The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
After American forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to stand trial here, almost no Republicans spoke out in dissent. Notably, however, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did speak out. In a series of remarkable tweets, she accused Trump of breaking his promise to avoid military adventurism abroad. Now, the idea that Trump and MAGA are anti-interventionist or anti-war, as we’re constantly told, has long been obvious bullshit, but now we have a MAGA leader stating this very plainly. Strikingly, Greene said straight-out that this is a bid to take Venezuela’s oil. Norm Eisen, the publisher of The Contrarian, has been saying we need to look at Trump’s invasion in similar terms: as an example of international corruption. So we’re talking to Norm about how all this unmasks Trump/MAGA’s true ideology and intentions. Norm, good to have you on, man.
Norm Eisen: Thank you for having me, Greg. Honored to be here.
Sargent: Great to have you on. So as everybody has heard, U.S. staged a major attack on Venezuela, bombing its air defenses and seizing Maduro. The justification is that he’s a narco-terrorist who’s being indicted in the U.S. Now look, Maduro is in many ways an illegitimate leader. He’s a thug. He’s an international pariah. But the bottom line is this wasn’t authorized by Congress. It’s an undeclared and unprovoked war and it violates international law. Norm, how bad is this?
Eisen: Greg, we haven’t seen anything like this in modern American history. It violates the Constitution. It is an invitation to the Putins and Xis of the world to do the same thing in their backyards. It puts our service members potentially at risk. And as Marjorie Taylor Greene shockingly noted, it’s a betrayal of Donald Trump’s commitments to the American people: less foreign adventurism, more helping them at home. He’s doing the opposite.
Sargent: Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene did post the long and remarkable takedown of Trump. You just got into a little of it. I’m going to read some more from it:
“If prosecuting narco-terrorists is a high priority, then why did President Trump pardon the former Honduran president?”
She also said, quote: “By removing Maduro, this is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies.”
She also said this: “Americans disgusted with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because both parties always keep the Washington military machine funded and going. This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy, were we wrong.”
Norm, she’s really not wrong about the betrayal of MAGA here, is she?
Eisen: No, she’s not. First of all, she notes that Donald Trump has admitted that he’s doing this to benefit Big Oil. And Greg, she’s hitting a note here where the right and the left actually have some common ground—the genuine right and the left, not Trump’s party, which is all about the greatness of Trump, including supporting his corruption. We should not be invading foreign countries to seize their oil. I mean, the guy is such an unsophisticated dictator. Trump is setting up a payback loop to the big oil companies. He said as much during the campaign. It was reported that he openly said, You should vote for me. You should financially support me. Because, in essence, I’ll make it worth your while if I get into office.
Sargent: Norm, not only did he do that, he did it while he was raising enormous amounts of money from them.
Eisen: And he did it at a fundraising event. And that fundraising has not stopped, Greg, because he’s done political fundraising from the oil companies. But then he’s done quasi-official fundraising for his whims, like the ballroom that he’s going to erect over the destroyed East Wing. That ballroom is like—remember how in the Popeye cartoon, Popeye would have one giant arm, the rest of him scrawny? That ballroom is symbolic; it’s like a corruption tumor on the White House grounds.
So there’s that aspect, the corruption, and there is a commitment that Donald Trump made that he would fight the corruption of the swamp. Instead, he’s just deepening the swamp. So that’s one point. A second point that she notes is Donald Trump promised an end to the forever wars and the entanglements around the world. And instead, he’s just thrust himself into every conflict all over the globe—here, Greg, kidnapping a foreign president, whatever legal claims we may have against him. And nobody supports Maduro, nobody likes Maduro, but you’ve got to deal with Maduro in a legal way.
Part of our gripe with Maduro is that he did not follow the laws, including in running his own country or drug trading. Well, can we break the laws then to go and grab Maduro?
