Did Trump Get Played on Venezuela’s Oil Deal?

- You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson, stand up comedian, speechwriter, other kinds of writer, and most likely to get people to stop me on the street and ask for my autograph podcast host.

I'm joined as always by my panel of experts,

our expert on foreign policy and the military, Chad Scott, Chad, how's it going? - Going well. If you guys watch on YouTube, you'll see my background's getting more and more barren.

I'm redoing my entire office. So that'll be a transition over the next couple weeks, but really go out to be here, still doing the podcast, and I'll get your autograph one day, Nat.

- I'll mail it to you. And if you are watching on YouTube, you'll see that now that I'm engaged, I don't shave anymore. Also joining us, our expert on oil, renewable energy,

all things energy industry, Mr. Global himself Matt Randolph,

“Matt, how are you and your branded hat doing today?”

- I'm doing fantastic, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, check what it says on my face on my hand screen. - You haven't shaved, I'm sorry, I'm confused. - Yeah, I'm a different man. - Yeah, honeymoans over you name.

- For the podcast too, apparently. (laughing) - Okay, to be fair, I haven't shaved either. - I have not shaved like so. - Yeah, I don't have to shave.

- I don't have to shave. - Yeah. - Like I could go a month, and I still wouldn't look like maybe Joe Dirt, but let's because you're growing here. - You're 25 years old there, Mr. Global.

(laughing) - But we've got an interesting week. A lot to talk about right now, as we are recording this, it's currently in Monday evening, August 31st,

around 6 p.m. And as of the current moment, we are at war with Iran again, so I can only predict that by the time

“this episode comes out Wednesday morning,”

Trump will have declared victory on the straight open again. We will have had several fake ceasefire talks, and then there will be several more acts of war, and we will have announced, Trump will announce that he's re-engaging war.

I'm gonna say, late Tuesday, that's my prediction. In the meantime, there's another pretty major story I want to talk about though, which is Trump announced on Friday, an agreement with him to give the US a stake in Venezuela's oil reserves,

and Venezuela's acting president Rodriguez, described the deal as a step towards economic recovery, that will modernize the country's oil reserve. Trump is also saying that we're gonna use this to refit the strategic petroleum reserve.

I got a lot of questions about this, but I want to go to Mr. Global as quickly as possible. Tell me your feelings about this, and can he actually use this towards the SPR? Is that possible?

- Well, it's possible on a long enough timeline, so here's, (laughs)

“on a very long timeline, so here's the deal.”

The oil that goes into the SPR,

it holds basically two kinds.

It holds half of it is generally light, sweet crude, what we produce here in the United States, and the other half is what we call a medium sour crude. But the oil that we put in the SPR, since it's stored in salt caverns for decades at a time,

has to meet very specific requirements, as far as gravity, density, the weight, basically, the amount of corrosiveness it has. So the number is 30 to 45 degrees, so keep that number in your head, 30 to 45.

Just, you can even forget about degrees, just 30 to 45. The oil from the Aranico belt, where we are doing this deal, is usually like an eight.

So it's way outside of 30 to 45, okay? Now, to be clear, the lower the number, the heavier the oil, right? So 45 is the lightest, out of that 30 to 45 range, eight is what, four times heavier than the heaviest that is allowed.

So the way it is, it cannot. And also, a lot of people, for whatever reason, believe that you can blend it and dilute it with lighter oils and lighten it up, you can't do that, you do that in the refining process,

but you can't do that in the storage process, because over time it separates. Now, this stuff doesn't stay blended forever. Light oil and heavy oil is just like oil and water. Eventually, if you shake it up and just set it down,

it'll separate. So the one way this could happen is if the oil could be run through an upgrading process, which is a form of refining, it's what Canada does, a lot of their bitumen and heavy oils up there.

But Venezuela doesn't have the upgrading capacity

to basically convert this heavy oil into a light oil

to put into the SPR.

at $10 to $12 billion and probably five to seven years

of construction time. That's the only way it would work. And even then, it may not fit the specs as the thing, like there's no guarantee. So that is what would have to happen

for that specific oil from Venezuela to go into the SPR.

“Basically, you have to change the entire chemical makeup”

of the oil and convert it to a different kind. - So I suppose my question is, do you think that's all bluster? What are they actually doing with this oil then? - Or you can blend the oil and refine it,

but you can't take that oil and stick it in the SPR. - That's not the thing. - That's what I'm saying is the claim of refilling our SPR, probably bunk. You think it would actually build?

- So if you picture a glass of water with oil and the oil floats on top of the water, right? And how do we get oil out of the SPR? We pump water into it, we bring the oil up, right? And then we pump the oil off the top of the water.

This oil is so heavy that the water sits on top of the oil. So if you put this oil in the SPR,

it'll sink to the bottom and you'll never get it out.

- Oh. - This one I'm saying. - I think that's probably a long crazy straw. - A really long crazy straw? - Yeah.

- I think that's the bottom. - That's the bottom. - Yeah, let's go talk about it. - Yeah. - Totally.

- Okay, I'm hearing that's not realist. - Well, can they replace the oil we refine for like our vehicles in diesel and then use that cleaner oil to fill the SPR? Is that potentially a strategy?

Or is that, or is trying to refine Venezuela, Venezuela and oil for our domestic use, not possible because it's such a different type of oil? - So all oil that pretty much leaves Venezuela today has to go through upgrading,

like you can't even pump it through a pipeline, like you can't transport it on a tanker. Their current capacity to do that is actually less than their current production. Any oil we get from Venezuela

goes straight into refining. It's blended with lighter oils and it's refined to make refined products and it's either sold within or outside the United States. None of the Venezuelan oil really goes into the SPR.

- With that in mind, I mean, this assumes they actually have the oil they say. And I've heard you say or others talk about this may be a big nothing burger, or they may have just completely lied about their reserves.

I mean, who has proven their reserves? I'm trying to figure out 'cause I keep hearing, yeah, 65 billion barrels, but then I hear real experts say, yeah, it's not 65 billion barrels, I mean, it's not.

“And here's the thing, it's not 65 billion barrels.”

And the truth is it wouldn't matter if it was, or it wasn't, because you don't get all that oil. That's not a thing. Their 10-year timeline that they're hoping to achieve is to produce one and a half million barrels a day out of that.

That's their 10-year goal. So the 65 billion barrel talk, like none of that matters,

you're never gonna get even a billion barrels out of it likely.

So here's the thing, when Hugo Chavez was in charge and Venezuela and oil was really climbing. Their oil production was climbing. He used a lot of crazy methodology to artificially inflate Venezuela's oil reserves.

And one year, they went from 90 million to 180 million. And then the next year, or billion, they went from 90 billion to 180 billion. And then the next year, they went to 303 billion. And it was based on methodology

that he was using to calculate their recoverable reserves. And so one of the ways you calculate your recoverable reserves

“is first you have to figure out your total reserves,”

because that's not the same as the amount you can actually get out of the ground. And then you over a period of time, you can see a recovery factor. How much oil are we getting out of this section of land, right?

And you can determine, you know, if you're getting 10% of the oil or 8% of the oil that's estimated to be there. And then that's your recovery factor. And that gives you your total proven reserves. He was using a 20% recovery factor

to estimate his total reserves. When the fields were only getting about 6% recovery, and that means that the total reserves are likely inflated by more than three times what they actually are. Because if your recovery is only 6%.

