INTERVIEW: Why Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó backs Trump's drone strikes on narco-traffickers
President Juan Guiadó explains why President Donald Trump's drone strikes against Venezuelan narco-traffickers are needed against a regime that uses "chaos" as a strategy.
As President Donald Trump’s administration strikes at drug boats tied to Venezuela, hones in on Tren de Aragua’s ties to the Venezuelan regime, and seeks a $50 million bounty on the head of dictator Nicolás Maduro, the Washington Reporter spoke with Juan Guaidó, the former President of Venezuela from 2019 to 2023, to better understand current events.
During an interview with the Reporter’s editor-in-chief Matthew Foldi at the 2025 Nixon Foundation Grand Strategy Summit, Guaidó praised Trump for his leadership and military action against narco-terrorist boats from Venezuela in the Caribbean.
“President Trump is leading an operation back in the Caribbean to confront, to face that criminal regime back in Venezuela that used narco trafficking and terrorism to directly threaten the western hemisphere,” he explained. “[The] operation in the Caribbean is not against Venezuela by the way: it’s against a criminal regime led by Maduro and his cronies…they have links with Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, also China, to sustain power through fear, corruption and violence.”
Guaidó added that Venezuelans “welcome every effort that upholds the rule of international law to confront that kind of regime.”
When asked about the current state of Venezuela, Guaidó described his country’s current regime as a “criminal autocracy.”
“What began as an authoritarian regime has evolved into a system that fuels state power, which organizes crime, using the nation’s work to serve not our people, but to evade justice, sustain power, to fear, corruption, and violence,” he said.
Nicolás Maduro’s regime uses “chaos as a weapon,” he added.
Guaidó also compared the state of Venezuela to other nations struggling in authoritarian regimes.
“Our Venezuelan struggle is not isolated,” he explained. “It’s a mirror of what happens when corruption, impunity and foreign interference, talking about China, Iran, and Russia converge. So if the world tolerates criminals, autocrats like Maduros, they invite others. If we allow chaos to be weaponized, it will not stop at our borders.”
The solution to this problem, from Guaidó’s perspective, is to make governments accountable for their actions.
“If you make accountable regimes like Putin’s regime or Iran’s regime, you also make a countable Maduro’s regime, and you get weaker dictators around the world, and we can promote better ways to recover democracy,” he said.
Guaidó’s fellow panelist, Bonnie Glick, the former deputy administrator for USAID, pointed to the economic power Venezuela used to hold.
“Venezuela was the wealthiest country in South America, and it is now one of the poorest countries in the world, because the natural resources of the country have been pillaged by successive dictators,” Glick said. “When we think about the future that could be for Venezuela, it’s as an important trading partner and an important peace partner for the United States and a tremendously, potentially powerful influence in our hemisphere, extremely important.”
Venezuela’s stability can also strengthen economic ties for the western hemisphere, Guaidó noted.
“So if Maduro remains in power, the cost will not be only for the Venezuelan people. The cost is greater, it’s instability, it’s the opportunity cost by producing, not only oil, also gas minerals, that can be commercialized all over the region and in the main initiative with the US,” he said, estimating that a free Venezuela could produce between three and five million barrels of oil a day.
Asked about Maduro’s claims to oil, Guaidó responded, “Maduro doesn’t have the abilities to promote any war, any invasion, but, they can promote chaos. If Maduro remains in power, the cost will not be only for the Venezuelan people. The largest oil reserve, immense gas, is threatened against Guyana, the minerals, the fresh water, the resources, if they remain in the hands of a criminal enterprise.” Guaidó concluded that, “it’s key, in this moment, to prevent, not only a crisis in the region, a new one with Guyana, but also to secure all the assets and commodity to a healthy region in the western hemisphere.
“If we resolve the problem, we’re going to see a stronger Venezuela, also a prosperous one, and a country that people want to live to get back to a state to achieve, to dream again, back in our country, with the largest oil reserve in the world, we can grow fastly in the continent and stabilize all the region and to promote healthy relations, economic relations, but also diplomatic ones, to secure and promote leverage all over the continent and the world,” he added.
Guaidó stressed the importance of peace and democracy in both Venezuela and the Americas, paraphrasing Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “the Americas must remain prosperous, stronger, and safer.”
“In the case of the Americas, we have to stabilize the region and to promote democracy liberty, because if it stands unchallenged in Venezuela, it will spread. But if freedom prevails, it will echo in Russia, Iran, and you send a strong and clear message.”
President Guaidó said that Trump understands the importance of Venezuela to the region. “Freedom, the security and our future are inseparable in this moment, and President Trump knows well.” A free Venezuela would mean that economically and politically the Americas could become a unified powerhouse of countries. “When Venezuela stands free, the hemisphere stands taller. When we protect our people, their resources under the rule of law, we protect the world’s security and the future of freedom itself. So it’s a strategic action to achieve that we hold and not only free Venezuela, also a free continent.”
