this is about oil. Donald Trump said this is about oil. And Lindsey Graham said with all of the deals and all of this happening, we're going to become more prosperous with all of these new... So that's what it's about and that's what Davos is going to be about. That's it. Yeah. Is Davos relevant?

Yeah. In the US, it was made by this streaming platform in Canada called Crave. And it costs 3 to 5 million an episode. Compare that to Stranger Things, which I think it was like 50 million for the finale episode. And what is dominating the conversation right now? It's Heated Rivalry in every aspect. I mean, people are like, Don, you've rewatched it, right? This is a phenomenon. People are rewatching it. People are not just watching...

As the expert gay man on the panel... But it's not just that. When you said it was a gay story, it's actually a love story.

It's a love story. It is a love story, but people are calling it the gay hockey show. But...

But it is sex-heavy. It is sexy.

But the most important episode of that, episode five, had no sex. And what you're seeing, I think it's a really interesting thing. I mean, first of all, do you know that according to Pornhub, 47% of viewers of gay porn are straight women. So that's, you know, that's just the way it is. Straight women are talking about this show. Straight women love this show.

I think Kara's favorite show, Hunting Wives, so these boys could run. That was the amuse-bouche to this, right?

I was watching Heated Rivalry on the plane last night and I was like, 'Oh my god.'

Two more seasons. So here's the thing. I think it's you have a bunch of unknowns and we're also watching in particular. I mean, there are three main guys which are Connor Storrie who plays Ilya, who speaks, if you watch Russian TikTok, which is TikTok with Russians, they're losing their minds over his accent and his Russian, when not just his accent speaking English but his Russian. This is a Texan born and raised who started taking Russian lessons a week before filming. It's phenomenal. You're watching Connor Storrie become a star and right before our eyes a star is born. We hope that fame doesn't corrupt him. Hudson Williams, who plays Shane Hollander, is an unknown that is just having an unbelievable moment. And then the most known, I loved him in Schitt's Creek, was François Arnaud who plays Scott Hunter, and he is the one who had that pivotal episode, which is episode five, which has zero sex. So I think they bring you in. It's sexy...

is the same stroke of beauty of independent media, right? Before independent media existed, when there was just giant pillars, right? When there was three television networks, when there was three papers of note, when there was three movie studios, you had to work your way up and be part of this giant conglomerate and marketing machine. And that's the only way that content could be distributed. Now, if you make something magical, it can find legs. It can find a home. And that's sort of the beauty of, right, we talk so much about the problems of social media and all the, you know, the bad actors and so on and so forth, but when you now have the system broken and these unknowns can create something on a small platform and then it gets distributed to me, like that's extraordinary and that's something that couldn't have happened decades ago back when they were, you know, three studio heads with their arms folded running Hollywood.

They were breaking what she said. What she said. What she said. Kara, look, I want to say, remember when we had this conversation, we talked about, you know, some of the things you see on independent media and independent journalists and podcasts. You know, it's done by a skeleton crew, what you would call for broadcast, and you walk into a big broadcast studio office and you go, 'What are all these people doing here?' And so, Stephanie is right. This is where the media is going. There will be big breakthroughs. There's going to be the big guys and then I still consider myself a little guy. There's going to be a little guy like me. But this is where it's going and I think it's actually fantastic because something that's small can have lift, as you say, and something that's big where it's overthought, like what Stephanie says with these guys and people sitting around going, 'It's got to grow through this' or whatever, that's not where we are anymore. We're not there anymore. People want it a little messy and authentic. I think we're in a transition period and I think there's space for both and I think that's what's awesome about it.

You bring up a good point. This is going to change society, I believe, like Will & Grace did. I think...

Got a short, these all these shows now have such a shorter life. If the budgets go triple, right, these kids are now huge celebrities or what happened with Glee.

Or maybe the example that you're pointing to is remember the first season of Nobody Wants This. Okay, nobody expected it. You loved every minute of it. It was like, what is this? It's touching me. It's connecting me. And then the second season, which had so much hype.

Oh, for God's sake. I listen, I for a mosquito just shutting the show on me. I shall not. Won the, what did it win the awards last night? It doesn't matter, like five people. I love the show, but you cannot put it in the same breath as Heated Rivalry. I shall not.

But can I jump in here, please? Not it is... Can I jump in here and tell you I don't think it's going to change because Jacob Tierney, who you know, Brooke, is the, he's a Canadian creator of this. They're adapting a book. They have to stay somewhat true to the book. A book written by a woman. And so, and I've been watching him because I'm obsessed. My husband's like, 'You're obsessed with this.' And so, I think that Jacob Tierney knows that it cannot change. It's got to be authentic and it's got to stay grounded. But here's what I just want to say, this one thing. You know how Will & Grace changed the culture and made it okay for, you know, gay people to kiss on TV or just to have gay plot lines on television. I believe that this is doing the same thing to the culture because as Brooke mentioned, straight guys are talking about it. Hockey podcasters are talking about it. People who do sports, they're talking about it. Yeah. And so... Yeah. Empty Netters podcast with a bunch of white boys who are sports hockey fanatics.