And your reserves are based on a 20%. 6% is less than a third of 20. And that also explains how they went from 90 to over 300. So if you were using the original recovery rate, which is accurate, Venezuela would have 90 billion

pounds of oil in the entire country and not 303.

to try to bring in new investment to increase the overall expected value of Venezuela and the reserves and all that. It was Donald Trump-esque. It was a hyperbolic exaggeration of what he actually has

to make everything look better than it actually is. So I mean, this sounds exactly what's-- Like what's something better? Intentionally faulty methodology you're saying. This isn't like anything.

That is how we rate the recovery rate. There's an actual recovery rate and he's calculating it wrong intentionally. No, there is a scientific methodology for calculating this stuff.

And he just did it. He just did it-- you know, he was an authoritarian. And he just did it the way he wanted to, to artificially inflate his number.

Venezuela does not have 303 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

It's not a thing that's ever going to be a thing. That's something that drives me crazy. That, like, the USGS and everyone else has accepted this number as its fact. Like, you know, if you look up Venezuela reserves,

you'll see that 303 billion barrel number. It's the most ridiculous number there is in the oil and gas industry. It's so inflated and false. And people often ask, like, if Venezuela

has more oil than anybody on the planet, how come they don't ever produce that much? So maybe they don't have 300 billion barrels. Oh, yeah.

“Yeah, there might be an automobile's reserve answer there, right?”

It might not be that complicated. Is Trump trying to do this to have a separate source of oil from Errando or from the Middle East? Is this a reaction to the continued slowdown of refining, and, like, a Ukraine and, but also in Russia,

but also in the Middle East? Is this his way of trying to circumvent our dependence there? Or what do you think is the motivation here? It's just pure profit. Well, personally, so look, whatever Donald Trump says,

this is, whether it's lowering gas prices or energy independence, which I don't know how Venezuela and oil makes us independent. But either way, none of that's true, because it's not going to lower our gas prices.

This, in my mind, and Chad can speak on this. To me, it's just a teaching move against China. Because China was basically owning Venezuela. Almost all of their oil was going to China to pay off old debts.

And when you borrow money from China, like Venezuela did, it's kind of getting a car at one of those buy-here pay-here places where you're paying the people to you die

and you never own the damn car, or it's like getting a TV

at Renaissance. Like, so Venezuela is just sending oil to China for years to try to cover their debts, and really not, not make it a dent in any of 'em. So I think this is really more of a strategic move

against China to try to keep them out of South America, specifically Venezuela, and these large oil reserves. But the thing is, that doesn't sell

“to the American people, and you have to sell everything.”

So they're going to talk about gas prices, and it being the greatest deal ever, and Donald Trump banned a genius, and I'll let shit know that matters. This, to me, is all a strategic move against China. Chad, what do you think about that?

- Well, I mean, there's some weirdness with this. First of all, we can't rule out the possibility that Donald Trump is just tweeting bullshit quite frankly, just because we're so close to the midterms that he could try to be trying to just get wins.

And when you have things like Alexander Bettencourt, who is Venezuela and businessman being the vehicle for these investments supposedly, as well as the Department of Defense is the loan tool, the Office of Strategic Capital.

It's very weird, because when you have this broad, Department of Defense, low-insystem, under national security, I'm doing air quotes here, there's gonna be some hidden things taking place. But broadly, I more think that

Donald Trump is actually just being played by Delsea Rodriguez in Venezuela. - I don't know, he totally is. - Yeah, and it's like, like you're saying, and it's not just in a business sense.

“I think Trump seems to believe he has secured this long-term”

American victory over Venezuela. He may not be the case, he may just be doing this for tweets, but this reeks of the Apatura Petra Lera oil opening back in the '90s, the Oranoco Belt Projects, and there's a lot of heartburn from companies like Conical Phillips

and Exxonmobile and Chevron, Total, BP, et cetera. I mean, they launched essentially the same deal, as we're seeing right now, from 1993, '97, they dumped billions of dollars into this thing, and it feels like the same thing's happened

and we're repeating history. But the fact is, in 1999, after all these deals were done, after all the investment was taking place, Hugo Chavez came to power, and he passed all these new hydrocarbon laws

requiring Venezuela's oil companies to,

or excuse me, all these oil companies to basically

which was the state owned Venezuela and oil company. And so eventually in 2007, Chavez drops the hammer and says, you know what, you guys have to give a 60% of your companies over to Venezuela, or there's gonna be consequences.

All of the British and most of the American companies, it's kind of said, okay, fine, Exxonmobile and Conical Phillips say, no, we're not doing that, Chavez takes control of them anyway. So, and these guys go to courts of arbitrary international

course of arbitration, they win. They win against Venezuela, but of course, we're not seeing a dime of that.

There's something like $13 or $15 billion that is owed.

“I think they've recruited maybe $700 million of it.”

What we have to understand here is Delsea Rodriguez is the same person when it comes to politics as Maduro and Chavez. She's a Chavista. She's not Maria, Maria Carina Machado.

She was supposed to be. She was the one that was a part of the party that was elected and then Maduro was overthrown. We all thought that Machado, Carina Machado was gonna come back and be this Western partner.

No, they put Delsea Rodriguez. This is a woman whose family roots are deeply embedded in Venezuela's revolutionary left, like her father founded the socialist league in Venezuela. And after Hugo Chavez was, they attempted

overthrowing in 2002, Rodriguez became involved in Chavez's government. And she was actually the Minister of Presidential Affairs in 2006, which means he was in his inner circle. And in 2007, she joined the United Socialist Party

of Venezuela and basically formed herself

around Chavez's ideas. She's like, I said, she's a hardcore Chavista. And then Maduro came along. And I say came along, but really he was actually just handpicked by Chavez to succeed him.

And when he was handpicked, Maduro picked Rodriguez. Delsea Rodriguez to be his vice president.

“And so because of that, I think Donald Trump thinks”

he's got this person that is in his back pocket, like she can be molded. No, this woman has been a Chavista, a Chavez disciple for 30 years. Maduro literally called her his Tigris

because of how aggressively she defended his socialist government. So this is not somebody standing outside of this Chavez Maduro system, who Trump said, hey, we found our person. No, she helped orchestrate the system

that Chavez and Maduro developed that ended up taking over all of these American and British oil companies after they invested. And a lot of people will say, well, Chavez and Maduro are not around.

Donald Trump says he trusts her. He literally said that he trusts her. I think that if you just look at her rhetoric, I mean, in 10 years ago, she was saying American pressure against Venezuela is part of an imperial project

to take Venezuela's natural resources. And that Venezuelans need to fight back. And she's not wrong. 2019, she went to the United States. That came true, huh?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, then funny thing is, I'll give you these what she's saying all the way up until seven months ago. And she's not wrong. It's just running counter to what Trump thinks.

Like the United Nations, she says the United States, this is in 2019, was committing economic terrorism against Venezuela. And that the treasury was actually just called, we should just call it the economic pentagon.

Two years ago, speaking at the World Anti-Fascist Parliamentary Forum, Rodriguez claimed Venezuela was a strategic target of the United States because of its enormous energy reserves. And that Venezuela needed to be prepared to fight back.

