TRIGGERnometry: w/ Daniel Di Martino on Venezuela’s Collapse (Transcript)

Well, the thing is you can’t have corruption if the state doesn’t have the power over the economy, right? That’s how they were able to steal. So even during the democratic period, as they took over the oil profits, the economy stagnated because there was no more investment. Everybody was receiving more welfare. It wasn’t even about taxes, it was all through the oil industry.

And it’s true that the politicians during the democratic period were involved in a lot of corruption scandals. Corruption scandals that now look like babies in diapers. And it’s true that by the time the 90s came, Venezuela had been on a long stagnation from the early 80s and late 70s.

And the consequence was that people were fed up. They wanted to challenge the status quo and the only person that gave them that chance, a lot of them felt, not everybody, was Hugo Chávez, and particularly the poor people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because what I experienced in Venezuela when I used to go was that there would be this huge strata of poor people, the diminishing middle class and then rich people. And that was pretty much it.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Though I will say a lot of people exaggerate this inequality. Venezuela even by the 90s had less income inequality than most other Latin American countries. But the other Latin American countries didn’t elect socialist military men that would destroy their country.

So I think that what is underestimated was the fact that Chávez was very charismatic. So the other countries didn’t have that. That’s more of a coincidence of things. And the fact that he really had a lot of support from the Cubans and the foreign interference is really under-discussed.

Cuban Influence and International Connections

Because Cuba in the 90s was going through what’s called the special period. I don’t know if you know about this. The Soviet Union fell, so the subsidies from the Soviets stopped and the special period is the nice way of saying starvation. The Cubans were starving.

And the special period, not coincidentally, ended in 1999, when Chávez takes office. Because they start getting all the free oil from Venezuela, literally free ships of oil that then Cuba would resell in international market.

And it is no coincidence that Chávez was a big fan of Fidel Castro, who knew him. Nicolás Maduro, the current dictator, went to Cuba and was trained in Cuba. Chávez was friends with Petro, who is now the president of Colombia. I mean, all of this is connected.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And what people don’t know is that Venezuela also supplied petroleum to London and London buses, because of the connection with Hugo Chávez and Ken Livingstone.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I didn’t know that.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, which is a fascinating little kind of subtopic. But what’s really interesting with Chávez is Chávez gets elected. He sweeps to power on this wave of populist left. And the rhetoric and the fact that “we’re going to change Venezuela, we’re going to make it fairer.” For a couple of years it looked like it might work, didn’t it?

The Illusion of Success and the Reality of Destruction

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Well, economically, yes, because you have to remember the oil barrel was around $10 per barrel in 1999. By 2008, it was $100 per barrel. I mean, Chávez had a 10x increase in government revenue that was almost exclusively oil.

Yet Venezuela did not grow 10x. Venezuela by 2008 should have been like Dubai and it was still a poor Latin American country. How can that happen? Because they literally stole all the money.

Chávez took over. And a lot of people might say things were working, but the signs were there from the start. Chávez ripped the constitution apart in his first year in office. He packed the Supreme Court. He got them to say that because sovereignty lies within the people, we can just host a referendum and rewrite the entire constitution. And they did.

He rewrote the entire constitution, allowed for reelection. The presidential term was only five years with no reelection. It became six years with reelection. They would change that later to be no limits. They centralized power in the executive branch away from Congress. They abolished the Senate, took power away from the states so that the state polices obviously couldn’t become a militia against him when he would become a dictator later.

The Nationalization Agenda

And obviously the critical part that destroyed the economy was the nationalization agenda. Chávez began literally walking in the streets of Caracas and there’s videos of him pointing at businesses: “Exprópiese, expropriated. It’s not yours anymore.”

One of my best friends from high school, his grandma owned a bookstore downtown. Chávez came in and took the bookstore of an old lady out of nowhere. Jewelry stores, grocery stores, banks, manufacturing companies, electricity, farms.

The first really martyr for free enterprise in Venezuela was a man named José Burrito, who was a farmer. The government really made him the martyr of property. He went on a hunger strike because Chávez took his family farm from generations and he died in the hunger strike and they took his farm.

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The Gold Reserves Scandal

FRANCIS FOSTER: And when you talk about the rampant corruption, one of my relatives was president of the central bank of Venezuela.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Oh, the central bank.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Diego Luis. And what happened with him was, and he was a very honorable and a very principled man, and Chávez demanded that Diego Luis hand over the gold reserves of Venezuela.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Oh yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And he said, “Presidente, I’m not prepared to do that. That is not going to happen. That does not belong to you. That belongs to Venezuela.” And Chávez went on his program called “Aló Presidente.”

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Yes, “Hello, Mr. President.”

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, which would take over every TV station for an hour or hours at a time. And he said the words, “Diego Luis, fuera,” get out. And put him under house arrest until he intimidated him until he signed.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I didn’t know he was your family member.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, well, now there’s going to be a conspiracy theory that Trigonometry was actually started with Venezuelan gold.

# The Venezuelan Gold Heist and Money Laundering in Dubai

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I wasn’t thinking about it, trust me. No. You know where the Venezuelan gold is now? It’s in Dubai, actually. We know this.

So what happened was, most countries hold their foreign exchange reserves in Switzerland and London and New York City. Chávez said, “No, we will need to hold them in Caracas. We can’t be subject to foreign powers.” They brought almost all the gold to Caracas. All that gold disappeared.

