Transcript of Trump’s Venezuela Plans & ICE’s Minnesota Crackdown | 1.7.26

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As Tople dictator Nicolas Maduro heads to trial, the Trump administration sketches out its vision for Venezuela. His priority right now is on security, prosperity, stability, mobility. So he is working round the clock to get Venezuela's oil industry up and running to where it needs to be. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia How. It's Wednesday, January seventh. This is Morning Wire.

Trump surges immigration officers to Minnesota as a Hilton franchise gets caught trying to ban ICE agents.

We're not accepting people from immigration ICE agents, DHS, into our property. It's just our management ownership.

And after blockbuster fraud discoveries in Minnesota, lawmakers take a closer look at other states.

Well, how about bad it is in Minnesota.

We know it's very bad and it seems to be getting worse by the day.

It's a thousand times worse here in California.

Thanks for waking up with MorningWire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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As Nicolas Maduro prepares to stand trial in the United States, President Trump's plan for Venezuela is beginning to take shape.

Daily Wire senior editor, Kabbit Phillips, is here to break it down for us, Kabbit. So the reign of Nicolas Maduro is officially over. The big question now Now what? What are we hearing from Washington?

We're starting to get a better idea of President Trump's plan long term for Venezuela. In the immediate aftermath of the operation, he turned heads when he said that the United States planned to, quote, run the country. For a lot of folks, that conjured up images of Iraq and Afghanistan and the long wars that went on there. But it now appears the Trump administration prefers to exert control over Venezuela, not with boots on the ground, but through a pressure campaign. The White House, reportedly, has three main things they now want to see. First, a an government-led crackdown on drug cartels who for years have acted with impunity throughout the country, often working hand in hand with the Maduro regime. Second, they want Maduro's replacement, that's Dilsi Rodriguez, to loosen the country's relationship with Iran, Cuba, and other adversaries, and also remove those countries' operatives from Venezuela. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for Trump, they want the regime to stop the sale of oil to countries like Russia, Cuba, and others, and then, really big part there, open up access to their oil fields for American companies.

The White House pushing for major changes, as you've outlined there. How exactly do they plan to actually accomplish this?

There's two sides here. First, the military side. The White House is still full steam ahead with their naval blockade, trying to block illegal oil tankers from leaving the country. Of course, Trump has threatened Dilce Rodriguez with the same fate as Maduro if she continues to defy the US demands. Then there's the economic side. The administration could offer Venezuela relief on sanctions and then free up billions of dollars in frozen funds that are right now stuck over the Middle East and elsewhere abroad.

Now, you've touched on oil there, and that's obviously a huge part of the equation in all of this. What is the latest on that front?

First, just for context to understand that element here, keep in mind, Venezuela is sitting on top of an estimated 300 billion barrels of crude oil. For context, that is nearly 20% of the known reserves on planet Earth. American oil companies are, as you can imagine, chomping at the bit to get a piece of that action. President Trump has made clear that he wants them to pour billions of dollars into the country. He wants them to build out new infrastructure and, importantly, further reduce the US's reliance on the Middle East for oil. Experts have cautioned, though, that even if we do gain access to Venezuela's oil fields, which is not a given at this point, it will still take time to see a tangible impact at the pump. For more on that, I spoke with RT Trevino, President of Pacos County Energy. That's an oil company in Texas.

Reality is six months at a minimum. Keep Keep in mind that the infrastructure of Venezuelan oil is basically needing to be rebuilt. They did not know what they were doing, so they just ruined it by just continuing to produce until the systems would run out and break down. So it's going to take big companies, big money, and big projects to get it back up and running. So this is going to take somewhere between 6-18 months to just get back up to somewhere between a million to 2 million barrels of oil a day.

And while we have seen continued opposition to the strike, particularly among Democrats, it's worth noting there is a shift in public opinion that appears to be taking place. So according to Reuters polling, Before this operation, a wide, wide margin of Americans opposed the idea. It was actually 26 points underwater. But after the strike, which was obviously successful, did not cost any American lives, there was a 25-point swing, and that same poll now shows it's just one point underwater when you ask if Americans support it. So obviously, public opinion could shift if this turns into a drawn-out conflict. But if the oil starts coming in in relations with Venezuela, improve, those numbers are likely to go up even more ahead of the midterms.

Somehow I knew you'd mention midterms before all of this was over.

John, it all comes back to midterms.

It does. Kevin, thanks for your report.

Absolutely.

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The Trump administration has sent roughly 2,000 immigration agents to Minnesota as it doubles down on its fraud crackdown.

Daily Wire immigration reporter, Jennie Tear, joins us now with the latest. So, Jennie, the Trump Administration sent a few hundred agents last month in connection with some of the other fraud allegations. So how is this new operation different?

Well, we know the DHS is sending a much more robust presence of ICE agents, and now even border patrol agents. There's also reports saying that Chief Gregory Bovino from Border Patrol will be down there, which signifies a really more aggressive approach We know that Bovino has been in cities like Charlotte. He's been in New Orleans. We also are seeing reports that agents with Homeland Security investigations are on the ground. They're knocking on doors. They're asking organizations for paperwork to see if they are using taxpayer funds properly. This comes from those fraud allegations out of Minnesota that have been tied largely to the Somali community.

It sounds like a pretty significant escalation from DHS. Now, there were some roadblocks at the start of this when agents were trying to book into hotels, when they were deployed to various places in the country. What can you tell us about that situation, specifically with, I think it was Hilton Hotels?