She was dismissed. Well, clearly, that came true. And then while we were holding presidential elections, she described the United States as an imperialist and Zionist nation. And it didn't matter whether Democrats or Republicans

were in office. This was Delsea Rodriguez saying these things, 25 years or not 25 years ago, two years ago. January of this year, after Maduro was taken, she's now in power.

She gives a speech, praising Hugo Chavez, and what she called the true nationalization of Venezuela's petroleum industry. She continues to praise him over and over again. And I'm not saying this is good or bad in any way.

I just think that Donald Trump thinks he has his person and she's playing him. She has this self-preservation. She's writing this out until Trump is gone, knowing that after this debacle and Iran,

the U.S. has no appetite to be more forceful in a country. We're not going to deploy troops to Venezuela to secure these oil fields. She just has to outlast Trump.

And that's basically her take.

“And so I think what we're doing is we're just”

reliving history again. No one reads a history book apparently in the Trump administration. And so what happens is history from the '90s and 2000s, we have literally a Chavista, not candidate.

A Chavista president. We keep calling her the interim president. Do you think she's really going to go anywhere?

in all of the power positions, the minute she took power.

She knew that was successful. That probably helps cement that power, right? Like if this doesn't have been an absolute error

“for them, like that's what I'm talking about in the election.”

Exactly, and this is what I predicted. Matt, it corrects me if I'm wrong by all means. But I predict if the U.S. companies are foolish enough to go invest. And I just don't think they are,

which is why I think the Defense Department is involved in the loan program. I think the Defense Department is going to underwrite U.S. oil companies kind of like we do with V.A. home loans almost. So to speak.

So if you default, the government will back you up. With the backup these oil companies, with taxpayer funds in order to have so Trump can get them into Venezuela to start investing. The minute Trump's gone, or even after the midterms,

and all of these, some of the stuff's been built,

she's going to pull the rug out from under all of them

and say, this is ours again. Thanks for building our infrastructure. It's our sovereign nation. She talked about sovereign two days ago. She said, this is our sovereign oil.

Two days ago, she said that. And so Trump has these grandiose ideas of having these American flags all over oil rigs across Venezuela.

“And I think she's going to let it happen.”

And then the minute Trump is gone, or the minute, Trump is weakened in his domestic power. She's going to say, nope, I'm going to do a poll on a show is, and this is all our oil. Thanks for building it up.

We're not paying you back. And this is because you're an imperial piece of shit of America. And that's what you get for taking my boss, who I still believe wholeheartedly and long-lived Chavista, Chavismo,

and the Chavez way of thinking. That was a long die tribe. But I just think that he got played. I think he got played here. I think he got played here.

We need to hear it. A couple thoughts on that one. I have to say economic Pentagon goes pretty hard. That's a good line. Regardless of how you feel about Chavista politics,

have to say that's a good sound bite. Yeah, that's a trick. It is wild. But she's saying things far to the left of the opposition party in America, being the Democrats.

And Trump somehow thinks that he's going to be able to control this person. But I have a question, which is, what's to stop Trump in an active retaliation from doing to her what he did to Modura?

“Here's the thing, I think they understand better.”

So this is what Modura was one of those things you can only do once. It was surprised. It was a superbly planned done very well. Things like the Modura raid.

They tried it again in some other fashion, with just strikes on the Itola and Iran. They killed him. But over time, there's a diminishing return on the success rate here.

There's a discussion of this potentially happening in Cuba. And people are saying that it's getting more and more hard. So these are militaries. These are security apparatus within Venezuela that are learning.

So they saw what happened in Modura. They're not going to put delzirudries in that same position. They're going to be harder. The US still do it, absolutely. But at what point are we just now punching people in the face

because we don't like what's happening over and over again? So what do we do? We over throw Rodriguez?

Yeah, I mean, this is Bush basically.

Just keep punching people in the face and hope it all works out. And so exactly. But we, who do we replace them with? Dr. and style. Yeah.

If we put in Karina Machado, even though she is someone that we should have done in the first place, because she was legitimately elected, and she actually would have been more friendly to everyone, frankly, other than potentially

shining, and any of those, those groups. But if we now start overthrown another government and put the opposition, it's just going to start with Civil War. And they don't want that on their plate. That's actually why they didn't put Maria Karina Machado

and is because they were afraid of a Civil War. And so I don't, I think they'll hesitate on that regard. And I've seen a lot of MAGA come out and say, oh, well, there's contracts. Now, I'm like, yeah, there's contracts back in the '92.

You think they give a fuck about contracts, the minute they start yanking everything up. I mean, these, these people know that the U.S. has this proclivity for assassinating and kidnapping foreign leaders now, and they're preparing for that.

They're preparing whether through her security apparatus to keep her safe or they're preparing with a string of successors. Just, that's what around us. There's a string of successors that'll carry on. And again, in two years, we're going to all look back at this deal

and go, where'd all that money go? Where did our tax money go? Where did, why is Connego Phillips? And why is X on not actually investing? Yeah, because they're not dumb.

They want to make money. So. Matt, do you want to follow up on that? Any thoughts? Questions?

Yes. I do.

No, no, no. I mean, a lot to tell you.

“I thought the OPEC 2020 deal was the worst”

asking I ever saw in my life when Saudi Arabia literally bent Donald Trump over a desk right in the middle of the kingdom. But this is literally literally, but yes. Well, I mean, probably, I don't know your right. This is how there was a no-camera's meeting at one point.

This may be even worse than that. So to put it in perspective, when a U.S. oil company drills on federal land, on U.S. public land in the United States, they paid the United States a 12 and a half percent

royalty on all the oil they produce.

The royalty for this deal in Venezuela is over 30 percent,

and that does not include income taxes and production taxes and the other taxes. So you're looking at upwards of 40 percent of all revenue, straight to Venezuela. And that will make it almost impossible

for anybody to make enough money to even think about recovering any of that investment. So even if this was a completely legit deal, no serious, at least in the United States, no serious company is going to invest in that.

When you can just go to North Dakota or Wyoming or Montana and pay the U.S. government, 12 and a half percent. Why would you go all the way to Venezuela to pay them nearly 40 percent after everything adds up? That is why this is such a horrible deal.

You have a CEO. Exxon. It's an investable. Yeah, he's either uninvestable. It's important to note.

“Chevron that it's currently in Venezuela, they pay this, right?”

But most of Chevron's production is old existing production. And that means they didn't go drill a bunch of new wells and spend all that money. And in Chevron's situation, the country itself is investing the lion's share of the money into the production.

So like the break even price of Venezuela and oil, if I was to go buy an old Venezuela and oil well, the break even price for that oil would probably be 30 to $35, $40. The break even price for new, new production, which means drilling new wells and all of that,

is like $80 to $90. So there's a huge difference in new production and old production. Chevron's production over 100 years in Venezuela, they're only at 250,000 barrels a day after 100 years. But this is going to be all new production.

All high-cost new production with a 30 percent royalty

strapped on high-cost new production that is completely unprofitable. That would be profitable with old production with a $35 break even, 'cause you have a very low entry point. We're talking about investing $180 billion

and then paying a 30 percent royalty. Like nobody's going to do that. Like you would have to be a complete idiot to do that. That's higher than any world to buy that was started, right? Like you're saying that's the billion for structure.

Just to be clear, that 130 billion was the just to build the infrastructure for new drilling. So they're talking about $100 billion to get started

and then $180 to $250 billion for full development.