And we know it ended up in Dubai because of TikTok videos of prostitutes and people who are corrupt within the Maduro regime who left. Dubai is the hub of the world for money laundering through gold because there’s a no-questions-asked policy. If you bring in gold to Dubai, no tax, then you buy property, sell it, and then it’s laundered.

And these people showed in the video this table, glass table with gold bars. Below the table, central bank gold is marked with a specific symbol of that central bank. And it was Central Bank of Venezuela. And that’s where the gold ended, which makes all sense in the world that it ended there.

Corruption vs. Socialism: Understanding the Real Problem

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So, Daniel, this is what I’m wondering. This sounds quite a typical story of a dictator coming to power and becoming corrupt or already being corrupt before he came. Is it really fair to lay the blame for this at the feet of an ideology?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I think it absolutely is about the socialism and not about the corruption. Most countries in the world face endemic corruption problems. Do you think Colombia is not a corrupt country? Do you think that the Saudis are not a corrupt kingdom? Or even in Dubai, the sheiks there, the emirs, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping.

Yet why aren’t there millions of refugees escaping those countries? Why aren’t there people starving on the street? Why isn’t there hyperinflation in any of these countries?

Because the difference between corrupt countries and socialist countries, which are also corrupt to an even greater extent because the government has more power, is that Chávez printed money to pay for welfare, expanded welfare tremendously, hired millions of government workers to reduce the private sector. Nationalized businesses, put price controls that led to shortages.

This is very basic economics. If you put a price cap and you can’t profit, you don’t do business. And that’s why I had to line up hours to buy food, to buy medicine. That’s why I suffered blackouts. No water in my own apartment for days. And that doesn’t happen in most corrupt countries.

And so it is about socialist ideology, which you might say, “Well then no, this is not socialism.” Well, what is socialism? Socialism is government ownership and control or control over the means of production. What did Chávez do? He took over people’s businesses, that is the means of production. The businesses that he didn’t take, he controlled through price controls.

So Chávez was not only a self-described socialist, but he implemented socialist policy.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s a really interesting point. And I suppose in terms of your warning to the United States, where you are, you know, with the broader West, in terms of some of these ideologies and views becoming more mainstream, it’s interesting if you look at recent elections in the US, Zoram Dani, for example, right, you go, “Well this guy is not actually advocating for taking controls of the means of production.”

And the same in the UK. Socialists in the UK, they’re not, they just want free stuff. They don’t even do the means of production part of it, at least on the surface. Is that a fair assessment?

The High Price of Free Things

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Who makes the stuff? Oh, I know. You need to seize the means of production of some people to give others free things. Nothing is free. In fact, I call this “the high price of free things.”

Because everything has a cost, everything’s a trade-off. The question is, what trade-offs do you want to make? And the trade-off that Venezuelans made under Chávez was, “We’re going to nationalize all these businesses, supposedly the government’s going to run them better.” And all of them went bankrupt.

You could see signs on the highway, this is my favorite one, sign on the highway between Maracay where I was born and Caracas that says “Made in Socialism” in a big red heart. And the empty fields that they took over. Deserted. How can you get a deserted feeling in a tropical country? Only a socialist can do that.

How do you not have gasoline in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world? Only in socialism. You know, thankfully Venezuela is a tropical country, so people could eat the mangoes off the street. Very good mangoes, I would say.

But how can then people say that it’s not about socialism, it is about corruption when this just doesn’t happen anywhere. People don’t understand that Venezuela is the largest refugee crisis in the planet. It’s nearly 9 million of us who have left our country, nearly a third of the population.

That is more than Ukraine, that is more than Syria, that is more than Afghanistan. And we don’t have an Islamist takeover, a foreign country invading us, chemical weapons. We don’t have an ethnic or religious conflict in Venezuela. We just have a socialist regime.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Wow. And this free stuff point is so interesting because you look around Britain and America now you go, there are a lot of people who are understandably quite frustrated about the fact that things are difficult to buy. Housing is unaffordable for young people, et cetera.

And along come these very charismatic people who say, “Well, the solution to all of this is free stuff.” And, you know, and they have a very good answer for where the stuff comes from. “We’re going to tax the rich, we’re going to tax the 1% or the 0.1%, we’re going to tax the billionaires.” Why are they wrong?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I’ll say I also want things to be cheaper. I mean, I think housing is unaffordable in New York City. Certainly that has affected me. I mean, I’m not a homeowner. I mean, I’m affected by the same problems that these people complain about.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Sure.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: And I think it’s the same problem all throughout the West, especially in the Anglosphere, with housing and other issues. The question is, how do we make it affordable? And the answer to that is not “we’re going to build government housing.”

Because none of the people who really are running for Mandani, I think, or for socialists all over the world really want to live in government housing. Have you looked at government housing anywhere in the world? This is the US. This is not a Venezuelan problem. Go to the public housing projects in Manhattan or in the Bronx or Brooklyn. It’s not a nice place to live.

Is the solution to just tell landlords how much they can charge for rent? Well, then they won’t build new housing. Right. So if you want to build more housing, what is the issue? Why aren’t there more apartment projects being built? Because the government prohibits it. It’s the government standing in the way.

I also want cheaper rent. I also want cheaper groceries. I want cheaper everything. I want everybody to be wealthy. Imagine if we could have a system, Venezuela could have achieved this. By the way, like in the UAE, very low taxes, a very small government, an oil petro state. Right. Venezuela could have been that.