Right. As we know with these operations, DHS is flying in ICE agents, HSI agents from all over the country. I've heard from sources within DHS that some of these offices around the country are really depleted of manpower because of how many people are being pulled into this. Basically, DHS posted on Monday screenshots appearing to show a Hilton employee from a franchise in Minnesota saying that the reservation for any DHS or immigration employees was canceled. And then there was another email that appeared to show the property doubling down, and that read, This email is in regards to the reservation you made with the Hampton and Lakeville property. We have noticed an influx of gov reservations made today that have been for DHS, and we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property. Hilton now says that they've dropped the franchisee from its group, that it's no longer affiliated after they conducted an investigation and after a video emerged showing independent reporter nick Sorder, going into that facility and being declined rooms when he said that he was booking for DHS.

Now, another beat that you've been covering for us over the past few months is illegal immigrants obtaining commercial driver's license We recently had another case involving illegal immigrants driving commercial vehicles. Tell us what happened just this week.

This new case that we found out about out of Indiana shows this shift in the commercial driver's license, illegal immigrant nexus. Now we're seeing not only are these illegal immigrants involved in fatal or near fatal crashes, but also apparently drug smuggling. The state troopers down there had actually pulled over these two illegal immigrants from India. They found over 300 pounds of cocaine in their truck. These guys said that they were moving an empty truck to an Indian restaurant nearby where they were going to be picking up cargo. It also has been discovered that both of these individuals came here illegally, one in 2017. He was later arrested in California, and ICE tried to detain him at the time. They issued a detainer. They had a hold on his case, but California authorities had ignored that and let him go, and now this is where he's been. He's allegedly been trafficking cocaine in the United States, and both of them were also using commercial driver's licenses that were issued in California. The Trump administration has really scrutinized California and Governor Newsom over this issue. They've threatened to withhold millions of dollars in taxpayer funds if the state does not revoke thousands of these commercial driver's licenses that were issued to foreigners.

And Newsom actually didn't make the deadline for this. And now the Trump administration is really doubling down on their threats to withhold that funding. Newsom, however, defends that it's the federal government's issues that caused this.

Well, that one truck in Indiana, it was reported they had seven million worth of cocaine in the back. Jennie, thanks for reporting.

Thank you.

Following the latest Minnesota fraud revelations, there's now a nationwide push to crack down on fraud in other states.

Joining us with the latest is Daily Wire political reporter, Cameron Arcan. So Cameron, it's not just Minnesota that the administration is looking into now. What other states are feeling some heat here?

Well, five blue states, including California, are now among the targets of the Trump administration to potentially look into for potential fraud. Now, Health and Human Services, they said that they are stopping some types of welfare payments while they look into this right now. Obviously, the Minnesota scandal definitely has has accelerated a lot of this national interest in cracking down on fraud. We've seen everything ranging from allegations, from YouTube videos that went viral regarding daycare centers. Now we're even seeing some tangible charges. We saw that over recent years regarding everything from housing payments to autism fraud treatment scams, as we discussed before. So really a high level of interest in this from the Trump administration. We talked with Heritage Foundation Economic Research Fellow, Alan Mendenhall. Here's what he told us.

Well, there were some perverse incentives in place. After the COVID pandemic, the emphasis was on speed. So people wanted to disperse funds as quickly as possible. Also, politicians did not want to look cruel. This creates a perfect storm where agencies dispersed funds as quickly as they could and with very little accountability.

Now, We have seen some states taking action of their own against fraud. Tell us more about that.

The state of Texas said that they're launching their own, quote, proactive investigation into childcare payments in the state. Now, the governor, Greg Abbott, he's asking for a progress report at the end of the month, and he wants to see some final answers next month, according to News Nation. Now, what we're seeing with this is this heightened interest with this, particularly at state government levels to see how this money is spent, because typically with these types of payments, we see a mix of both federal taxpayer dollars and state taxpayer dollars. I'm curious to see if we are going to see more states follow suit with this.

We'll see if there's more momentum in other states to take proactive action against fraud. You mentioned California coming under the focus of the Trump administration. What is going on there?

Trump posted this week that he is having the federal government look into potential fraud and taxpayer money mismanagement in the state of California. We don't have any details on that at this point, but obviously that did ruffle some feathers with Governor Gavin Newsom's press office posting that they've been taking their own action in the state to crack down on fraud. We will see pretty soon if there are any end results that come from this. In fact, here's Governor Gavin Newsom sending off on this.

If he has some unique insight and information, I look forward to with him. Can't stand fraud, can't stand waste and abuse.

The New York Post also reported that candidate for governor, Steve Hilton, as well as the candidate for state controller, Irm Morgan, these two Republicans said that they want attorney general Pam Bondi to look into whistleblower-related tips from their own tip line that they created, and they estimate that that would be around $250 billion. We don't know too many details on that just yet, but obviously, a lot of this remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Mendenhall said that going forward, there could be some benefit to investigations like these.

We have to start looking at extended structures and figuring out what can we do to change things. For example, nonprofit organizations ought to have some type of skin in the game. They shouldn't be dispersed millions of dollars right up front, no strings attached. Maybe there's a way to put collateral up, or maybe there's a way to put up bonds, or maybe there's something we can do to make sure that they are more accountable on the front-end. The other thing is a lot of these nonprofits get less scrutiny by particular government agencies because the perception is they do good things, and we don't want to get in the way of these good things.

Where it's going to be fascinating to watch how these investigations shake out. Like you mentioned, we're talking about billions, hundreds of billions maybe on the line, so extremely important we get to the bottom of it. Cameron, thanks so much for reporting.

Thank you.

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