I say, over a long period of time. So to me, and if those numbers are correct and I do believe they are, because Chevron's paying a similar royalty, but the difference is what Chevron is doing and what the new company is going to be doing is two totally different things.

Chevron has a much more attractive deal in Venezuela than this North American Blue Energy partners with this criminal that don't.

“You know, anytime you have to ask Switzerland to stop investigating your business partner”

so you can then become a business partner. Maybe you shouldn't become a business partner with that person. You know, I've been business partners in a lot of oil and gas ventures. I didn't have to make any phone calls and ask any authorities to ever stop investigating or prosecuting that people I was going into business way.

Like that was not a thing I ever had to worry about. And that's literally what we did here. This dude's been under investigation for over a decade. So I think that Chad is right, but I think this is going to be a long, drawn bleedout of American money.

They're going to do this over a period of many years. Donald Trump will be dead and gone when this happens. Like he won't even, he'll be way gone, but this is going to happen. And I think what's going to happen is the entire company is going to default.

And that is how Venezuela is just going to take it and say, you know, what it's ours. Because they're not going to be able to pay the royalties. You know, so maybe they take it by force. Maybe they take it because they're not getting paid. Either way, eventually, they're going to take it.

It's going to happen. And I agree with Chad 100%.

“And the reason I think it's going to happen is because it's never not happened.”

And usually the thing that's never not happened continues to never not happen.

If that was confusing. No, no, I follow. Yeah, they double make it. But it's interesting because this NABEP company, like it's very weird that they offered the deal to them because why not offer it to the big oil companies?

And I think my theory is one, Trump is now ignored all the previous arbitration that is supposed to be owed to Conaco and Exxon. He originally was saying to them when he was campaigning. Now it wasn't a big campaign promise. But he was telling these oil companies, hey, I'll get your money back.

We'll deal with Venezuela, I'll get your money back. This new deal talks nothing. There's no resolution of the old arbitration. So at this point, he's just allowing for that money to disappear forever.

“And that's why I think he realizes no legitimate oil companies,”

as you said, he's going to invest in this. And so they had to create or work with this side gig and then use defense loans to try to fund it. And it's all very shady. And just like as we've been asking over the past months,

I mean, you're a big, big voice in this, where's the money going? Where's all this money going? And so it starts to look like, I say that Trump got played. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just part of his scam, essentially. So well, he totally flipped.

He did promise he would help them get their money back. But if you remember right after we snatched Manduro out of there, he had a meeting with the oil companies and it was public. And that was when Exxon said it was uninvestable. But right after that meeting, someone asked him in a press conference and said,

what about these companies getting their money back that you promised them? And he said, if they want their money back, they're going to have to go back and reinvest and Venezuela again and get it back that way. So give your money back to the bad guy that stole it from you and earn it back, because basically what he's saying.

And I think that was probably one of the dumbest things he said. Like, if there was any consideration of all from any of those companies to going back, when he said, they're going to have to invest if they want any of their money back. That probably shut the door right there. But I really don't think they were serious about it to begin with.

And a lot of people are talking about, well, BP's going into Venezuela, Shell is going into Venezuela, they're not. They're not going into Venezuela for oil. They're going offshore north of Venezuela for natural gas, which has nothing to do with all of this Venezuelan oil stuff.

It's a totally different investment, totally different vehicle. It's not even in the same universe as being similar. So now, Shell and BP are not going into Venezuela to develop Venezuela and oil. They're going offshore for gas, which has been there forever.

And they've never had any problems.

And I guess that's because Venezuela can't seize their offshore operations like they can. They're on shore operations. So yeah, they're not going after Venezuela and oil. I have a question, looping back just a little bit to think you said earlier about how the Venezuelan oil reserves are misrepresented at about 300 billion around there.

So I did a quick search. And I'm seeing Axios, the USAIA, Reuters, CBS, Strauss Center, NPR, all saying 298 or 300 billion barrels of oil, also what it says on Wikipedia. And that might be the only one that our listeners can add it. So if any of you with our Wikipedia power users over there and you want to site Mr. Global, feel free.

But my question is, why are all of these extremely reliable sources reporting Venezuela's reserves as the largest in the world if it's pretty easy to figure out that it's not? Okay, so two parts to this. One, if you Google what I said about it being inflated, you will find a lot of sources that support that as well. Two, the USGS, United States Geological Society, accepted.

Hugo Chavez is assertion that it was 300 billion barrels.

“And that's why it is universally used and don't ever, ever say Axios is a reputable source again.”

So I mean, Matt, come on, dude, that's like saying Fox News is reputable. I also see BS in there, Matt.

One's trusted source.

Axios's very wise type sources.

“Dude, Axios was, once a very trusted and respected source.”

But since this was a wrong word, CBS, and Chad knows what I'm talking about. Baroque Reveated Axios has been the person that has been breaking the reports of every fake ceasefire, like the whole manipulation of the markets and everything has been done through Axios. And they've lost so much credibility in the last six months. Like that place is just in the tank.

I would hate to be at Axios right now. I stand officially corrected. I'm looking into the camera for those of you not on YouTube. I, all right, I shouldn't have used them all on the same breath. But what I'm surprised is there's a number of legacy institutions reporting it.

Maybe we shouldn't trust Axios or CBS. But again, Reuters is reporting it. NPR, the IA, like, it's, yeah, I guess what I'm saying is it's, it's reported pretty regularly. Yeah, across the, across the, across the board, across the spectrum of, not only political leaning, but reliability.

Yeah, I've been, I've been saying this stuff about Venezuela for years. And like nobody ever listened to me, but now that it's in the news, maybe it's actually pertinent in someone, but if you ask any any of the, like, really well-known experts, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about because they believe it too. Like, you can find where he used highly inflated recovery factors to artificially inflate his reserves.

“But once the USGS accepts something as, as golden, then that's what it is.”

And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it's 300 billion.

Because they're never going to produce that oil in a moving year.

So it's, it'll be a totally unknown forever. But it's just more, you know, grandiose bullshit misinformation. It's became the truth over a long enough period of time. Well, if you're expecting gas prices to go down, don't hold your breath. But maybe channel that effort into editing Wikipedia, it's time.

I want to talk, if you don't mind, I want to move on to another topic, does anyone have any closing thoughts on this for now? I'm going to make a prediction that this whole thing's going to fall apart and nothing's ever going to come out. So that's all I'll say about that. That's like, that's like a fact, let's put that on, put that on calcium.

No, they'll ban you, they'll be like, no, it's two obviously's on the answer. They just ban George Santos for betting on whether George Santos would attend the state of

you the first time he's ever been dishonest. Yeah, so I want to talk about Iran unsurprisingly,

as I often do, we're at war again. If we've exchanged strikes for the first time,

“actual strikes for the first time in weeks, Chad, do you want to fill us in on this?”