And how are the citizens of the UAE living? They’re living like multimillionaires and then they bring in so many immigrants. I’m not saying that we need to imitate everything that the UAE does. Right. But what I’m saying is that Venezuela could have been that extremely wealthy country, much wealthier than any Western country.

The Left’s Abandonment of Venezuela

FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s such a profound point. Because the one thing and what really antagonizes me about the left is that Venezuela was their poster boy. It was their poster boy. They were talking about socialism. Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, all the big players of the left eulogizing Venezuela and saying this is the socialist dream.

Yet when it fell apart, when our people were starving, they were dying, 9 million of us left, they just walked away. And they’ve never mentioned it since.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: That’s right. No. Now they say, you know, “What happened in Venezuela can’t happen here. That’s not what we want. We want to be like the Nordic countries,” right?

And then you see the Democratic Socialists of America visiting Cuba, visiting Venezuela, meeting with their leaders, because that’s what they really want. And they’re just lying to the regular people who vote for them that “we want to be like Norway” or something, right?

When in Norway they pay for all their stuff with a 20% plus sales tax. I mean, what is the VAT in the UK right now?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 20%.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: 20%. I mean, how do you think you fund these public programs? What’s the payroll tax? Much higher here. Combined employer-employee is 15%. In Spain, I know, is over 30%.

It’s the poor and the middle class who pay for all those welfare things because they’re not going to move from your country. They’re trapped. The rich will move. It’s very simple. They’re all moving to Dubai. They’re moving to Singapore. If they start taxing them here, they’ll move out of the United States.

So my entire problem is that I fear that young people, especially in the West, are being lied to by these leaders who actually do support the Maduro regime and Chávez, just like you’re saying Jeremy Corbyn is one of them, and other leaders, even here in the United States.

Bernie Sanders, you mentioned. Zoram Mamdani has still a tweet up saying that he thinks the elections in Venezuela are “not so shabby.” The elections are rigged in Venezuela. If you think the elections are not so shabby, it’s because, in my opinion, you want to rig them.

There’s people like Gregory Meeks in the US Congress. He went to the funeral of Hugo Chávez. These are people who are sitting members of Congress. Bernie Sanders said that the American dream was more achievable in Venezuela. It’s never been more achievable in Venezuela, even when it was good. Okay, like, no.

Bernie Sanders said that breadlines are a good thing in Nicaragua. “It means people want to buy stuff,” you know? Well, maybe they think about the bagel lines here in New York City and they think that that’s a good thing. I don’t know.

So I do think that there are evil people at the top who support these dictatorships.

Growing Up Under Oppression

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because I just can’t believe that you look at Venezuela and if you are honest about it, truly honest, because what I want to talk to you, Daniel, is what’s it like growing up in a communist country? We’ve spoken about the economic realities of it, but what’s it like growing up under an oppressive regime?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: What happens to you when you criticize Chávez or if you were a journalist? I’ve got my stories from my family, but we’d love to hear yours.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Well, I’ll tell you, growing up, I had a great family, very loving family, but that suffered tremendously. I think that what’s interesting about my story is that it’s not exceptional. I grew up in a middle-class family. My parents owned a gas station in Venezuela.

And we used to make maybe $1,000 to $3,000 a month in the early 2000s. That’s pretty good, especially for Venezuela in the early 2000s, you know, before inflation. We’ve had adjusted by 2016. When I left, we were making $100 a month. That is the reality we faced.

We had cars, you know, I went to a good school. We lived in our own apartment that was our property. And then we didn’t have electricity, and then we didn’t have water, and then we had to line up for food.

And when we didn’t have electricity and we didn’t have water, I had to carry up five floors, the water jug on my shoulder as a teenager. You know, good workout. But it’s going from a first world country to a third world country, that is what’s so painful.

Because all other socialist countries were never so rich as Venezuela. Think about the Soviet Union. The Russian empire was a terrible place to live. The poorest empire in Europe. Think about China before Mao. Even before Mao, China was a desolate, terrible place to live.

Think about Cuba. Cuba was maybe the most okay-ish, but it’s still much poorer than Venezuela was. Eastern Europe ravaged by World War II? I mean, how many problems did Eastern Europe have before Soviet socialism?

Venezuela was a rich and democratic country, and it became poor because of socialism and became authoritarian because of socialism. And that is why the case of Venezuela is so important for all of us in the West. Because it is what could happen to us.

The Blame Game: Sanctions vs. Socialism

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the questions that—one of the challenges that some people might put to you, and I genuinely am curious to hear your response, because I don’t know—but the talking point from a lot of people who are supportive of regimes of this kind is actually it’s all the Gringo’s fault, right?

And I remember this was the narrative about the Soviet Union where I grew up, which is, well, if it wasn’t for the evil Americans, our brilliant experiment… And actually, it’s funny because towards the end of the Soviet Union, nobody in the Soviet Union said this anymore, because we knew that this was bullsh*t, because the whole system is terrible.

But that is a talking point that a lot of the supporters of these regimes still wheel out. If it wasn’t for the Americans, if the Americans hadn’t put the blockade on Cuba, if the Americans hadn’t interfered in Venezuela, if only they’d allowed Venezuela to do what it wanted to do in the way that it wanted to do it, everything would be fine. Is that true?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: No. And you know, it’s funny because the regime tried to brainwash the population about this. The great enemy was the United States, which Chávez called “the Empire.” They put graffiti in the streets with an evil Uncle Sam with devilish horns and a tail. “Gringo, go home.” And I’m like, which gringos? There are no gringos here.