Guaidó currently resides in Miami after being exiled from his home country for his political beliefs — a “painful” experience, he said.“It’s difficult being exiled. It’s not only my situation. I mean, eight million Venezuelans, we want to get back to our country. I want my girls home and to grow up in Venezuela.”
Guaidó’s time in exile has been a great contradiction, he added — living in freedom without the freedom to go home. Reflecting on his time in America, he said that he is thankful for the freedom and liberty to make everyday decisions.
“Liberty is about decisions, everyday decisions, and we have to fight for them. And when you experience that, you know it’s an everyday contradiction. I don’t take anything for granted. The love of your family, the closest one, the liberty, the freedom, the democracy. So we have to take action. And I want to take action everyday to recover democracy and this place.”
When Foldi asked if another presidential run was in the cards for Guaidó, the Venezuelan leader was coy: “I want to be a citizen in Venezuela, with my duties, with my rights, and also for my kids, and also for Latin America, for the Americas. So if I have to serve my country in any way, we’re gonna do it.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with President Juan Guiadó and former USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick, lightly edited for clarity.
Matthew Foldi:
President Guaidó, let’s talk about President Trump not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It went to a very deserving Venezuelan leader, María Corina Machado, who also lost a contested Latin American presidential election. Tell me your thoughts on her leadership and how you view that decision.
President Guaidó:
I was forced into exile by the Maduro regime, at this moment I live in Miami. But speaking about not only President Trump, I want to talk about the commitment of President Trump. He has been determined in confronting Maduro. What’s happening in Venezuela is not only a dictatorship, but also a criminal autocracy. What began as an authoritarian regime has evolved into a system that fuels state power with organized crime, using the nation’s work to serve not our people, but to evade justice, sustain power, to fear corruption and violence. Several years of struggling back in Venezuela, not only the recognition of our interim government, in that moment, the winning of the National Assembly back in 2015, and Maria Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize — and immediately they recognize the leadership of President Trump who, in this moment, is leading an operation back in the Caribbean to confront, to face that criminal regime back in Venezuela that uses narco trafficking and terrorism to directly threaten the western hemisphere. They use chaos as a weapon, human suffering as a weapon, the immigration, and Tren de Aragua, which is leading criminal organizations in all Latin America. So in this moment, that operation in the Caribbean is against a criminal regime led by Maduro and his cronies. The leadership of President Trump, not only in the Caribbean, but around the world, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. By the way, Secretary Marco Rubio, in his confirmation hearing, said that America must remain prosperous, stronger, and safer. We also need the Americas to be prosperous, stronger, and safer. So the freedom, the security, and our future are inseparable in this moment, and President Trump knows this well.
Matthew Foldi:
Bonnie let’s also get your thoughts on the Nobel Peace Prize decision. We’ll talk more about what you did in the first Trump administration with the Abraham Accords. But, Trump, just like Nixon, has not yet received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bonnie Glick:
Well, first of all, thank you to the Nixon Foundation for convening all of us here today. It is great to see President Guaidó, who has been heroic leader of the Venezuelan people, as have many others who have been fighting the dictatorial and illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro, as well as his predecessor, we will all remember Hugo Chavez, who basically turned Venezuela into a narco-terrorist supporting state with connections to some of the worst terrorists around the world. When it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize, Maria Corina Machado is certainly a very brave and patriotic Venezuelan citizen who has done an awful lot for the Venezuelan people. But even she, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, dedicated it to the people suffering in Venezuela and also to President Trump for his efforts to build peace and make peace and be the peacemaker around the world. So the Nobel Peace Prize Committee sitting in Norway almost can’t get out of its own way. They can’t deny the undeniable fact that President Trump is a force for peacemaking in the world, and he was a logical choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Oslo, Norway has really been captured, as has much of Western Europe, by this progressive cult and the chattering class of the World Economic Forum and other organizations similarly aligned. Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just 12 days after assuming office, and he got the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee said, because of what he would do in the future, because up until that point in time, what had he done? He was a community organizer. Were the communities at war which he organized? No. When you think about the Nobel Prizes in general, they are heavily politicized. The Nobel Peace Prize itself is sort of an anachronism in history, because it’s awarded under the name of Alfred Nobel, who himself was an arms and ammunitions maker and dealer, and so perhaps this was his penance to set up the Nobel Peace Prize in his own name to make up for all of the weapons that he sold all over the world. But it comes full circle when you look at how President Trump, who has in the course of just his first nine months in office in his second term, built peace in eight different situations around the world.