I have a lot of questions, but do you want to give it over you here? Yeah, just real quick, it just started on Saturday. This time, Iran struck a tanker in the state of Hormuz. It was on the Omani side, so it was, there was a concern there because that is what the side of the US support to try to get the very small, and I mean very small amount of anything through the straight. There are days and Mac probably can talk about this as well, where there's nothing

going through still. But apparently the Iranians wanted to establish their dominance of the straight, so they struck a tanker in the straight of Hormuz. It was near Kassabo-man. No casualties or anything. Cut to the next day, Sunday, the US strikes Leroc Island. There was supposedly two Iranian rocket launchers that they struck the justification, which is a legitimate justification. It was that they were preparing to conduct more launches. We can preemptively strike for the laws of warfare, and so

in response, Iran retaliates against Jordan. They fired ballistic missiles against King Hussein Air Base, as well as some other air bases that are operated by the US. Then today, Iran strikes, or attempt to strike UAE targets, and then they shot down an MQ9, Reaper Drone, and then the US conducts additional strikes in retaliation. So just changing strikes. One, before I get you to the question, one concern I have, to one Trump says that there's going to be another round where

we're going to hit them hard. There will be response, and I have massive concerns about munitions levels when it comes to that. And then also he decided Trump decided to tweet or true social or whatever the hell it is. An AI-generated video suggesting that Carg Island was being destroyed, and either it's foreshadowing, or he was just trying to provide some propaganda misinformation, maybe a little bit of both. But there's no evidence. If anyone saw that,

there's no evidence that Carg Island was struck, but he's tweeting that to be fair, he tweeted

But yeah, that's kind of just around the world of what's going on right now in the last

us in Saturday when it comes to this fight, and we're on Monday, the whatever day this is the 31st.

“So Monday, like it's 31st, as I said at the top of the episode. Yeah. So I think there's a very important”

guy in there. So yeah, it happened here in that. Yes, please. So as Chad said, the United States, you know, struck two rocket launchers on the Rock Island right. What was the wrongs response? So their response was massive compared to what the United States did. It was not a like for like sort of tit for tat, you know, it wasn't proportional Iran launched what appears to be 30 to 35 ballistic missiles at US bases and drones at the UAE. That is an unbelievable response to just a

small, very, you know, limited thing that the United States did. And I think that that was sending a message. I think Iran is like, we don't believe you want to fight this war anymore. So we're going to test you right now. And if the United States, if Iran had done a proportional response, it would be a no-brainer. The United States does nothing, right? Like if Iran had thrown up a couple of missiles and they got shot down, it would be the end of it. But that's not what happened.

You know, Iran launches like they were launching ballistic missiles from nine different locations. So this was like all out war for Iran in response to this response that the US had, I want to point out that Iran had fired missiles at tankers in the straight for 30 days in a row without a

“single response from the United States. This was their first response in 30 days. So I think there's a”

lot to that to Iran's response basically trying to go the United States into making some kind of decision

because if we don't respond to what they did, we look like the biggest punks on the planet. And if we do respond, we get into the situation that Chad wants to talk about and that's the munitions problem. And people will say, well, where are you getting your 35 ballistic missiles number? Based off of how many patriot interceptors we had to fire, is how I'm coming up with the number of what Iran fired. Because the reporting is anywhere from, I think, 110 to 130 interceptors is

what we fired. And Chad can correct me, but what I've read is usually three to four interceptors per ballistic missile is what we typically have to fire and Chad can correct me if that's wrong.

“But that's where I'm coming up with that 30 to 35 number. Regardless, even if that's incorrect,”

it was a massive response by Iran trying to suck us back in. One, it happened the day after the Pentagon report of the United States can't last in the Middle East. I'm sure you'll read that thing that supposedly leaked from the Pentagon where, you know, commanders and leaders were like, we can't sustain anything. So Iran launches this massive sort of counter. And two, just to make us look a certain way on the world stage and put us in a corner and

trap us into having to make some kind of decision. And I thought Iran's response was really the biggest story to what happened last night. Yeah, there is concern, and you're right on the three or four, that's the biggest concern I have. Whenever a ballistic missile from Iran, whether it's one or a hundred is launched, the U.S., or not just even the U.S., but the response from our allies with the Jordanians, the the Emirates, the Saudis, whatever. They all

have the same capabilities. We have sold them and allowed them to have the ability to use them

the tactic here is usually three, because often the first one's going to miss ballistic,

you're hitting a bullet with a ballistic missiles are difficult to strike, where the most capable of it, but we want to have redundancy because it's going to, the amount of time these ballistic missiles take to get to their target is rather quick. And so the concern is, the Iranians are developing relatively cheap, comparatively, to these exquisite interceptors, ballistic missiles, and they're doing so apparently in a manner that it's meaningful enough that their capability

is still bolstered by their industry, which means that we had not done enough damage to their industry for them to stop building, or they've just rebuilt it in that time frame. So when we talk about the estimates of interceptors, whether it's patriots or thats, we're talking inventories in the low hundreds at this point. And that's extraordinarily concerning because, as I've said, previously, we can't one support Ukraine who needs these desperately, number two, China watches this,

leaks, like this government leaks like a sieve, but there's offensive, munition shortages of our

“attackums. And apparently, US inventories, according to, now again, this is sources familiar with”

US inventories. So just take that potentially with a grain of salt. But these sources, traditionally, have not been incorrect. This is right, is reporting it. They said that we've used up virtually all of our attackums and precision strike missiles. That's strategic malpractice. That is, you have failed to, at this point, defend or prepare for a potential major war for the United States. And that is, that's something that we are going to have to probably deal with. Now, I know we've

signed some deals that are supposed to ramp up our production into the thousands across the entirety

of our missiles infrastructure. But those aren't, that's not instant. You can't just say,

deal, sign missiles are here. That's not how it works. It's going to take years. And in the mean time, you have a Russia that is on a massive wartime footing. You have apparently an Iran that has been

“able to rebuild very rapidly to the point where Donald Trump comes out says today, they're destroyed.”

They have no military. Yeah, they have no military. How are they striking us still? That's a dumbest shit. I don't understand how you can come out and say, we've defended our bases from Iranian strikes. But they have no military. Okay. What do they throw in rocks at us? No. This is ridiculous. And so we have, we're in a potentially a very dangerous situation with our tomahawks, our thads, our jazams, our prisms. And not to mention the morale and all of these leaks and both of you brought

this up, the leak out of the Pentagon. That's not necessarily a good thing. That's a situation where there's classified information. These, these generals and these admirals were telling the, the secretary of defense. They were telling the leaders that make these decisions that, hey, these are our vulnerabilities. This is exactly, I'm not just this broadly. This base exactly is vulnerable. This base is vulnerable. And now that leaked out to the, to the enemy, I'm not saying that

we should be like cheering the leak. But the leak needs to happen because nothing's going to get fixed. If we continue to, to lie to ourselves about our capabilities. It's really concerning that now this leaks out. And we, the enemy knows exactly what, what our capabilities are. That can be fixed pretty rapidly with redeployments and things like that. But understand that when this came out, they immediately attacked journalists and said they're committing treason. Independent journalism still exists in this

country, whether people want to fight it or not, it really, and these, these journalists are not at fault for the leaks that come out of this information, administration nonetheless. And when you say they, you mean hexes, the press secretary, the Pentagon. Yeah. And just a familiar who we're saying is exactly analysts. And I think I'm starting to wonder if these leaks aren't coming from people that are truly, I don't, I don't want to say quote unquote patriotic or anything like that. They're, they're really

are concerned about the path of this country. And just minutes ago, the army secretary, dandreschool resigns. I mean, do you put two into it together? And this is pure speculation that maybe he was discovered as the person saying that this is, because there's only a few people that have at access

“to the defense secretary's notebook. That's what this is called defense secretary's notebook. And suddenly”

dandreschools resigning. The official reasons that will not be official, but the reasons that the media is giving, the mainstream media, is that there's just been head buddy between him and hexath.

