Name: Ukraine For Venezuela? Julia Ioffe On Rumors Of A Trump-Putin Quid Pro Quo
Uploaded: 2026-01-06T16:55:55.000Z
Duration: 5 min 10 s
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My next guest is a Washington correspondent for Puck News and one of the country's leading Experts on Russia, U.S.

Please welcome back to the Late Show Julia Yaffe.

You understand the international stuff better than most people.

The Trump administration arrested the president of Venezuela without giving a heads up to Congress and announced the US Will run the country.

Have any of your sources offered clarity on what running the country means?

Well, he did notify the oil companies, so I think we're good.

I mean, we would have to have like 100,000 troops on the ground there if there's anything like trying to run Iraq.

Well, I don't think that's what's happening, at least as of yet.

It sounds like they're just going to threaten Delsey Rodriguez, who was Maduro's vice president and is now president, into doing what Trump wants, which seems to be, I mean, I'm guessing here, which seems to be allowing American oil companies back into Venezuela to supply delicious oil.

Far be it from me to give any advice to the commander in chief.

But remember, you're there to extract freedom from.

You're drilling for opportunity for all people there.

And when you install a puppet, don't say that she's your puppet.

And if she doesn't do what you're saying, we'll get a new puppet because people don't want to be ruled by puppets.

On behalf of the president, does any of that surprise you?

Look, I think this has been Trump's thing the whole time, right?

Which is that everybody does this, everybody lies, except me.

And I think for some people around the world, it has been, this has been the modus operandi for the US all along.

We've backed regime change and coups all over the world, in Iran, all over Latin America.

But we say that it's for democracy and we go to spread democracy in Iraq in 2003 when everybody around the world is like, no, you're not, you're going for oil.

And now the American president says, no, we're not, we're going for oil.

Just swish it around your mouth a little bit and it feels nice.

Now, Fiona Hill, in her testimony before the Congress and the Trump impeachment, the first one, the og, she testified this is having to do with Ukraine.

She testified that there was some sort of backroom deal floated from Putin to Trump, saying, hey, we'll kind of withdraw from Venezuela if you guys stop your support from Ukraine.

And we're each regional zones of interest.

We're great powers with zones of interest.

It was just that the Russians were dropping very thick crumbs, very fat crumbs of hints for the Trump administration, saying, hey, this is in our backyard.

You care about Venezuela because it's in your backyard.

So why don't you stay out of Ukraine and we'll stay out of Venezuela?

Well, because the people doing foreign policy for Trump 1.0, like Fiona Hill, like John Bolton, who loves regime change.

And he at one point recently told me, you know, I kept trying to get him to do regime change, and

So they were like, we're not going to make this linkage.

But according to Fiona, she thinks this is now back in the air.

And Medvedev, the former Russian president who was once a liberal, is dropping these hints again.

Donnie, we have to take a little break here.

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Ukraine For Venezuela? Julia Ioffe On Rumors Of A Trump-Putin Quid Pro Quo

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