Matthew Foldi:
President Guaidó was recognized by the first Trump administration as the legitimate President of Venezuela, and one of the things that Congressman Darrell Issa talked about last night, and I’ll paraphrase slightly, was that Trump reclaimed peace as a term from the left that was normally synonymous with surrender and weakness and America retreating, à la Afghanistan, and made it into something that is a cliché, but is peace through strength. The Trump administration is striking what it claims to be drug boats coming from Venezuela and from Colombia. These strikes are happening, in some cases, thousands of miles off the coast of the United States. From your standpoint, President Guaidó, do you think that these are legitimate targets? Our Department of War is bombing these and releasing the kill cam footage. But what is actually going on with these boats? The Trump administration is saying they’re carrying drugs. You’re both characterizing the Maduro regime as a narco-terrorist state. Is this a good move by the administration?
President Guaidó:
Well, Maduro is indicted for terrorism, for being a drug dealer, and for trafficking. Two Venezuelan generals are in jail in Venezuela, and they condemned Maduro as the leader of the drug cartel operation. Maduro is not only a regular dictatorship regime that uses the power of the state for being in power, but it is also a criminal autocracy. They have links with Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, also China, to sustain power through fear, corruption, and violence. Let’s be clear, the operation back in the Caribbean is a legit operation. The U.S. Navy presence in the Caribbean is not against the Venezuelan people. We Venezuelan people welcome every effort that upholds the rule of international law. To confront that kind of regime, we are seeing a decades-long struggle for the democracy being restored in Venezuela, back in the streets, in a non-violent struggle with the rule of law, winning an election last year, July 28 in this moment when Maduro faced true leadership, he’s afraid of Trump. We welcome every effort that will hold the rule of international law and the leadership of President Trump. President Trump is focusing on the criminal system led by Maduro and his cronies. It’s not only his ties with ELN participants back in South America, the Tren de Aragua, they use third party operations that threaten all the region this moment, our Venezuelan struggle is not isolated. It’s a mirror of what happens when corruption, impunity, and foreign interference, talking about China, Iran, and Russia, converge. So if the world tolerates criminals and autocracies like Maduro’s, they invite others. If we allow chaos to be weaponized, it will not stop at our borders. It will spread over all the regions. This is a legit operation that targets who lead drug cartels and targets a regime that promotes chaos in the region.
Matthew Foldi:
There was an intelligence assessment that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, put out linking Tren de Aragua to the Maduro regime. Can you talk about what those links are and does Venezuela have to be this way? You were the president of Venezuela. I assume that you were not working hand in glove with Tren de Aragua. How can that relationship be severed when Maduro is no longer running that country?
President Guadió:
Well, I want to use one example. The general attorney back in Chile, focus or point, Diosdado Cabello and Nicola Maduro also, by the way, Gabriel Boris, President of Chile, pointed to Nicolas Maduro and Diosada Cabello as authors of the assassination of El Teniente Ojeda, Lieutenant Ojeda, who was exiled in Chile for the persecution of the Maduro regime. The leadership of Chile pointed to the Maduro regime for being responsible for that assassination that was executed by El Tren de Aragua. They use this kind of organization to terrorize people not only in Chile, but recently they tried to kill two members of our team who were exiled back in Colombia. That’s the kind of regime that Maduro runs. With Maduro in power, leading the all the assets, all the commodities, back in Venezuela, the real threat for all the western hemisphere, if Maduro stays in power or stays in control, is going to be Iran, Russia, China, in the middle of the continent and again, the chaos is not only a consequence. It’s his tool to threaten all the regimes.
Matthew Foldi:
Bonnie, you were talking about how Trump should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize the first time. The Nobel Committee kind of fell back on the excuse of ‘we had to make the decision so early in what was Trump’s second term.’ And as you noted, Obama received it regardless of that fact. But looking back at what he accomplished with the Abraham Accords, you yourself were an instrumental part in the Abraham Accords during the first Trump term. Can you talk about how that alliance was a way for America to exercise its influence, specifically with Morocco?
Bonnie Glick:
I do want to point out one little thing that’s just a data point on Venezuela here for the audience to remember, going back now almost 40 years, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in South America, and it is now one of the poorest countries in the world, because the natural resources of the country have been pillaged by successive dictators, and when we think about the future of Venezuela with President Guaidó here with us today, when we think about the future that could be for Venezuela, it’s as an important trading partner and as an important peace partner for the United States and a tremendously, potentially powerful influence in our hemisphere, extremely important. Now to the Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accords were the most extraordinary foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration in its first term. This was you will recall, around August 2020, when it was announced that Israel would normalize peaceful relations with the United Arab Emirates and with Bahrain and that followed with a signing ceremony on the White House lawn. And then, in quick succession, two additional peace treaties were signed with Morocco and with Sudan. The tremendous success of the Abraham Accords, four peace agreements signed in the period of about three months, was more than had been accomplished in 40 years of Middle East diplomacy in the United States. We had the Camp David Accords signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979 and we had a peace agreement signed between Israel and Jordan in 1993. Two agreements were deemed amazing accomplishments for Middle East peace, yet President Trump got four peace treaties signed, and all of this way back machine to 2020 all of this you’ll remember, was during COVID. So some of the most extraordinary diplomatic efforts were undertaken, but it wouldn’t have happened if the groundwork hadn’t been laid, à la President Trump. And the way President Trump presents possibilities to international partners, is ‘this is why it’s good for you, not why this would be bad for you.’ It’s a very different orientation when you think about what the President has done for peace in the Middle East and what the potential options are moving forward, it is really incredible, and the possibilities seem almost endless. Now, no one anticipated that on October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorists would invade Israel and engage in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and over 1200 people were murdered, and 251 hostages were taken. We saw last week that we are on the road to having an implemented cease fire. The remaining living hostages, 20 people have been repatriated to their country, and 28 bodies were left behind. The Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have been slowly, slowly, foot dragging to return the remains of hostages who have been held for over two years in tunnels in Gaza. We’ll see if they’re able to carry out their end of this stage of the peace agreement, to end with a cease fire.