And that is absolutely true. He has disagreed with basically every strategy that has come forward

and why not? They've all failed. And I mean, there's six of them and I can go through them. But it's essentially we're watching a administration administration that just continues to fail and protect themselves by attacking independent journalism attacking soldiers and sailors. I mean, Trump went after the family members and the sailors that were on the USSR, Abraham Lincoln. And so it's just a continued to continue failure. And it's, it's really kind of getting spooky for the future of what

we may end up having to face. Now, we've seen a lot of high profile resignations in both Trump administration. Generally, they are in protest to not just policy, but like a dissolution of norms or essentially people, you know, there are people who are career, you know, careerists who weren't necessarily partisan who left many of the, you know, not just in the military, but like a large part, large parts of the federal government, people who weren't kicked out. There were people who seemingly

only statement they could make was to, you know, resign in such a way that it made headlines.

“Now, of course, you're relinquishing any power at that point within the administration. But I think”

that gesture is generally supposed to suggest, you know, that power is useless right now because, you know, they, they've completely disrespected and transformed the way our government works, right? What makes you think this isn't just that? I mean, obviously, there is the leak, but is there a chance that this is, that this is more just about, I mean, it would be reasonable to be anti-hagset if you're a career general. If you're, you know, if you believe in the U.S.

Army, if you respect, you know, respect the truth, if you're respect the Navy, you know, all, there's plenty of norms, reasons, respect, reasons, political reasons to, you know, resign in protest. So, I'm just curious, is it possible that it's more than that? Do we have a reason to suspect him of being involved in the leak? Or is it possible that he's just, uh, yet another high profile case of someone who realize that they can no longer steer the ship or affect the steering

“of the ship? I, I think, uh, I think it's probably 90 percent that they are disillusioned with”

the, the direction this administration is. It just was a very weird timing situation. And that's why I said it's pure speculation. It was just this leak happened and then within hours he resigns. And so that's the only reason. So other than that, but to, to be absolutely fair, dangerous goal has been budding has with Hexeth for months now. And if anyone pushes back against Hexeth and hurts his feelings, he starts kicking him out. I mean, this is, there's a huge number.

I mean, we had Chris Donnie here, the commander of U.S. Army Europe resigned. We had the biggest one was the Alvin Housley, who is the South Com commander because he resigned or he announced an

extraordinarily early retirement is what it was called, basically because he completely disagreed

with us murdering people and boats in the South Com area of operations. So this, this expertise vacuum that we have, where we have generals that are really smart. It translates to the foreign services, well, we have 98 vacant U.S. Ambassador positions out of 196. That's, that's unprecedented. No one else in the history of the presidency, maybe at the beginning of a presidency when they're doing the transition and people are kind of moving around. You'd see that. But after a while,

you'd see at most like a 20% vacancy rate as a tradition happens and things like that. But for Trump to be this deep into his administration and have not only vacancies in the senior levels of the military and people resigning because of his policies, but also just to have so many vacancies in the ambassadorships because of one, people don't want to operate and they, I mean, I guess in a farious ways that Trump wants to operate with these other countries, but also

they, he doesn't trust anyone. So he just won't put people in place. So it's a combination where we have this, this intellect vacuum, unfortunately, that is taking place at the top. And so this is why we see failed strategy after failed strategy when it comes to Iran. And then we're on

“now strategy number seven, I believe, out of the last six all failed. And so yeah, that's what happens”

when you either doge fire or you have such sucky policies in toxicity that people will resign or you don't allow the necessary pushback and say, hey, this doesn't look, this isn't going to work or this doesn't make sense. And you go, I don't like hearing no. So I'm just going to fire you. And that's we have this brain drain within the United States. And the last time I used that term, brain drain was with Russia and the Kremlin. The exact same thing happened. And we all know

the direction their military went. It wasn't good. Are there just not enough sick of fans with expertise to work in this administration? Generally, no. He's generally blind. People who want to do things wrong in that capacity. My favorite part of today was when Donald Trump came out this morning and said, we're going to hit Iran really hard and Iran responded and said, whatever you hit us with, we're going to hit you back 10 times harder. Yeah. And then

Donald Trump came back and said, well, that's going to be very limited. Yeah. Well, that was like, could you look weaker on the world stage? Like, you know, I mean, could you look any weaker? We've talked about this so many times, but it's like he doesn't know what to do when bullying doesn't work. It's worked for his whole life. He's a rapist. You know,

like he's always been able to just take what he wants. He's a rich guy, no consequences,

a total sociopath, you know. And this isn't even me being like, what a mean guy. I'm saying like, this is, this is where ego, you know, infiltrate strategies, where it becomes part of the government,

little shock in all, right? But he doesn't really understand what to do when overwhelming force

“isn't the successful. He never has. Absolutely. No, because it's all, it's all big threat. It's”

all intimidation. Yeah. And to kind of your question about the, the, the sick of fans and to fill those positions, I'm mind you a bit biased because I'm a soldier. The military doesn't extraordinary job or it used to, of weeding those types of people out. If you're just an objectively terrible, ask his or with that just like, we actually find ways to get you to put you out. So it's not like that these people that are being given the opportunity to command and make decisions

are not traditionally what you would see in the military. They don't necessarily get that opportunity because we find ways to weed them out and they get, or they get put into staff jobs that just go die in a corner until you can retire type of stuff. No, these are the type of people as long as you continue to say yes to Donald Trump and Pete Hegseeth and their dumb ass policies, you're going to, you get promoted and you get moved up. Oh, and you got to be white and male as well.

That definitely helps goes without saying in this administration. Yeah, because I mean, we

got to go a little bit first D. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's just like this whole thing is

this is like we, I know there were generals. I know there were generals and kernels and admirals telling them, hey, the strategy of assassinating the Iotola where they, and then having them overthrow, like we did with nobody, but that's not what happened in Venezuela. We, yeah, we pulled Bendero out, but that same regime continued. Like we just talked about that. I mean, so that, that doesn't work. Then he went, he shifted to focusing on the nuclear issue. That's not even a thing

they're talking about anymore. That we don't even know what their status is. If it's anything like their ballistic missile program, they're probably rapidly bolstering it. That was a failure. The negotiations failed. The MOU was garbage. It failed basically within two days and definitely failed after a few weeks. And then we failed in the straight-up form moves and the block aid is pretty much failing because they just run along the coastline of Pakistan. And we stay because that's

Pakistani territory of waters. We don't mess with them there. That's where China moves all their oil through. That's so after they pay the toll. And now we're just bombing them again, like who's

coming up with these ideas? They're just all failed. So we're basically on failure number seven

in process. And at some point, we're just going to have to, as both Matt and I have said, we're just got to walk away, tuck tail and say, don't try and didn't prepare us enough. And collectively, because he's our president, we have lost this war. And I mean, that's a tough field of swallow. There's no way around it. Well, it's going to be an interesting week. Does anyone have any final thoughts on this before we move on to our final segment of the show? I feel like we've made our

predictions as to what's happened. I made my predictions at the top of the episode, but I feel like we're going to declare victory again by the time this episode drops. If you have anything, I do have one thing on what I would to watch for going forward, though, if you have anything, Matt, though. So I'll just say, there's, there's a couple things to watch for going forward. And it has nothing to do with this current bombing campaign that we may be starting, that that's not going to do anything. It's just

going to waste our munitions. And it's going to give Trump the ability to tweet. The first thing is

an ignore what Trump is saying, actually, ignore what Iran is saying when it comes to the state of Hormuz, if the numbers change, whether they dramatically cease to zero, or they move up dramatically to like 30, or something like that, that means something has changed materially.