Sargent: I just want to throw this in here, Norm. We recently at The New Republic described what Trump is doing with the presidency as creating a bribe delivery system. And to your point about the fact that fundraising is ongoing, I really do think reporters are going to want to start looking at where Trump is raising the money now in the context of what we’re seeing.
Eisen: That’s right. It’s one of the most outrageous examples of the corruption of government that we’ve seen in American history—probably the most outrageous. And that brings me to the third betrayal that Marjorie Taylor Greene writes about in her long tweet, her social media posting. If you’re primarily focused on grabbing as much cash as you can to stuff into your own pockets and that of your allies so they can pay you back by supporting your political and personal self-aggrandizement, then you’re not focusing on the reason you got elected, which is to help the American people.
And the American people are facing an affordability crisis, a health care crisis. And the two are interrelated. Health care premiums are skyrocketing all over the country because of Donald Trump’s policy failures. Marjorie Greene notes that. And it’s the distraction factor. This is not what they put Donald Trump in office to do. And I think you see that in the extreme unpopularity. Most unpopular president at this point in their tenure of anyone not named Trump—except for the possible exception of his first term, the most unpopular.
Sargent: Well, Norm, I want to try to get at what Trump actually intends with the oil in Venezuela. He’s saying that U.S. oil companies are going to go into Venezuela now and revive the oil industry. You’ll be shocked to hear that we get some of the money. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, no, we’re going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil because we have to have, we were sending our expertise in. So you may need something not very much. But no, we’re to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.
Sargent: So it’s a little unclear how real all this is. Some of the oil companies themselves seem to be very reluctant to go in now, but it sure looks like pillage or plunder. What’s your take on Trump’s actual designs here? What do you think he’s going to actually try to do and what will it look like?
Eisen: Well, we know that Chevron is already present there and we know that other oil companies are barred from participating in general because of U.S. sanctions. And Trump promised those oil companies when he was raising money during the campaign that he would release the Biden-era strictures on them. These sanctions were in place in the Biden era. So I think that the initial form of the corruption is going to be allowing oil companies to start profiting again, withdrawing oil, being present in Venezuela.
There’s hostile sentiments being expressed by the Venezuelan government at the moment. What we should look for, though, is whether—even as they continue to make noises, because this is unpopular to say the least with Maduro supporters in Venezuela—Trump may have actually done one of the few things that could give ordinary Venezuelans more sympathy for Maduro by making him into a kidnap victim and by violating international law, violating American law to snatch the guy out of the country. Look for, though, the loosening of those restrictions, American oil companies going back in there.
And then, of course, that sets up this vicious cycle where those same oil companies and/or their executives can start contributing to Trump’s campaign ventures, to his misbegotten vanity projects in government, like the ballroom, like the Kennedy Center. Let’s not forget he’s also raising money as part of this scheme, putting his name on the Kennedy Center. That’ll be the initial level of thaw. You know, the Venezuelan government could continue to make noises about rejecting Trump while allowing the oil companies to come in under this Trump-administration bullying. That’s what I expect, the cutting edge of it.
Sargent: Yes, I think that’s very reasonable to assume it’s going to be really, really ugly. I want to stress something else for a second. It’s good that Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling out Trump for breaking his anti-war promises, but it’s just not true that Trump and MAGA are anti-war or anti-interventionist or anything like that. That whole thought is based on a confused reading of Trump and MAGA’s hatred of multilateralism and international law and institutions. Right here, we see Trump saying almost explicitly that they’re basically using the military abroad to pillage and plunder. I think this just breaks MAGA. You have people like Tucker Carlson who are criticizing Trump adventurism, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer criticizing this latest action. But broadly speaking, what we’re seeing now just wrecks whatever lingering sense there was that MAGA actually stands for anything, right?