Matthew Foldi:
Can you talk about the creation of this alliance? I’d love it if you could dive into Morocco specifically and why that specific country is important. Not only was it important, but the way in which Morocco was chosen, almost at the expense of Algeria.
Bonnie Glick:
First, we’re going to go through a quick timeline of where we are today, just to bring everyone up to date. Where we are today is President Trump went to Israel to address the Israeli parliament, the Knesset where he was just received by the Israelis as the most heroic figure, foreign figure in history, because he returned hostages to their families. He then went to Egypt, where he convened a Middle East peace summit with 20 leaders who weren’t all from the Middle East, some from Europe. The president of Paraguay came, interesting. He traveled amongst the farthest. Another traveler who came from very far, was President Subianto of Indonesia. When we think about the Abraham accords and where they’re going, and we can talk about this a little bit later. Everyone always says the magic bullet is going to be Saudi Arabia. I actually think the magic country to enter into normalization and peace agreements with Israel is going to be Indonesia, the largest, most populous Muslim majority country in the world. Now to your question about Morocco. Morocco was the third country of the Abraham Accords to sign a normalization agreement with Israel. I say normalization because Morocco was never officially in a state of war with Israel, they just didn’t have normal diplomatic relations. In that vein, we figured that Morocco might be a little bit of an easier nut to crack than other countries that are technically, officially still at war with the State of Israel. What happened, and history will retell this, I’m sure, but there were certain things that the Moroccans were interested in receiving as benefits for normalizing relations with Israel, and among those things was an American determination that control of Western Sahara would be something that would be determined, not at the United Nations, but that we recognized Moroccan control over sovereignty of Western Sahara. This is something Matthew, as you pointed out, Algerians were ticked off over because Algeria has been supporting the rebel Polisario, some might call it a terrorist organization. They’ve been launching terror attacks on Moroccans in Morocco for a long time, and America just determined this should not be a stumbling block for the Moroccans getting to peace with Israel, to normalized relations, so we recognized Moroccan control over sovereignty of Western Sahara. And now that area is commercializing, and there are tremendous natural resources and phosphorus, which is Morocco’s chief export, as well as tourism going into the region of Western Sahara. The other reason why Morocco is most interesting of all of the Arab countries and North African countries for making peace with Israel is that one in every seven Israelis traces their lineage to Morocco. So they are Moroccan Israelis. And it’s a very powerful voting block in the Israeli Knesset. It’s a very powerful cultural block in Israel. So having normalized relations with this North African kingdom was something extremely important and significant to Israel and to Morocco and America was able to make that happen under President Trump.
Matthew Foldi:
President Guaidó, we’ve seen at this point, and this was obviously a big issue in our elections, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing due to chaos that you’ve described as a tool of the Maduro regime. Many of them have ended up in America, such as yourself, and you’ve talked about this a little bit, but I’m curious if you can address Americans who would say ‘whatever happens in Venezuela is not our problem.’
President Guadió:
Yeah, it’s a good question, because Venezuela’s problem is not a distant tragedy. I never thought that Venezuelans can walk from Caracas to the southern border, and that’s a necessity. You don’t leave your house, your family, your home, your people, for luck. You know you do that for necessity. So Venezuelans problem is not a distant tragedy, it is a test of whatever freedom can still prevail when tyranny disguises itself as democracy, our fight is not only for a nation to reality, but also for the security and stability of the entire hemisphere. Because Venezuela is not just another country in the region. It’s a nation that holds us. We heard before, the largest proven oil reserve on Earth, again, the largest ones on all Earth, vast gas and mineral resources in the middle of the continent, an immense fresh water biodiversity. Those resources in this moment, the very ones that fuel prosperity, clean energy. Energy, all over the region and the world are today being used by a criminal regime for finance, repression, terrorism, chaos, Tren de Aragua, drug dealers, not only in the Caribbean, also in the US, because Maduro stole an election. He commits fraud. So the restoring of democracy back in Venezuela is not only a moral duty, it’s a strategic imperative for the Americas. Not only the United States, also Latin America. We are already seeing what’s happening in Colombia with Perto is part of the problem, for sure, but it’s an imperative and strategic for all the region. I heard in that moment Senator Marco Rubio hinting in the Senate, America must remain prosperous, stronger, and safer. I agree, but my belief is the Americas must be for that goal, for that and we’ve already seen, I mean, the immigration problem. The problem is not the immigration it’s the safety of the border. I mean, the immigrants are part of the building of this, and not only this, country, also Venezuela, by the way. So in this moment when Venezuela stands free, the hemisphere stands taller for sure. When we protect our people, their resources under the rule of law, we protect the worst security and the future of freedom itself. So it’s a strategic action to achieve that we hold and not only free Venezuela, but also a free continent talking about Cuba and Nicaragua, that is part of the problem.