“That's one thing you need to watch. Second of all, watch if this economic day that we've talked about”

this operation, what they call it, economic outcast is the official name of it. If we actually do anything with China, if we don't, it's a waste of time, it's nothing. And then third, watch, this is the big one. This, I think this is how we decided for war ends on any kind of terms other than us tucking tail. Watch what Iran is doing internally. Because internally, there are hard liners that say America has tried regime change, it tried bombing, they tried forcing open Hormuz, negotiations,

blockade, et cetera. And we're still here. Let's keep fighting them. Let's keep winning. But there's another side of this. And there's a strong faction as well as these pragmatists that argue, hey, Trump wants out. Let's throw a deal down that gives us huge amounts of leverage. And we'll get everything we want. They'll pay us money. We'll have paid traffic, sanctions relief,

“and both sides have valid arguments. So I think those are, that's the biggest thing. But those are”

the three things that if we're going to watch the end of this war eventually, those are things

themselves to be completely incompetent. But what does the Iranian administration do in order to maybe take their own steps to end this war? Whether it's ramp up as we've seen with these missiles, or perhaps they say, as time to make a deal, Trump, what do you want to do? We want all this, and you're going to give it to us. So Matt, final thoughts. All right, great. Yeah, me too. Thanks, but feel good. Now that we're aligned, it's time to move to our final segment of the show,

where we highlight a slightly more positive story, if or a less negative story than what we've covered throughout the episode. And it's a segment that we like to call the least worst part

of my week. I've got a very simple one. I might go first, but that's all right. Yeah, go for it.

The least worst part of my week is drinking whiskey. And I have a reason I'm saying this is because I talked about whiskey a lot in our last episode, and I decided to do a follow-up, and I spoke to some Canadians, and I received both compliments and criticisms of our last episode, largely that we weren't, like what I spoke to people in Canada, they said, "You weren't harsh enough on Trump."

“And I was like, "I think we were pretty clear on where we stood on all of this." I don't love”

Rob Ford to be totally clear. Now, these are people I know. I don't know if this is the general reaction, but I did look into a couple of the things that I was talking about, and I want to make a correction. And I did drink my way to this research, but I want you to know that while I was reading

the label of these bottles, I was also reading more reputable non-marketing information,

and I want to talk about two things that I said. I think are interesting in relation to the story. And if you missed last week's episode, go back and listen, but we talked a lot about how foolish it is to engage in a trade war with Canada, our largest trade partner, and specifically I think that we talked about was what do we export to Canada and liquor being a big one of them. And I mentioned bourbon, and I said bourbon has to be made in Kentucky, which I realized was wrong. After I said

it, I was like something's wrong with that Kentucky bourbon has to be made in Kentucky. But the interesting thing is that bourbon does in order to be sold in America as bourbon have to be made in America, and part of our trade agreement with Canada is to uphold that definition of our products.

So in order to sell bourbon in Canada, it does legally need to be American-made bourbon. So for those

who want that product, it does still create that conflict. And one of the other interesting

“things that I learned was we talked a little bit about liquor boards, and I said I believe that”

the way the liquor industry works in Canada is different than here, where a board sets the prices and the availability and the supply of liquor for an entire province. Now I was slightly off on that one as well. It actually differs province to province, but there's a really interesting thing I learned about that, which is that Ontario is the liquor board of Ontario, specifically. Ontario is completely controlled by a liquor board. It's one of the LCBO provinces in Canada

that what's what I was talking about. Ontario's liquor board is the largest purchaser of American alcohol, the largest soul purchaser of American liquor. And I thought it was my uncle, but it turns out to be Ontario, and so I thought it was really fascinating. It's a good idea to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America then, is that was a stellar idea? Really good, really good people to antagonize if we want to do the liquor or anything. Yeah, really great marketing. And on that note,

now I'm going negative in the least worst part of the week, the word Ontario predates the U.S. and Canada and the border existing. The lake was named that before the province, Ontario was named

“Ontario. That predates any existence of the concept of countries on this land mass. That's how”

dumb that branding is, but thanks Google Maps. So the least worst part of my week is, turns out MapQuest still exists, and they didn't change the name of Lake Ontario. I decided that last minute, but that's the least worst part of that week. I thought that was pretty funny. They got like a record passing move. They're another company, but I got to give them the, you know, I don't know if it's integrity or if it's just, you know, getting one over on Google,

but Google, you created a walled garden and now you capitulate to fascists. By the way, they've been doing that for years. You look at a depending on what country you're in, the border looks different. So the least worst part of my week, again, is liquor. I was, I was love your least worst. You're like, this is a great story, but also here's a bunch of awful scratches. I can't not know. Yeah, everything could do that. I would add that probably

much like you, that is when I learned that MapQuest still existed. Oh yeah, like when I saw that when I saw MapQuest post, like we're not changing it, I was like, they're still here. Like, I was like, what the hell? Like, do you still have to print off your map off your printer and have it in the car seat next to you? Apparently you still can, but they have an app. Yeah, I know,

I was like, got jeeps. You're out there still. I think jeeps was a real person too. I was

wanted to meet jeeps. The jeeps of the past jeeps or jeeps of jeeps and what? Yeah, or it's our dad's got. We're the ask jeeps guy. Yeah, we're going to get a bunch of things to see. He was a real guy. You could just get our internet slow. It's going to wake jeeps up out of his coma. Like dude, dude, it's looking for you. Jeeps was, ask jeeps was an early, like, hey, do you not know how to use Google and you type full sentences in?

“It's like medical. Because it's a little guy. And now that's how search engines work because”

we're destroying the world's water supply. And that's the least worst part of my week. Very positive. Do either of you guys want to go? Yeah, I can go. It's cool. Before I go, I don't have a correction, but I got hammered in the comments for forgetting to talk about one thing that helped force the negotiation between Canada and the US into this collapsed state and the trade war.

And it was this third party restrictions that the United States wants to put on Canada for trade.