Eisen: You do have misbegotten isolationists, America Firsters—that often goes with anti-Semitism. Let’s not get too excited about MTG given some of the anti-Semitic sentiments that she has expressed over the years. That strain of nativist isolationism is really contrary to American interests. It misunderstands our interests. The greatest thing that could have happened for our country—the thing that has powered American wealth, power, and safety since the end of World War II—has been the establishment of international institutions that allow America to prosper and that create peace and prosperity around the world. We’ve helped lift billions out of poverty around the planet by anchoring the economy. It brings investment into our country. It makes the American dollar the currency of choice. It brings prosperity to the American people.
I’m not saying it was perfect. I think you agree with me that we made mistakes in the trade policies of the 1980s, unduly sacrificed the American heartland. There’s things we can do better. But it’s been an extraordinary generation after generation of peace and prosperity for America. When we can avoid adventurism like the Venezuelan adventure—Vietnam was an example of a needless fight that we picked that cost tens of thousands of American lives. Look at Vietnam today, Greg. They want to be a capitalist nation. They want to do business with us. That’s the global system anchored by America that Donald Trump is tearing to pieces.
Sargent: Right, no question. And the fact that we have on a number of occasions not lived up to the promise of this international order, to put it somewhat charitably, doesn’t change your point, I think, at all. Just to close this out, Norm, this is an illegal, unprovoked war. You wear another hat as a legal advocate, and a Democratic House could take over in 2027 if Democrats won the midterms. What are you and your group doing and what could Democrats do going forward about this?
Eisen: Well, at Democracy Defenders Action and our parallel 501(c)(3), Democracy Defenders Fund, we’ve embarked on a series of over 235 legal actions and matters to push back on Donald Trump’s illegality. And Greg, I think it’s very important not to take the illegality of the Venezuelan adventure... it’s unconstitutional. Donald Trump can’t do this without the permission of Congress. It’s an act of war to grab the leader of another country. Not to take that in isolation, but look at the many cases that we have litigated where the courts have said what Donald Trump is doing is illegal. We and others have secured more than 200 court orders to that effect. The Supreme Court just most recently said Donald Trump’s domestic abuse of the military, his National Guard deployments, are illegal. Many, many other examples.
At Democracy Defenders Fund, we’ve started the process of pursuing the law licenses of the lawyers who are telling Trump and his cronies that all of this, including the boat strikes, is legal. It is not. You’re not allowed to kill civilians in international waters; none of the legal predicates that are necessary in order to do that are there. And to the extent that that is the foundation now, and it has been the foundation for going into Venezuela, we’re going to be pursuing the illegality there. So bar proceedings are one example of the kind of legal cases that you can bring. You find places where there’s guardrails and you reinforce those guardrails. And so we’ve done that across the board.
Sargent: Norm, let me ask you, what do you expect if Democrats control the House? I think this is clearly impeachable. There’s going to be a long list of things Trump could be impeached for. But that aside for the moment, what do you expect a Democratic House to do about this kind of thing?
Eisen: The power of the House includes oversight and accountability. I expect that you’ll see a rigorously prioritized list of the biggest scandals, biggest examples of corruption that have harmed the American people, and that the House will investigate those and issue subpoenas, have hearings, and enforce those subpoenas as needed. I do think—having worked on the impeachment of President Trump, the first impeachment, and then covered the second impeachment of President Trump for CNN—I think that you will see impeachment proceedings, maybe against Cabinet members in the first instance, and the investigative powers of the House are at their height.
We’ve got an epidemic of corruption. This invasion to benefit oil companies so they can pay Donald Trump back is an example of that corruption, and it harms the American people, puts our service members in harm’s way. And these are profits that are being grabbed to benefit Trump and continue his corruption. This is not in the interests of Americans. And they hate corruption. They hate it. So expect consequences if the Democrats return to power in Congress.
Sargent: Well, I will say that this invasion of Venezuela and this illegal action does give Democrats a good argument—another good argument—for putting them in charge of the House. I hope they make it. Norm Eisen, terrific to talk to you, man. Thanks so much for coming on.
Eisen: Thank you, Greg. Love being here.