Matthew Folid:
In his second term Trump has curbed illegal immigration. President Trump talked about how under Biden, Venezuela was safer because they were just emptying their prisons and sending people to the United States of America, Tren de Aragua, gangs, things like that. What does Venezuela look like right now? How has the crackdown on illegal immigration impacted Venezuela?
President Guadió:
Well, the people are fleeing from Latin America, South America, but the problem is still the same. Maduro. I mean, I want to get back to my country in a safer way. If I had been there, I’d have been killed or in a jail, like many of my people back in Venezuela. My team is still in jail back in Venezuela. My uncle was detained and tortured in a military jail back in Venezuela and that happens when you only raise your voice when you speak with truth back in Venezuela. If we resolve the problem Maduro has become for all the continent, we also will be solving the immigration situation, and have to insist, it’s Maduro, the consequence or the cause, per se, of this. And they saw that they can use that as leverage in the continent to promote his terrific regime all over the world. But I have to insist, if we resolve the problem, we’re going to see a stronger Venezuela, also a prosperous one, and a country that people want to live to get back to a state to achieve, to dream again, back in our country, with the largest oil reserve in the world, we can grow fastly in the continent and stabilize all the region and to promote healthy relations, economic relations, but also diplomatic ones, to secure and promote leverage all over the continent and the world.
Matthew Foldi:
Bonnie, you were the number two Senate confirmed leader of USAID confirmed unanimously back when the Senate did such things. What should the state department’s new international assistance program look like globally, and then also specifically, when it comes to countering China’s Belton Road Initiative?
Bonnie Glick:
That is a fantastic question, and my good friend, Ambassador Waltz, took my line. I always start off conversations sort of on the wither USAID level of America is the most generous country in the history of the world, and it’s something that we as Americans almost just take for granted, that it’s in our DNA, it’s built into who we are as Americans, that we offer a hand up to people who are in need, wherever that might be. And for almost 60 years, the United States did that through USAID, we helped countries on their paths toward economic development and paths toward stabilization as well as we stepped in when there were humanitarian crises, and you heard Ambassador Waltz talking about this distinction between development and humanitarian crises. I think where things went wrong in the Biden administration these insane distributions of American taxpayer dollars, but there were also illegal distributions of American taxpayer dollars. Our tax money went to fund organizations that were in violation of US law. One concrete example of that would be organizations that operated in violation of the Taylor Force Act. The Taylor Force Act was actually championed by Ambassador Waltz when he was in Congress, and it was designed to keep American tax dollars from flowing to Palestinian organizations, NGOs and the Palestinian Authority for paying terrorists lifetime annuities, or if they were killed in their suicide attacks, annuities to their families in perpetuity for killing Americans in Israel.
Matthew Folid:
Taylor Force himself was an American military veteran who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel, on an organized trip.