And obviously, that's kind of a big deal. But I didn't mention it to be quite honest. It's, I mean, we do this live. Or like, so I can't think of everything under the sun. But man, the Canadian has got pissed at me about that. So I just mentioning that one of the reasons that the talks failed was Trump put a really ludicrous requirement that, and it was in the last hours of the discussion that the Canadians were not allowed to trade with third party countries

about the permission of the United States. And that goes against Carnies' reduction of reliance on the US and the first fine trade. His is a big plan that he put out in the back in December 2025. So I just wanted to give a nod to those people that, yes, I forgot that. Even though I got, I talked for like a half hour on this whole thing. But anyway, that's me kind of being shitty

“about it. But anyways, I love you guys. Can I love Canadians? I love Canada. I think what Trump's doing”

is dumb. My leads are going to produce our show after this though. Yeah, no more notes. Anyway, so my least worst story or the least worst part of my week is, I'm it's another pet one, but this one is very cool. So in San Antonio, there was a San animal shelter. And if you're doing thing about Texas, they have storms all the time. And they lost power after a particularly severe storm. And hundreds of dogs and cats were without air conditioning in San Antonio heat. There's

well above a hundred degrees, which when you're in a shelter like that, worth probably a metal roof or concrete, it gets incredibly hot. So the shelter put out a plea, we need people to temporarily take these animals home. And dozens upon dozens of people just flocked to the shelter scooped up the the pets and became emergency fosters and had put them in their air conditioning and fed them and took care of them. And shelter employees would go and visit these animals in case they needed

care for like shots or anything like that. And they put they had this rotation until the power came back on, which is like a day or two later. And some of the people ended up keeping the pets. So I want to say some 12 to 12 to 18 people roughly is what the story is citing and it up keeping their pets. So just a cool story of once again, last week was Canadian people being cool. This time it's American people being cool about helping pets out and making sure they didn't

die of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and things like that. So good for you guys, San Antonio, for stepping up and helping those animals that needed homes. That's great. And I'm going to go and head and encourage our listeners. You don't got an animal? Go get one. Don't buy something from a breeder or anything. There's strays. There's shelter animals that need a home right now. Go get yourself a black dog or cat. They photograph poorly and no one adopts them. That's true. As a result

of photograph and poorly, black animals get adopted at a much lower rate. I have two shelter cats.

They made my whole life way better. Yeah. Go save an animal. You'll re-cain some of your essential

humanity. Did I see you negative again? No. Okay. No, that was good. Thanks. No, I love animal. I'm so I am a, I'm such an animal lover that I walk around my neighborhood talking to stray cats and you know, my bird. I'm kind of like a Disney princess when it comes to that. Yeah. The birds just fly around me as I walk down the street. Neighborhood cats come up and run around my shoulders. You know, I'm just like four squirrels on me at all times. I love animals. You like the,

“you're like the bird lady from home alone. That's what I was going to say. Oh, I'm seeing”

who was glaring her with those parts. Home alone. Yeah. She was a good person. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, sorry to go negative during the least of a sudden. That's so sad. Yeah. Tim Curry. I love Tim Curry. Anyway, it's good. We go ahead and mad all the time. Once again,

“the wrong person from home alone, two dies. Okay. Mr. Global, what's the least worst part of your week?”

There's 1,200 wigs for sale in Tennessee after this week. But that is not the least worst part of my week. That is for my friends that did know that Dolly part in more wigs or whole life. I don't know if anyone ever saw her natural hair. But no, my least worst story is about the public service company

of New Mexico. You ever heard of him that? Yeah. Well, you have now. I've never heard of him.

I live in New Mexico. That's not me. So New Mexico has some of the lowest utility rates in the entire country and the public service company of New Mexico delivered in 2025. 80% of its electricity for the entire year, completely carbon free. And that is a huge accomplishment by the public service company of New Mexico. The New Mexico passed a law in 2019. I'm trying to remember what it was called. It's like it's an energy transition type act right where they set dates and goals.

So in 2025, public service company of New Mexico reached 80% carbon free, investing in solar, battery and wind. And solar 80% of their electricity throughout the day and also charging the batteries and wind and batteries covering at night. 80% they are five years ahead of schedule of reaching

basically carbon free electricity generation, which was supposed to happen by 2040. They're expected

to reach 100%. They're currently five years ahead, but they actually will probably end up seven or eight years ahead when they are 100% carbon free energy. That is the public service company of New Mexico. So great job guys. Congratulations. It's really big. You hear stories. It's like, oh, you know, this was 100% renewable, but it's often just for a day or two, right? So when you think about over scale over time, 80% over an entire year is massive. I don't know that I've heard a US-based

story where that much electricity was carbon free over that period of time. So also just further cements and proves that renewable energy actually works despite what a lot of what people say if it doesn't because this utility, which is a large utility, it's not like some little mom and pop shop, right? This is the public service company of the state of New Mexico. 80% so great job. Congratulations. Great job. Hell yeah. Public power. Let's expand it to more states. I know the

infrastructure is not the same everywhere, but that's great news. In very ironic that New Mexico is the number one or number two producer of oil and gas in the United States and still manages, you know, to secure an 80% carbon free electricity, at least within that one utility. I do want to point out that's not the entire state. That's one utility within the state. But if one utility can do it,

then they all can, right? Mm-hmm. That's really incredible. Before we sign off, can I throw out a

request to the audience from from all of us? Basically criticizing Chad. Yeah, that's the password.

“No, so I think I think we're coming up on six months of doing this. I think I can't remember”

entirely, but I believe we're pretty close and I believe we would discuss that around the six month anniversary and maybe we do this every six months, we're going to do try to do an AMA, like, and ask me anything situation where we are just going to have an episode answering questions myself in Mr. Global, and I guarantee that like 90% of the questions are going to go to Mr. Global, but you know what? I'm going to answer two. You're going to have to deal with it.

A little nattle answer as well. A lot of local comedy. You sent him away. Otherwise, I was kind of relapse. But please, please just leave comments. I try to keep an eye on not only the YouTube, but we do have a TikTok channel. We do have an Instagram channel that is specifically for

“American power. Our YouTube is under, find out, media is right now. And then if you want to just”

shoot questions to me on my TikTok or producer, Jamal, it says we have our own YouTube channel. All right. Well, I did not know that. That's very cool. Anyway, so please tell me about questions there. Yeah, please drop questions because we're going to try and do an AMA and ask

couple. I think it'll be sometime in the next three or four weeks that we'll try to get in an AMA

one. But yeah, and then finally, I just want to thank everyone for we have a 4.9 rating on,

“I think both apps, Spotify and Apple. So that's awesome. That's hard to maintain.”

But if you haven't rated, give us five stars. Please. That's all I want to say. It was about the AMA. Absolutely. So leave us some comments on our YouTube or TikTok. Maybe tag them AMA. So we

know that there for that episode, but you can feel free to leave them in either comments section

and we will find them. And also, while we're at it, subscribe to our separate YouTube channel now for American power. And if you're not following us on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, go ahead, follow us on all those platforms or whichever ones you use, recommend us to other people.

If you're really enjoying the show, because we are trying to obviously reach as many people as possible.

And if you like the show, we'd love it if you shared it with other people. Leave us a rating if you feel like it. But only if you feel like it being a 5 star rating. Otherwise, please don't feel like it. So on that note, that brings us to the end of our show. And I do want to thank everyone who's been listening and make sure that, like I said, follow us on social media, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube. We really appreciate you. And we're happy to do this show every week.

And I do want to double back to what Matt said about Dolly. It's very sad. A really excellent one. We lost some excellent Americans this last week. So if you want one more call to action, go make a donation to the imagination library. Dolly partnered a lot of really good work providing those to children in need. And was a really non-judgmental person who used her values in a, I want to say, a political way, because she certainly had political

“leanings, but she was mostly a humanitarian who could really communicate with anyone. And I think that's”

really admirable. And I think we can live under that example if we try really hard. A really easy way, like I said, is make a donation to imagination library or, you know, find a similar educational charity in your area, especially if you're in a state that makes it hard for children to get books. And that brings us to the end of our episode for Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph.

“I'm Matt Towson. You're listening to American Power from Findout Media. And remember,”

power corrupts, but American power corrupts, American League.