Last thing you would expect, they are crying. It's the biggest green flag of men I've ever seen. I've never been a... Can I say one thing, Kara? Can I tell you a story?

Okay, I'm going to tell you a story. Going to get it in a second. So, I don't have a sports background whatsoever. Yeah. When I was a senior in college, I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and a boy took me to a dinner at then senior in college's house, Peyton Manning. It was a big... I at the time I didn't even know who he was. He was about to win the Heisman right after Mardi Gras ended. I'm sitting at a long, long, long dinner table of all of these Miss football players. I know nothing about Miss. I know nothing about college football. But looking at a table of 45 boys, I say to the guy next to me, 'What is it like? What is the mix go with, you know, like gay players on the team and straight players on the team?' Okay, this question came because I'm a girl who doesn't know sports, but I know math and probability and statistics would tell you when dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of men are in a group, there's some gay ones in there. When I asked this question at this dinner at Peyton Manning's house in 19, or his parents' house in 1997, my date practically threw me in the bayou, flipped the table out, right? For real. For real. I mean, a guy hit the table with both hands. 'What? Are you kidding me?' I mean, like it was, I was on the fast train back to Jersey and here we are 30 years later and nobody's saying you play hockey, you're gay. It's probability and statistics. There's going to be some gay guys on the team.

No way. Kara, were you?

And are you doing... You were a total... I was, by the way, a puck bunny when I was in high school.

I know. You're... What's a puck bunny? Okay. It's, you know, I grew... Is that like a lacrossestitute? Is that like a groupie? Is that a... It's a groupie of hockey players. Yeah, puck bunny. You were for the Rangers. I grew up in Rye. That's where the Rangers were. We were puck bunnies. And our parents were like, 'If you can get us Ranger tickets, have fun.' Wow. [__] you.

I was a Scott Hunter because that scene, but I don't love Scott's boyfriend. I'm just going to be honest. He's like a short king. He's great, but he's not my guy. But Ilya and Shane, I'm obsessed with. But Ilya, I mean, Connor Storrie, there's this video of him that he did with Interview magazine where he's wearing a, you know, a Gold's Gym T-shirt and he's lip-syncing to Madonna's Like a Prayer and he does this all over and he... Well, no, that's a different one. But this is one where he does this. Yeah, he's... Anyway, he's very... I can't explain it, but this thing has gone so viral. They're showing it in nightclubs. DJs are interjecting the video. Sports bars, they're showing it. There's a very funny TikTok that's part of the Culture in the newsletter this week that is these two women that are saying like dinner and a movie and their girlfriends eating Chinese food out of with their chopsticks on the floor watching this 30-second clip over and over again.

You know that, I can just imagine the conversation that like they, Lindsey Graham is watching it. There's so many gays in MAGA and Republicans. Of course they're watching it. Allegedly.

Well, I think the biggest story going forward is going to be the fracturing of MAGA. It's already started. The MAGA media is starting with the Megyn Kellys and the Candace Owens and the Benny Johnsons world. Yeah, they're beefing. And I think that is the beginning of the end of MAGA. That's what I believe the biggest story is going to be moving forward.

Okay. For me, you know, I'm going to pick the economy because at the end of the day, I think how people vote is truly rooted in their pocketbook and how they live. And what's interesting is the economy is growing, but its growth is fragile and it's really in the palm of Trump's hands. Like whether the economy builds or weakens depends entirely on Trump's deglobalization agenda, right? Tariffs, mass deportations. So I just think where we go in this K-shaped economy, right, where the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer and we have, and that's only getting exaggerated this year. Where we're headed is where I'm laser-beam focused.

The economy is certainly being goosed. We could have more federal intervention. We could have more farm aid bills of the like. But remember, when you're facing less and less regulation in your business, which is what we're facing right now, you're going to see businesses spend and grow. The thing that's standing in the way is tariffs. And Trump is fat, right, fat in the middle of it. But you're right. Is it just astroturf? Because Kara talks about this all the time. When you look under the Magnificent Seven, under those big giant tech companies that aren't getting hurt, they're being held by AI, that aren't getting hurt by mass deportations. When you look under there, lots of those companies are struggling and if consumers don't have the money to spend or the money that they're spending doesn't go so far. So that's my point is it's a fragile economy and the person who has his hands on the steering wheel is Donald Trump and let's see what he does.