Bonnie Glick:
Yeah, exactly. He was on a trip to visit the startup nation as part of a business school trip to see how innovation thrives in Israel and Palestinian terrorists came up to him in the street in Tel Aviv and stabbed him to death. So Ambassador Waltz, Congressman Waltz, helped push forward the Taylor Force Act in recognition that we cannot support entities that pay others to kill us. Well under President Biden, that’s exactly what USAID did with NGO and what are called international NGO funding of organizations that contributed to the coffers of terrorist organizations. This would include and Ambassador Waltz mentioned this UNRWA, the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, which has been proven to be complicit in the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, the Biden administration funded UNRWA to the tune of $3 billion after we, in the first Trump administration, cut all assistance to UNRWA. This is just an example of how American trust in USAID was eroded, and yet American Heart Strings are pulled when there are tornadoes or there are hurricanes in the Caribbean, and islands are wiped out because of a storm. We want to help, and so USAID was shut down and is being restructured under the Department of State. And my sense is that the humanitarian component, that part that pulls on American Heart Strings when people are displaced from their homes because of war, or when people are suffering from real famine in countries like Sudan and Nigeria, when people are suffering humanitarian crises, America will be there. The efforts that the Biden administration undertook in what is called development assistance were the areas that Congress really took a red pen to and struck out of the budget and for American NGOs that want to support them out of the budget. And for American NGOs that want to support all of the insane, I’ll use your word Matthew, the programming that was developed by the Biden administration, they’re perfectly able to do that from their own personal checkbooks, but the American taxpayer, writ large, won’t be doing much of that moving forward. I think too, when you think about your next question about how USAID now under the Department of State, can be used to counter China and China’s Belton Road Initiative, which was their start of development assistance around the world, usually in the form of large scale infrastructure projects. It’s hard to compete with the Chinese Communist Party and their seemingly endless capacity to fund infrastructure projects, bridges that may or may not be helpful to a particular community, soccer stadiums in subnational capitals in developing countries. Significantly ports in strategically located parts of the world from which the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army, can operate. These are the kinds of projects that China has funded through its Belton Road Initiative with $6 trillion at their disposal. Well, American taxpayers aren’t going to pay $6 trillion in development assistance to anyone, not even here at home. However, where America comes in and is massively competitive with China was also alluded to by Ambassador Waltz. This is where our private sector comes in. When there are actual incentives to build, there are actual incentives to invest in communities to build workforces locally that are capable of building trade relations with the United States in the short, medium and long terms. These are areas where our government can harness the best and brightest of American innovation and deploy that with a business sense, where there are profit margins, where there are incentives for growth, that’s an area where I suspect our ability with not $6 trillion of investable capital, but $60 trillion of investable capital for deployment around the world, in infrastructure, in development, will make a sizable difference. And certainly that’s something being pushed by the Trump administration.
Matthew Foldi:
Can you talk about where assistance should not go? As you were saying, American heartstrings are tugged when we see starving children. Of course, there was no famine in Gaza, Hamas’s own numbers show that there’s no famine in Gaza. When should America look at a purported problem and say that’s not our problem?
Bonnie Glick:
Our media has been hijacked by the far left. I certainly think Richard Nixon would agree with that. You are a rare exception, but it’s rare for the media to do the hard look, to actually question data, to actually question statistics. Why is it hard? I don’t know. It shouldn’t be. That’s their job. But when the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza throws out fake numbers of children being killed in a war zone the US and the international media just accepted that as fact. Fact being given and spoon fed to them by a terrorist regime that has total control over the local government in Gaza. It’s criminal, the way the media just absorbed that and reported it as fact and continued to report it and cited itself as the source of the information. So there are real problems with that kind of assistance and making the determination of what is true what is not true, but it is incumbent on the United States to be the government, to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. And Ambassador Waltz said this as well. His job is to ensure at the UN that we are not throwing good American money after bad when it comes to funding some of these UN bodies, entities like UNRWA, entities like the UN so called Human Rights Council, and instead to look for ways to curtail that us funding our investment into things that actually make sense and are beneficial to the American taxpayer.
Matthew Folid:
President Guaidó,you were talking about the chaos again as a tool, and as you said, the current regime in Venezuela is laying claim to oil and gas discoveries off of Guyana’s international shores. What do you make of the legitimacy of those claims? And is that something that you want the United States of America to weigh in on?
President Guaidó:
Well, that’s a polemic equation, because for us Venezuelans, that’s a historic reclaim. In this moment, of course, Mauro deteriorates all those claims that we have historically. But if you think, if Venezuela could produce not only three million, four million barrels a day like we used to produce maybe 10 or 12 years ago. We invest in the oil sector almost $300 billion, but we decrease the oil production back in our country because the corruption that Maduro promotes. If we produced five million barrels a day, seven million, maybe ten, the discussion could be different, because we were talking about new discoveries, new possible sectors that we have to produce back in Venezuela. We can recover the production back in Venezuela, in a free Venezuela with rule of law, with security, very fast, maybe three, five million barrels a day. Talking about the claim about the threat that Maduro made to Guyana, that’s a different question. Maduro doesn’t have the abilities to promote any war, any invasion, but, they can promote chaos, as we will be talking minutes ago. So if Maduro remains in power, the cost will not be only for the Venezuelan people. The cost is greater, it’s instability across our any further. It’s the opportunity cost by producing, not only oil, also gas minerals, that can be commercialized all over the region and in the main initiative with the US. So the largest oil reserve, immense gas, is threatened against Guyana, the minerals, the fresh water, the resources, if they remain in the hands of a criminal enterprise. You know what is happening in this moment and the links with the bad guys all over the war. It’s a strategic necessity to the rule of law to overcome what happened in Venezuela. We already won an election last year, we have a president elect Edmundo González Robles, who goes against a tyrannical regime, and that comes with costs. Thousands of political prisoners, thousands of refugees, millions of migrants across the continent, and only one responsible, Nicolas Mauro, the maximum economic pressure that in Agoura, that promotes President Trump, 45 and in this moment, 47 targeted sanctions against criminals support the democratic movement and social society. It’s key in this moment to prevent, not only a crisis in the region, a new one with Guyana, but also to secure all the assets and commodities to a healthy region in the western hemisphere.