But nobody bought it, really. I mean, now people really like the United States. People joke about the U.S. and say, “Oh, did you? How was the empire?” When you come back? “Are you an imperialist too?” You know, that’s how we were called.

So if really the United States is to blame, how can the socialists explain that the people of Venezuela like the United States and don’t think so? Are we all brainwashed? Is that why we all left? We’re all brainwashed, right? Are the people inside that haven’t left also brainwashed? Because if anything, they have less access to the media. How could they? If anything, is the regime brainwashing us?

You asked me about growing up in Venezuela. The media was so censored that when I was 12 years old, before it was even allowed, I opened a Twitter account back when it was called Twitter. I then had to re-upload my ID, you know, the whole process because I opened it as a minor. I opened that to read the news because I couldn’t get it from TV or from the newspapers because they began to be censored.

So the situation is very dire. It is not because of foreign sanctions or the U.S. And the best example to counter this narrative is actually another country that is sanctioned by the U.S., and that is Iran. If Venezuela is sanctioned, oil dependent, you know, authoritarian, corrupt, how come Iran doesn’t have hyperinflation and millions of refugees fleeing Iran?

In many ways it’s less free than Venezuela. If you’re a woman, you have to wear a hijab. It’s oppressive in a social and political way that Venezuela is not. So why aren’t millions crossing the border into Turkey? They could do it to other countries. Azerbaijan—there’s so many Azeri Iranians. They would fit very well culturally in Azerbaijan, a very long border. They don’t.

Because in Iran it might be all these horrible things. It’s not a good regime at all. But Iran is not a socialist country. In Iran you can feed your family and live. In Venezuela you cannot. And you cannot not because sanctions are stronger on Venezuela. They’re much stronger on Iran. You can’t even send a piece of mail to Iran from the United States.

To Venezuela, you can send cash, you can send food. There are companies based in South Florida that send food door to door in Caracas. You give them your family member’s address. You can travel. I don’t recommend that. You might get kidnapped by the regime, but there’s no limitation. The limitation is on the Maduro regime itself. And that is a good limitation. You should sanction criminals, people who violate human rights, take their properties. Even buildings in New York City were owned by Maduro regime affiliates, in Miami too.

So I think it’s just a scapegoat. They always blame someone else. The Cubans have done this as well. The Cuban regime says it’s all because of the embargo. If capitalism is so bad, why do you want to trade with us? If trade is bad, why do you want to trade with capitalist countries?

America was the main buyer of Venezuelan oil throughout all of Chávez’s term. Then how did inflation go up? How did all these things happen without sanctions? Sanctions in a real serious way against the oil industry that’s owned by the government only began in 2019 under Trump, who, by the way, Biden lifted them. Why hasn’t Venezuela recovered?

If it’s the oil price? The oil price recovered a long time ago. Venezuela never recovered. When the oil price goes down, do you see refugees fleeing Dubai and other oil dependent nations? Are they crossing the desert seeking food and a better life? No, because it has nothing to do with the oil dependency, has nothing to do with corruption, it has nothing to do with sanctions and everything to do with socialist policies.

From Chávez to Maduro: The Continuity of Collapse

FRANCIS FOSTER: And Daniel, so we’ll go back to the story of Venezuela. Chávez has been this authoritarian leader, a larger than life figure, hugely charismatic, but he developed stomach cancer. He becomes desperately sick, desperate. He dies. And then Nicolás Maduro comes in and there’s people going, well, it can’t get any worse, can it?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Well, Maduro, the thing is he didn’t do anything different from what Chávez did. Maduro continued the same policies of nationalizations, price controls, printing money. And things just became worse naturally, as they always were going to.

A lot of people have tried to rehabilitate Chávez and then say, no, this is all because of Maduro. Chávez was an international criminal drug dealer, the guy who started it all. Chávez is the one who put Maduro in charge himself too. None of these are saints or good people.

And what happened is, think about it, the government owned the electricity, the water sector, the oil sector. And the longer it passes without doing maintenance to, say, electric facilities or water facilities, the more likely something bad’s going to happen to them.

In Venezuela, we saw even during Chávez, explosions of refineries. The main refineries, El Palito and Amuay, exploded. That’s why there’s no gasoline. They exploded because they didn’t do maintenance. The water and the electric facilities, explosions too, because of lack of maintenance.

And every time something’s happened, you know what Chávez and Maduro would say? “Oh, it’s Marco Rubio that hacked our system from Florida, from Miami.” Imagine now that he’s Secretary of State, right? They really are paranoid, or try to portray themselves as paranoid.

They know it’s all their fault. It’s all a lie to deceive Westerners that, “Oh, it’s all our fault.” And they play into this guilt when in reality they just want to stay in power forever. They’re not even Marxists, I actually think anymore. I actually think they know socialism is bad. They know socialism makes people poor, but that’s why they implement it. Because keeping people poor and dependent on the government is how they stay in power and continue their drug trafficking operation.

The Narco State: Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns

FRANCIS FOSTER: And so with that in mind, and I’m glad that you touched on the narco trafficking thing, because that’s one aspect of the regime. He’s been critical of many aspects of the regime, but that’s one aspect that Trump has been hypercritical on. So let’s talk about that.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Yes. So the Maduro regime is what’s called a cartel, the Cartel of the Suns. This all began—I mean, these investigations have been ongoing for over 10 years independently at the Department of Justice.