I actually think the best case for him would be if the tariffs were to be ruled illegal. That would be his most graceful exit. He could say, 'I wanted to make America great. I wanted to bring manufacturing back, but they wouldn't let me.' Companies would say, 'Great, we're not having to face these tariffs. The happy days are here again.' I don't think that's going to happen or it's going to be super messy. We'll soon find out, right? Trump is the first to say the market is the economy. It's not. The market has done very well. It could do even better. But under that, what is the world going to look like with kids coming out of college, can't get jobs, when our health... One of the things is we were looking for pajamas yesterday for something? And one of the things that's noticeable is there's fewer items, harder to find and more expensive. Even if you're, you know, it was kind of not, it's noticeable in every store now.

No, it was offline. It was offline. But what's noticeable, Kara... But that's how most people shop. What's noticeable is the big have gotten bigger and the small are getting smaller. Small and mid-sized businesses could not survive tariffs. If you're a giant company, you could frontload your inventory. You can keep cost down. If you're a small business in Georgetown and you're selling toys and books and pajamas, you can't weather storms like this.

Can I, I just want to say this? I think the best case scenario for him would be to completely fail with the economy because Donald Trump does not like to admit that he is wrong. And so if the economy goes off of a cliff, that will be the biggest wakeup call. It's like an addict. You can't, they have to hit rock bottom before they make a change. And I think Donald Trump, the economy has to hit rock bottom for Donald Trump and Republicans to understand that he's [__] up the economy.

We're talking about the economy for the United States of America. Donald Trump is currently flanked by the most powerful tech giants in the world. And while we think, 'Oh my gosh, look at those tech guys kissing his ass. No way. They have played him.' AI is going to change every element of the way that...

God, there's so many. Um, but I, the thing that I'm thinking about as we were talking about Hollywood and the business of Hollywood, which is again not my business, but as a voyeur and as a cultural sort of, you know, fan guru — guru. Uh, by the way, my newsletter exists because of Stephanie and Kara, because of you guys. But um, I think it's the marketing of these movies. For example, I look at um, at uh, Timothée Chalamet's movie Marty Supreme. This is — he is a very genius. It makes a lot of sense why he and Kylie Jenner of the Kardashian world are paired up. They have very similar mindsets of marketing, how to market. This movie was marketed in a way they have never seen before. If you watch TikTok or whatnot, people — a lot of people were very unsure about the movie. They saw it, they came out, they're like, 'I don't know if I loved it. I really don't know. But I went to it. I went to it because of the marketing.' This was not done in a traditional rollout like the night shows, the late night. He did the Sphere. He did blimps. He did a fashion drop and had all of these sports icons wearing Marty Supreme swag. It's really a whole thing. And when you're seeing like, you know, there's a YouTube show, Allen's World, that is now — I think the New York Times just did a big story on it. They have like, I don't know, billions and billions and billions of views a month. And this is — these are shorts. This is the stuff that, you know, your friends Meg Whitman and what's his name want to kill themselves over because these shows are...

It's not doing that well for the price.

No, but Kara, imagine if the Leonardo DiCaprio movie that came out last year, One Battle After Another, this extraordinary film — I'm not saying it should have had the Timothée Chalamet–Kardashian marketing plan, but had they employed more creative, renegade marketing in a different way? People now are like, 'What's that Leo movie? Where can I see it?' And it was months ago. I think they missed — those are old school, and I'm not calling them old, but like old school Hollywood mega celebrities where they probably had to beg Leo to do any press at all because he's Leo. Now you're looking back saying if they would have employed some of these like renegade kind of tactics, it may have had a bigger impact.

Stephanie is right. You've got to have either guerrilla marketing. It's got to be social media heavy. It's got to — it's not just, you can't rely on the old things of 'we'll put an ad here and we'll do that.' Doesn't work anymore. Doesn't play.

I'm talking about movies. I'm talking about getting to the guys of culture.

I love them.

No, no, no. The genius — yes, the genius of the photographer telling the story, you can put in category A, but category...

For me, it's more about them getting played. They — I mean, if they're in the White House and she's a communications person, they should be smarter about their communications.

As a communications person, I changed my profile picture on Twitter of the cesspool of what I — when I use it — to that picture because it's like she's a communications person. She should know exactly what was ahead of her.

I think they all looked bad. I think the only person who actually was on to it was JD Vance. He's like, 'You're going to make us look bad, aren't you?' And I — and I was...

I didn't go to the movies. This is the first holiday season I didn't. First of all, it's pouring rain in LA, but I just rewatched Heated Rivalry and that Palm Beach reality show that Netflix has dropped, which is insane, called Members Only, which is like the Mar-a-Lago Real Housewives. It is astonishingly.

I did not go to the movies, but I'm a bad — I didn't go to the movies even when people love going to the movies. I either like to leave the house dressed with high heels and uncomfortable underwear, or I like to stay home. But like the movies to me, where it's like a little bit stinky in there and I'm not that comfortable in the chairs, that's a hard no.