Matthew Foldi:
In South America, formerly democratically aligned and minded countries are now turning socialist or communist, like Brazil and Colombia. And countries that were once socialist are now focused on strengthening ties with the United States, like Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia. What do you think is behind those trends?
President Guaidó:
The lack of delivery. I mean if you only promote and make promises and don’t deliver for the people, the people in turn around. I mean, that happened in this moment with Petro in Colombia, who is a bad person for saying the least, in Colombia, and the ties with Maduro are even with Lula. Lula was in jail three years ago for corruption. He defended Maduro on the international stage but, they have the opportunity to promote change with their people, with Colombians, Brazilians getting promoted or electing a new candidate. We have to promote the rule of law, because the instability, the impunity that Maduro acts with must reflect that actions next year. I mean, again, the leadership of President Trump planned to face against the Maduro regime. It’s a key for the evolution, for the future of all the Americas. It’s a tragedy for Venezuelans. It’s painful. It’s difficult being exiled. It’s not only my situation. I mean, eight million Venezuelans, we want to get back to our country. I want to see my girls grow up in Venezuela. The older one is eight years old. Miranda is eight years old, and Maria only four years old. I mean, they have to cross a river to escape from persecution that the regime promotes against their dad. They don’t have to be running for persecution when they are only babies. So that’s communism. That’s socialism back in Latin America, and the people are rejecting that situation. Thank God. Also in Colombia, Colombians can talk about what happened, but I ensure that Petro is going to be out next year. Thank God.
Matthew Foldi:
You mentioned the ties that Venezuela’s regime has to countries, specifically Russia and Iran. Do you think that these countries being less powerful after their respective wars takes strength from Maduro? How are the conflicts that America had with Iran and that the West is having with Russia impacting the Maduro regime?
President Guaidó:
Sure you hit the target back in 2019, and 2020, Maduro used Russia to bypass U.S. sanctions, and also European sanctions, by the way, they use Russia. They laundered money back in Russia, they made commercial flights to Iran, Caracas to make money. It was a crazy situation back in 2018 and 2020 but in this moment that you have a weaker Russia, a weaker Iran, you have a weaker regime back in Venezuela and again, we have to plan to face of impunity. If you make accountable regimes like Putin’s regime or Iran’s regime, you also make accountable Maduro’s regime, and you get weaker dictators around the world, and we can promote better ways to recover democracy. In the case of Venezuelans, I mean in the case of the Americas, we have to stabilize the region and to promote democracy liberty, because if it stands, unchallenged in Venezuela, it will spread. But if freedom prevails, it will echo in Russia, Iran, and you send a strong and clear message. That’s what happened in this moment when you saw an afraid Maduro, because they already saw what happened back in Iran. It’s a good moment for democracy and for liberty. We have to push for recovery, and that is why this fight matters, not just for us, but for the future of the hemisphere that must remain prosperous, stronger, and safer.
Matthew Foldi:
Bonnie, let’s go to China and then back to the Middle East. You were already talking about the Belton Road a little bit, and Africa. How can America enter that continent and that market at the expense, at the direct expense of China?
Bonnie Glick:
Well, it’s so interesting to be at the Nixon Foundation talking about China, because President Nixon, who opened America, to have a conversation about President Nixon and not include a really meaningful conversation about where his opening to China leaves us today, would be an oversight, so we won’t do that. I think what President Nixon and Henry Kissinger thought when they opened to China was, if we open to China, which at the time, was about 20 percent of the world’s population, they’ll want to be more like us, and we’ll open this massive new market to American products. And on some level, that was a little bit true. And every successive president has thought the same thing, that if only we give more to the China relationship, they will want to be more like the free world. And at the end of the day, I think we can all say that that didn’t really happen. It was still extremely important to do, because you can’t box out 20 percent of the world’s population, but you can call out bad behavior, and that is what we see from China, day in and day out. We see it in unfair trade. We see it in human rights abuses of their own population, where they have put Muslim minority Uyghurs into concentration and labor camps, where they surveil their own population and build out something that they call social credit scores to determine what types of benefits Chinese citizens should or should not be eligible for. They steal our intellectual property because we have an open patent system, and they deploy industrial and governmental espionage against the United States government and against our companies. And then, of course, they experiment with bioweapons, as we all saw with COVID-19 and you know, President Trump, in the first Trump administration, Trump 45 learned some very, very important lessons about how to deal with China. We saw how they hoarded PPE, remember that term personal protective equipment, masks and gowns that made our hospitals in the United States less safe and left us struggling with the COVID disease in our own borders. In the race for technological dominance, which is China’s end goal, we are really in a race for our lives and for our livelihoods. So whether it’s in the development of bioweapons, where we’re in a race for our lives, or it’s in the development of 5G or 6G technology for communications, we’re in a race for our livelihoods. People in the Think Tank world, which I now inhabit, talk about the great power competition that we’re in with China. And I dispute this term. A competition implies that we’re playing the same game and