And one of the things Chávez did in the early 2000s is that most countries have cooperation agreements with the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, to stop drug trafficking in South America. It’s a big source of drug trafficking. Why? Because it’s mostly produced in Colombia. That’s where the U.S. opened military bases there and really fought it hard under the Uribe presidency. And then now under Petro, obviously, it’s all going overboard.

But Chávez stopped the cooperation with the U.S. government, and that was purposeful. That’s because they thought that that was actually their best revenue source. They destroyed the oil industry, so they ran out of oil to steal. What they didn’t destroy, because it’s not government owned, is the drug trafficking industry.

And so the generals of the Venezuelan military—this is part of how they remain in power—the military is the cartel. And the military knows that if Venezuela were to become a democratic country, obviously, generals cannot be drug kingpins, no matter who comes to power in an election. And that’s why they will never give up power peacefully. It’s another discussion that we can talk about.

But the point is they became a cartel. They don’t mainly produce the drugs there. It’s mostly from Colombia, from FARC, ELN, these other military groups. They bring it through Venezuela. And because Venezuela is a narco state, the government itself endorses this. They use government planes to transport drugs. They use all the state infrastructure to do it.

Nicolás Maduro’s nephews were captured by the DEA in Haiti with kilos of cocaine. They were brought here, they went to trial, they were declared guilty, and then Biden pardoned them and sent them back.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Oh, yeah. This happened a few years ago under Biden because part of an exchange for American prisoners, and he released their nephews, the nephews of the dictator. I mean, this is how high up it is. I mean, how close do you want to get? It’s his own family.

So that is why they do it, because it’s a big source of revenue. It’s a way to create a clientele of people in power that have the weapons to remain in power.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And how much cocaine—do we know how much cocaine is being trafficked from Venezuela to the United States?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: So my understanding is that it’s about 20% of the cocaine that gets to the United States comes from Venezuela. It’s not a majority, but it’s a huge portion. But I mean, I don’t know how credible it is, the amounts, but it really comes from Colombia. That’s where it’s produced.

And then Venezuela helps with the transportation. Part of it also goes to Europe. It’s not all to the United States. Goes through the islands of the Caribbean, sometimes on flights, sometimes on boats, like the boats we’ve seen struck in the Caribbean and then ultimately also through Mexico.

Operation Absolute Resolve: Striking the Narco Boats

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, these boats that have been destroyed by U.S. strikes, are they narco boats? What do we know about them?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I am certain that they are. So one of the things is right now there’s a very lively discussion in the United States over whether this is legal, whether this is good, whether these people need to be brought to trial.

Look, I can tell you at least me personally as a Venezuelan, I fully support the Trump administration’s strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean. And a big majority of Venezuelans even post on their personal social media jokes about it. They love it. They’re like “another one bites the dust” because this is part of what keeps the regime in power.

Now, are the strikes going to overthrow Maduro by themselves? Striking boats? No. More would need to be done. But is it a good thing? Because these people are evil and have destroyed our country? Yes.

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Well, there’s something strange I found because, look, this episode might go out a fair while after the events that we’re discussing, and by this point, it might all be legal or illegal or, you know, whatever.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Right.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But I just thought it was quite weird the way the media covered it because they were like, well, one of the people who was hit, you know, was a fisherman. And you’re going, well, drug cartels will use fishermen to drive boats.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: No, no, wait. That person who was, by the way, Colombian, that fisherman was a convicted armed trafficker in Colombia.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Are you telling me that he reformed himself? Went to a drug trafficking route to fish?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: That sounds fishy.

Venezuela’s Security Threat to the West

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, that sounds fishy. But even if that isn’t the case, I mean, just because there was one fisherman on a boat doesn’t mean it’s not a narco boat. I mean, drug cartels probably don’t have boat training camps. They just get a guy who has a boat or who knows how to do. You know what I mean? It’s kind of silly.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Now.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: You might say, well, Daniel, but is death really the solution? Right. I’m going to tell you why this is the appropriate strategy. It is the appropriate strategy because the drug trafficking in Latin America, and especially in Venezuela and Colombia, it is tied to terrorism.

How do you think FARC and ELN, the terrorist designated groups by the United States, not even talking about the Cartel of the Suns yet.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Sorry, Daniel. There’s a lot of people who won’t know what FARC is and won’t know what ELN is. So let’s just give us a bit of background and then come back to the FARC.

FARC, ELN, and the Drug-Terrorism Connection

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Yeah. The FARC and ELN are Colombian militias that occupy large portions of Colombia. They do bomb attacks, kidnap people. They have kidnapped even presidential candidates in Colombia, and they extort businesses in the region, and they’re funded through drug trafficking.

How do you think Hezbollah even gets funding too, as well? Also receives money from drug trafficking. Terrorist groups have found out that the most profitable way to make money is drug trafficking and other criminal activity. It’s like the mob did the alcohol and the prostitution and all these things together. It’s the same thing the terrorists do.

So when you strike the drug trafficking, you strike the funding source of terrorism.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s really, really interesting. Another thing I was going to ask you is one of the things that I think is probably under discussed is the extent to which Venezuela is working with hostile regimes to the United States.

Venezuela’s Alliance with Hostile Regimes

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Absolutely. So Chávez became very good friends with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was president of Iran. Iranians are still very good allies of the current regime. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, I mean, Russia and China gave him billions and billions of loans and then they forgave. That’s all to prop them up.

