[00:00:00] Speaker 1: One of the things that I know that you know the president's supporters absolutely love is that he has been arguing since he first ran 10 years ago that he's going to end forever wars and put America first. Now he says he's running Venezuela, he's totally open to putting boots back on the ground there, and he's signaling that Cuba and Colombia could be next. How is that America first?

[00:00:23] Speaker 2: I mean, look, I trust the president to make decisions that are in the best interest of Americans, of our country. This president gets results. I think when you have a guy who's not recognized as the head of state, who's head of a narco-terrorist criminal operation, who's cozying up to Iran and China, and he's doing it right here in our hemisphere, bringing that individual to justice, I think that's a good thing. Most Americans think that's a good thing.

[00:00:49] Speaker 1: The so-called Gang of Eight is notified before major U.S. military operations, but that didn't happen here. The Trump administration notified congressional leaders only after the attacks were underway. Here with me now is a member of that Gang of Eight, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes. Thank you so much for being here. It's been more than 24 hours. Have you been briefed by anybody in the administration?

[00:01:13] Speaker 3: Still haven't gotten a phone call. You know, well after the operation yesterday, a staffer at the Office of the Secretary of Defense called the staff on the Intelligence Committee. But no, look, this is a long pattern and a particularly egregious example of a pattern of this administration not giving a hoot about the United States Congress, which by the way, Jim Jordan just sort of gave the game away. I hope you can play that interview over and over and over again, because he gave the game away, right? He said over and over again, I trust the president. I trust it. Now, he's being asked to explain an imperial adventure, right? I mean, you did a pretty good job. An imperial adventure from the guy who was going to be America first and not get into stupid wars. And his answer is, I trust the president. I trust the president. I trust the president. That is giving the game away, because two-thirds of my Republican colleagues in the Congress wake up every single morning and say, what can I do today to prove my loyalty to the president of the United States? And Jim Jordan, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, seems to be unaware that our whole system, our whole system, Dana, is set up to provide checks and balances. The job of a member of Congress is to approach the president, regardless of that president's party, with skepticism, with pushback, with checks and balances. So again, I hope you can play that video over and over again so America can see the fact that they no longer have a Congress.

[00:02:32] Speaker 1: Congressman, on the topic of Congress and being briefed, what the Trump administration is saying is that they didn't want to notify Congress because leaders, people like you, leak. The Secretary of State said it's just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission. And then the president said Congress has a tendency to leak. Your response?

[00:02:59] Speaker 3: Well, two responses. Number one, that's not accurate. I've sat in on a number of Gang of Eight meetings talking about the boat strikes in which there have been no leaks. So number one, that's not accurate. Now, when you brief all 535 members of Congress, there's a higher probability that there could be a leak. But again, I'm a member of the Gang of Eight, and I have yet to get a phone call from anybody in the administration. I talked to Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader yesterday. He got no phone call even after the event. If this were an administration serious about abiding by the law, and that's the second point that's really important here, whether you think Congress leaks or not, the law says you must brief the Congress. So this is just yet another example of absolute lawlessness on the part of this administration, and they get away with it because of what Jim Jordan just told you. I trust the president. I'm not interested in acting as a check or a balance on this imperial exercise of presidential might.

[00:03:53] Speaker 1: Let's look ahead. You said removing a leader, however brutal, without a next day plan is dangerous and irresponsible. We can talk about the effective plan if there is one. We don't know, but Maduro is gone. What do you think should happen right now to prevent chaos in Venezuela?

[00:04:19] Speaker 3: It's a great question because we're caught up in exactly the euphoria that we got caught up with in 2002 when the Taliban went down. In 2003, when in Iraq, Saddam Hussein went down. In 2011, when Qaddafi was killed. We're caught up in this euphoria of how amazing we are at taking down leaders. But again, let's take through those countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Post our removal of those leaders, I think all of us would look back and say, oh my God, we don't want to do that again. We don't want to not have a plan for the next day. And I don't know about you, but I heard the president yesterday say, we're going to run Venezuela. Now again, I'm just a member of the gang of eight who hasn't yet gotten a phone call from the White House. But as far as I know, we don't have a single person on the ground in Venezuela right now. So what it means for us to be running this, I don't know. What I can tell you, Dana, is that if you were serious about stability in Venezuela, you would have not done two things that the president did yesterday. Number one, you wouldn't have spent half your press conference talking about oil. What do Venezuelans hear when they hear Donald Trump talking about oil? What they hear is the Americans are here for our resources. And by the way, I wouldn't have delegitimized probably the most politically popular woman in Venezuela, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And Donald Trump just out of nowhere says she doesn't have the respect or the standing. He not only made this about oil, but he delegitimized probably the most unifying force in Venezuela right now.

