English transcript

Well, a couple things. First of all, Maria Corina

Machado is fantastic, and she's someone I've

known for a very long time and and she uh she's

that whole movement is. But here's the... we

are dealing with the immediate reality. The

immediate reality is that unfortunately, and

sadly, but unfortunately, the vast majority

of the opposition is no longer present inside

of Venezuela. We have short-term things that

have to be addressed right away. We all wish

to see a bright future for Venezuela, a transition

to democracy, all of these things are great

and we all want to see that. I've worked on

that for 15 years on a personal level, both

in the Senate and now as National Security Advisor

and Secretary of State. These are things I still

care about, we still care about. But what we're

talking about is what happens over the next

two, three weeks, two, three months. And and

how that ties to the national interest of the

United States. And so we expect to see more

compliance and cooperation than we were previously

receiving. With Nicholas Maduro, you could not

make a deal or an arrangement. Although he,

by the way, was given very generous offers.

He could have left Venezuela as recently as,

you know, a week and a half ago. There were

opportunities available for him to avoid all

of this. Because he's not... he's not someone

we can work with. He suckered the Biden administration

into stupid deals. He's made a career out of

not keeping deals and figuring out how to how

to save himself by buying time. And we were

not... President Trump was not going to fall

into that trap. So now there are other people

in in in charge of the military and police apparatus

there. They're going to have to decide now what

direction they want to go. And we hope they

will choose a different direction than the one

Nicholas Maduro picked. Ultimately, we hope

this leads to a holistic transition all the

way around in Venezuela, societal, political,

democ... all of that. We're in favor of all

of that. But right now we have to take the first

steps, and the first steps are securing what's

in the national interest of the United States,

and also beneficial to the people of Venezuela.

And those are the things that we're focused

on right now. No more drug trafficking, no more

Iran, Hezbollah presence there, and no more

using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries

around the world and not benefiting the people

of Venezuela or frankly, benefiting the United

States and and the region.