Because for these regimes having Venezuela, there is both a platform to attack the United States, but also to bother the United States. They know that the drug trafficking kills Americans and harms the West. Why not support them? They know that Maduro and Chávez before him funded communist parties in other countries, including Petro in Colombia, including Podemos in Spain, by the way, the far left party there that is in power.

So it is a very cost effective way to just fight an asymmetric war against the West. And yeah, so I would say it is a big problem. I don’t know if you remember when they tried to kidnap the Iranian dissident here in New York City, these armed assassins. The objective was kidnapping, but the other option was assassination. The plan was actually to take her to Caracas, not to Iran directly, was much closer.

That’s because the Iranian regime cooperates with the majority. The first lady and the President of Iran came recently to Venezuela. It was a really funny video. She came in a full black burqa. And then when she was coming off the plane, Venezuelans put the Star Wars song as she was coming down. That’s exactly what it is.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. And that’s the tragedy of Venezuela, is that it’s become completely corrupted, that it’s essentially now a vessel for the Iranian regime. But it’s also got links to China as well.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Well, absolutely. The Chinese supported Chávez with loans. They’re still present. I mean, part of how the oil is extracted today in Venezuela is Iranian, Chinese and Russian companies because the Maduro regime wasn’t able to do it themselves. So they’re like, hey, let’s bring you all of this.

So it’s really funny when the far leftists in the United States and other countries say that, oh, this is the United States that wants to overthrow Maduro because of the oil. The oil is being taken by Russia, by China and by Iran. What are you talking about? Where do you think the Venezuelan gasoline comes from now? It comes from Iran. Take the oil there, bring the gasoline back.

The Iranians, I mean, those are the imperialist countries that intervene in Venezuela. It’s Cuba that did. Venezuelans want to have peaceful, free relations with the United States like it used to be. The refineries all along Texas used to be designed to bring Venezuelan heavy oil and refine it there. That’s what they’re designed to do.

And if anything, the Maduro regime has destroyed oil production. Venezuela used to produce three and a half to four million barrels a day. Now it produces less than a million, about half a million.

Hezbollah Training Camps and Terrorist Presence

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it represents a very real security threat to the United States. Because I was talking to one of my cousins and he was saying that there’s Hezbollah training camps on the island of Margarita.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: You see now people in burqas. You see a lot of Islamists in Venezuela. And look, people, you might understand that Muslims are immigrating to rich countries because it’s a better place to live. Nobody’s immigrating to Venezuela because it’s a better place to live. How did they show up there? Because they’ll work for Iran. That’s really simple. It’s because of the Hezbollah training camps.

Not only that, but the other terrorist organizations I mentioned earlier, FARC and ELN, sought refuge from the US involvement in Colombia inside Venezuela. Chávez protected them. He even has in one of his State of Union addresses saying that FARC and ELN are not terrorist groups. They’re just misunderstood people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And not only do they represent a terrorist threat externally to the United States, Venezuela, and I’m ashamed to say this, it actually pains me and it upsets me to say this. We represent a threat to the United States internally with gangs like Tren de Aragua.

Gang Infiltration and Internal Threats

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Absolutely. So Venezuela, then after 2020, became a different, greater threat to America and the world. Because now not only was it the drugs, which also increased, but it’s also the migration of hundreds of thousands of people, well, millions all over the world, of course, and among them really dangerous gang members that you really didn’t need to be a genius to identify them.

So one of the examples is this woman who crossed the southern border under Biden. She was not sneaking in. She was let in by border patrol. She was checked. You just had to see her picture to know that she shouldn’t have been allowed. Okay? Facial tattoos everywhere. This woman was actually a child sex trafficker. And when she came to America, what she did was traffic girls into prostitution. Her nickname was Barbie. This is on the New York Post. You can read it and see her photo.

All the other cases in New York City of gang members and thieve bands, right? Shoplifting gangs, and that is little. They took over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. I mean, they have done so much, and they have even attempted to assassinate Venezuelan dissidents in other countries. Two Venezuelan dissidents were almost killed a couple of weeks ago in Colombia by an assassin group. They survived, thank God. They killed one in Chile.

Their goal is to, it’s not that most Venezuelans, or even a large, you know, or even a small or significant number are all criminals or whatever coming into the US, but that the Venezuelan regime uses the natural migration flow of people who flee them to infiltrate criminals and gang members.

The Paradox of Crime Under Socialism

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, this is what I was going to ask you because there was one thing that we didn’t have in the Soviet Union because it was an authoritarian, maybe even totalitarian regime. We did not have criminal gangs that were roaming, kidnapping people, trafficking drugs, that like, if you want to talk about the benefits of totalitarianism, crime tends to be really under control. Right.

As far as I understand, in China there are no huge gangs that are doing any of this stuff. So how does a country with an authoritarian socialist regime end up having such a strong presence of organized crime?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: That is such a good observation. You’re right. Cuba also doesn’t have a major crime problem.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Venezuela is unique among these socialist nations in that it allowed crime to fester. And I think it was a political strategy. So if you see the charts of all the independent groups of the crime rate, homicide rate, kidnapping numbers, everything of Venezuela. Chávez got elected and sworn into office. Linear increase up.

Caracas became one of the cities with the highest homicide rates on the planet. And that was all during my lifetime. It became so dangerous that when I went to parties as a teenager in friends’ homes, we would stay overnight because we didn’t want to be picked up or leave in the dark.

My own family in the early 2000s were kidnapped at the beach at home. They stole everything. They took our cars, they took our belongings. And so this became commonplace. I have friends who, some of them got robbed two times a day. It became a joke. At this point it’s like, really? And when they come, they already stole my phone. I can’t give it to you.