[00:05:46] Speaker 1: Let me ask you about that, because you'll know the answer based on your perch on the Intel Committee. What I have heard about the sort of dynamic there, that potentially what the president was saying about Machado, who won the Peace Prize, is that it's about the Venezuelan military. And the Venezuelan military is so powerful that the elected official, not the dictator like we saw Maduro, but the elected official has to have the backing of the military. And perhaps Machado, or even another candidate who came after her, effectively won in 2024, Edmundo Gonzalez, don't have that.

[00:06:33] Speaker 3: Well, I don't even know quite how to respond to that. Number one, the Venezuelan military demonstrated precisely how powerful they were 48 hours ago, when they couldn't stop an invasion of their own country, and in which not a single American serviceman was killed or a single military asset. So I'm going to not be terribly sympathetic to the argument that the Venezuelan military is a giant standing astride the globe. Secondly, my God, we're the United States of America, right? We care, or at least we used to care about democratic norms. We used to care about the idea that the people ought to have a little something to say about who governs them. And again, Donald Trump yesterday in his news conference basically, I think, set the stage for a disaster here by making this about the oil, and by taking the person, Machado, who is recognized not just in Venezuela, but by the world as the most legitimate political actor and saying, ah, she doesn't have the juice.

[00:07:26] Speaker 4: I mean, come on. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, one of the members of the Gang of Eight, said he knows very little about the president's objective and wants some answers.

[00:07:37] Speaker 5: I was not briefed. I still have not been briefed. We've gotten no information from them.

[00:07:44] Speaker 4: All right, my panel is back. Beyond just the briefing, there's the actual authorizing this strike. This is what Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, said to Vanity Fair magazine in an interview that was published just a few weeks ago. If you were to authorize some activity on land, then it's war, then we'd need Congress. So she says.

[00:08:02] Speaker 6: So for this broader operation, the administration has been relying on those very decades-old use-of-force authorizations back in 2001. But I found it really interesting when the administration did start doing their notifications. Obviously, Chuck Schumer is a little lower down on the list of the people that they talk to.

[00:08:21] Speaker 4: But I found— But typically, though— Typically, they are— It would notify members in both parties, leaders in both parties on something like this.

[00:08:27] Speaker 6: Particularly in advance, even if it's just very minimal, just to let them know what's going on. But the administration said, we felt that was not necessary. And then Trump just went in and said, also, they would probably leak. And that is why they decided to keep the lid on it. But when they started notifying members of Congress, I found it really interesting—I don't know if you did, Manu—that one of the first people that they talked to was Mike Lee of Utah. And he's not in leadership. He is not the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. But he is a Republican who has been critical of both administrations, or administrations in both parties, relying on that old AUMF and kind of going beyond the powers of the presidency. And I found—so the fact that Rubio went to him among the first and rationalized the administration's actions there, and he seemed to be persuaded, they were really trying to neutralize their potential Republican critics there.

[00:09:23] Speaker 7: Manu, the Gang of Eight does not leak. I've been at this for a little while. They may, after the operation is over, step in and criticize this. But at that point, the operation's over. But they do not blow operations in advance. Neither, by the way, does mainstream media when they learn of these things in advance. So the president's argument here I did not think carried a whole lot of water. The second part of this is, you could separate out grabbing him as the U.S. grabbed Noriega in 1989, and say that's the law enforcement part of that. But you have to separate out the law enforcement part from the part we were just discussing, which is the virtual occupation part, the part where we say, we now will be essentially running your government. You can do whatever you want as long as it's in our interests. And if it's not in our interests, there may be a second wave of invasion. And by the way, look off coast.

[00:10:26] Speaker 8: No one has been really briefed on that second piece of what you're talking about. That's right. And to your point about the order of operations here, I mean, what I was hearing is they were essentially looking at the tweets from Republicans and calling the people that were out there tweeting questions.

[00:10:40] Speaker 4: Who could create political problems for them on the right?

[00:10:43] Speaker 8: Exactly, exactly. And the thing about this Venezuelan issue and the power of Congress is it's not just Democrats that have been critical. I mean, in the aftermath of this operation, the Republicans have largely stood in line. But prior to this, I mean, I've been hearing from Republican lawmakers that they are not getting enough information from the administration.