So we became used to the crime. That was one of their greatest quality of life improvements. For me, coming to America was being at peace in the street, not thinking that a man on a motorcycle was going to come next to me on the sidewalk and then point a gun at me and say, give me everything you have and then kill me perhaps.

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Crime as a Political Tool

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I guess what I’m asking is, is the crime and these gangs that we’re seeing, particularly the ones that are infiltrating the United States, is that simply a failure of the Venezuelan regime to assert its authority or is there something more nefarious going on?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I think it is more nefarious. I think that the other authoritarian regimes chose to just quash crime and Maduro and Chávez chose not to. Inside Venezuela, the purpose of the gangs was to repress protests. They used these armed groups so that when there were large protests, they would send them, it’s called colectivos, collectives, and they would come in motorcycles, dressed in red, and then they would shoot some people, kidnap others, torture them, and defuse the protest that way, and then say, oh, that wasn’t the police, it was them.

With Russian weapons, by the way. I mean, how else do you get weapons in a country where weapons are illegal, right? Well, the weapons are illegal for the law abiding citizens, not for the gang members and the collectives. So that’s how it all began.

And then these gangs also grew on themselves, right? They control the prisons which are totally packed with people. Part of what President Trump has said about the gangs is that Maduro released the people from the prisons. Actually, the problem is that people just didn’t go to prison in the first place.

The prisons are actually the place where criminals thrive. They have chicken inside the prisons, they have banks. They bring in people from outside. There are several good documentaries of people who go into the prisons, Americans and others.

So I think it was a political strategy at the beginning, internal. And then when they saw that people were coming to the United States through the border, they were like, we can exploit this. So the gang members came with them.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Do you think that there’s going to be some kind of military action in Venezuela involving the U.S.?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I hope so.

The Case for Intervention in Venezuela

DANIEL DI MARTINO: You know, right now where we’re only seeing is striking the boats. Trump has hinted at striking inside Venezuela, the land. Look, why do I say I hope so? Because it’s really the only way we see this regime end.

This regime will not end because they feel pressure from sanctions as much as I support it, because I don’t think they should get to enjoy the financial benefits of what they stole. It’s the just thing to do to sanction the regime.

If you want to see a prosperous Venezuela where millions of people aren’t fleeing, where criminals aren’t going to other countries, where we’re actually exporting oil instead of exporting people, the only way is for Maduro not to be in power and Venezuela become a free country again.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And I think it’s such a good point, Daniel. And what people don’t understand because Venezuela isn’t the focus of most people’s attention, is this is not sustainable either for Venezuela or actually for the United States. And something really does need to be done.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Indeed. I mean, we’re all paying for what socialism did to Venezuela. We’re paying it in higher gasoline prices because there are millions of barrels that are not being produced every day from Venezuela. We’re paying it in crime.

I mean, how many people have been killed by gang members from Venezuela in the US? Every time I was seeing the news, like migrant crime, whatever, I was like, please let it not be Venezuelan. Please let it not be Venezuelan. You know, like, oh, please, at least I know a Latin American nation. Please, come on.

Yeah, so that is not a coincidence. And so we’re paying the price. And we would all benefit so much if Venezuela became free. Not just Venezuelans. So many people would go back to Venezuela. Millions of people.

And I think so much suffering has been done, people starving, so much lost human potential of valuable people that could be innovating and doing good things. It’s the same thing with the Soviet Union when it was still a socialist regime. How many smart Russians were there? I mean, Russia had some of the smartest people in the world that couldn’t fulfill their potential and innovate for all of the world’s benefit because of Soviet socialism.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And a lot of them are here now and in Israel.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Very true. Very, very true. But still, it was a loss of human potential. Same in China. Same in so many authoritarian countries. And I think President Trump has the opportunity not only to get a huge win on foreign policy, but to do the greatest foreign policy achievement of the US perhaps in many decades.

The Regime Change Question

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, here’s the question, Daniel. And look, I think what you’re saying I totally get, particularly from your perspective. I also think, I think you’d agree with me over the last 20 years, regime change has got a bit of a bad rep. Right.

And partly, I think, for very good reasons, which is one of the things, I think Americans have discovered that, you know, I always try to explain this to our American friends. It’s like not everyone in the world is American. So even if you remove the evil guy at the top, they don’t necessarily end up in a, you know, social democracy or liberal democracy or democracy at all.

So, for example, you know, I think there was a few people who were a little bit too enthusiastic when the Ukraine war, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and they were, oh, we just need to get rid of Putin. And I was like, well, I agree with you that what’s happening is bad and I’m super pro Ukraine. You remove Putin, I’m not sure you’re going to get something better.

So if you are saying, well, it would be better to remove Maduro, I totally get the sentiment. But make the case to me that he’s not going to be replaced by Nicolas Paduro and he’s even worse.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: That’s very important. And obviously during the last 20 years, I mean, because of the Iraq war, which was a massive mistake, trillion dollar mistake, that’s a big problem. But people forget that there have been many successful uses of force in US foreign policy in the past, even in Latin America, that led to great prosperity.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Tell us about that.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: Panama, for example. Panama, Chile is one of the richest countries in Latin America. After the US deposed Manuel Noriega. Grenada, in Grenada, they celebrate Thanksgiving on the day of the US intervention in Grenada took one day. Now Grenada is an island. It’s much smaller. Panama had the Panama Canal. I understand it’s not the same.

But what I’m trying to say is that it can be successful, and it has been successful in recent period in the 1980s. So what happens in Venezuela is also similar in that we have a democratically elected government, we have an active opposition, something Cuba doesn’t have, unfortunately.

And so we have who people, you know, are a democratic alternative that has massive popular support, and we have a regime that totally depends on drug trafficking. We don’t have a country with ethnic or religious division. Right. We’re not going to have an Iraq Shiite versus Muslim war. We’re not going to have, you know, these ethnic genocides. Right. That happened in Africa. It’s a very different situation.

And we don’t need troops on the ground either. Right. That would be a massive mistake because it will be very costly. The US is simply not capable of doing that in Venezuela, which is a very large country, larger than Iraq, too.

So what President Trump could do is actually strike at the military facilities of the regime and even strike at some of the major regime members, such that Maduro gets the message, I need to leave because my life is at risk. And where would he live the same fate that Bashar al-Assad had? He will go to Russia, probably. I don’t think he wants to go to Cuba. It’s too poor. So in China, you know, he probably doesn’t want to be in Asia, so he’ll probably end up in Russia.

A Message to Young Socialists

FRANCIS FOSTER: And before we move on to our Substack where people get to ask their questions to you, Daniel, what would you say to young people who are toying with socialism, who are frustrated, who are angry, who are, who think to themselves, capitalism isn’t working for me. We’re in the hands of corporations. How bad can socialism be?

DANIEL DI MARTINO: If you don’t want somebody that you hate in the government running your life, like for example, Donald Trump, then you shouldn’t give the government the power that socialist regimes do, because that’s what’s going to happen. People that you don’t like are going to be in power and they’re going to use the power that you gave to the government against you. And that is what we need to stop. Right.

And I bet that most of the people who support socialism really dislike President Trump. Well, who do you think is going to be in charge of your health care in their government health care? Who do you think is going to be in charge of your education on government education?

So private property is actually a protection against governments you don’t like, against people being involved in your life in ways you don’t want them. And I want everybody to have affordable housing, affordable health care. Like I said earlier, I want people to be wealthy.

And we’re already much wealthier than we used to be. We just lack that perspective. We’re wealthier than our grandparents were, than our parents were. Immigrants find success in America in incredible ways. I have at least, and I know millions of others.

So the answer to this is not to tear down everything. It’s to understand what are the causes for the problems we suffer. Why are we not building enough housing? Why are groceries perhaps more expensive than they used to be? What? And then implement policies targeted to those areas.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And so what do you think the policies are from a capitalist perspective?

Free Market Solutions

DANIEL DI MARTINO: From a capitalist perspective, we need to really repeal a lot of zoning, parking requirements, all these government regulations on building. This is why Austin, Texas builds housing more in absolute numbers than New York City, a city that is 10 times larger, because there’s less regulation. It’s a liberal city. It’s liberal, people living there, moving there, but they just have less regulation, so they build more.

California has been understanding this and they’ve changed the regulations because they know it’s an existential threat. On other policies on labor, for example, America is one of the countries that has the most licensing barriers to enter any profession.

You need in most states more than 1,000 hours of unpaid training and over thousands of dollars in courses to become a barber. You need a license in Washington, D.C. and other states and territories to become an interior designer. Is the government trying to protect us from the wrong paint inside our walls, in our homes? This makes no sense.

It’s about 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 professions in America need a government license. Look, I’m not saying we need to repeal licenses for doctors and lawyers, but we don’t need to repeal most of the other licenses so that poor people who are the ones who can’t enter the profession are able to, so that they’re not stuck in low paying jobs, in fast food or doing something else.

The solution is not to increase the minimum wage. The solution is to get better training. The solution is to increase productivity, lower taxes, simplify regulations, the tax code too.

We have a great welfare cliff in this country where if you make more than a certain amount of money, you actually are worse off because you lose your Medicaid, you lose your public housing vouchers. So we need to reform this tax and spending system so that the incentives are aligned for people to make more money, work, and live better lives.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure and it’s obviously been particularly impactful for me. I’m going to cry, mate. A little cry. What’s wrong with you?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Not a real man. Can’t deal with the suffering your own people.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Exactly.

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I think a lot of, I mean, what happened to Venezuela is really, really sad. So I fully understand.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, of course. And I’m only joking. When we…

FRANCIS FOSTER: Now you know, don’t you?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I don’t know if you remember when we had an episode on the Soviet Union. I think I actually did cry. So I was only teasing you in a playful sort of way. Yeah, no, of course. It’s a very serious. Daniel, I thought you’re really, really special conversation. Thank you for coming on, man. It was great.

We’re going to head over to Substack triggerpod.co.uk where Daniel’s going to answer your questions. But before we do, what’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be?

The Gender Political Divide

DANIEL DI MARTINO: I think we’re not talking enough about the fact that the genders are politically polarized and that especially young women are the ones that are supporting socialist parties all over the world. It’s not just an American thing.

If you see the results of the elections in Germany, people are saying, oh, the youth are voting for the far right, not the young men were. The young women were voting for the far left. And I fear that that is happening here too. And I do feel what that’s going to do to the genders. It’s going to family formation and really, that’s what’s going to do to the political future of the West.

And understand, we need to understand better, why are certain groups of the population more attracted to socialist ideas than others? And that is not something that I fully understand yet.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Perfect. Well, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Daniel’s going to answer your question.

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