we’re playing by the same rules, and we’re not playing the same game, and China rewrites its own rules every single day, but among those rules are certain standards, lie, cheat and steal. That’s not a game that American government or American industry is particularly adept at playing, especially when you have a transparent government and you have quarterly reporting that corporations are bound to. So here we are in the U.S., a very open environment in which, for decades, China has sent their best and their brightest students to study in our universities, and they have, in more recent years, under General Secretary Xi Jinping. You’ll notice I didn’t call him president because he wasn’t elected by the people. The General Secretary has pulled these Chinese scientists back to China, often with financial incentives, but also often under threat that their families remaining in China will fall victim to disappearances, and they are building China’s new economy to be in opposition to the economy of the free world, particularly the United States. What I used to speak about at USAID during COVID holds true today, which is that America is at a crossroads where we have to look at ways that we can onshore nearshore and allied shore manufacturing. We need to gain control of our supply chains so that we are not made vulnerable by incidents that could very well happen again, like a COVID pandemic. Some people will say that by onshoring and near-shoring and allied shoring, we are cutting China out of the supply chain, and that will just lead to Chinese development in this direction and free world development of technology in the other direction. Ambassador Waltz talked about this, about how at the UN there are standard setting bodies and maybe, although I doubt it, maybe those bodies can have some impact on the development of technology moving forward. I doubt it, because those UN bodies move so slowly, and technology races forward every single day. It’s possible that we’re looking at two different evolutions of technology, one that’s led by China, one that’s led by the United States. Some people will be concerned that, aren’t we concerned that there will be two standards? Well, aren’t two standards, one of which is led by the United States and the free world, better than a single standard that is led only by China? And I think the answer to that, and I think everyone in this room would agree, yes, it’s better to have that. It is a bifurcation of our economies, and that is troubling, but I do think that the best technologies will win out in the end. Which brings us to Africa, Matthew, the technologies depend on natural resources that are sometimes referred to as rare earth elements. They’re actually not rare elements. They’re found throughout the world, but they’re found in small concentrations, which means that mining these rare earth elements and minerals is extremely costly if it’s done properly. We have rare earth elements here in the United States in small pockets and small concentrations all over the country, but we are such a regulatory environment when it comes to mining and exploration that the incentives are not there for mining countries to do our very own clean mining of these natural resources. A lot of the resources are in remote African countries in Sub Saharan Africa, and the resources are mined in probably the dirtiest ways imaginable, without safety gear, without protections and with a lot of child labor, I think that most humanitarians would think that there have to be better ways to extract natural resources, and that maybe we can do some of that here at home with an improved and less regulatory environment. But what happens in Africa is these natural resources are extracted and then they are shipped directly to China for processing. Where, oh, by the way, they also are not processed in a clean way. So all those greenhouse gasses that the left is so concerned about, are being emitted in order to make solar panels for the green economy, which also, by the way, are mostly made in China, in a non clean way. And those are for electric vehicles that run on batteries that are manufactured in countries that don’t operate a clean environment. All of this, I’m saying, can be done here at home. It can be done closer to home, and it can be done with our allies, so that we are able to secure our supply chains moving forward, which is vital for our national economy to survive and thrive.
Matthew Foldi:
President Guiadó, we talked last night about how President Trump, President Nixon, and Congressman Issa spent time in the proverbial wilderness, and you’re in your own wilderness right now. What lessons have you taken? What have you learned about yourself and your country and your people during your time in exile?
President Guaidó:
Being exiled is an everyday contradiction. You know, because I’m free and alive, it’s a privilege when you face a dictatorial regime. I have friends that can’t count on that. I mean, they’re in jail, they’re killed by the regime. Last week, the regime tried to kill two of our team members back in exile in Colombia. So it’s an everyday contradiction, because I’m free and alive, I’m with my family, thank God. But I am not where I want to be. You know, I want to be in my home, I went to struggle, fight, vote with conditions. I mean, we won an election several times, not only a decade ago, when I was re-elected asCongressman back in Venezuela, then interim president in 2019 but in this moment, trying to expand, or not only network our possibilities of future recovery, democracy, to learn about not only in a university, we founded a democracy innovation laboratory back at FIU nearby. Also raising my two girls, you know, explain to them about democracy, about liberty. Every day I saw people taking liberty for granted. The freedom, and it’s not, I mean, this could sound crazy, but when I go to the supermarket I can decide what I want, not what the regime put over there. Liberty also is about decisions every day, decisions, and we have to fight for them. And when you experience that, you know it’s an everyday contradiction. And it touches me every day. I don’t take anything for granted. The love of your family, your closest one, the liberty, the freedom, the democracy. So we have to take action. And I want to take action every day to recover democracy and this place. And I have to thank the Nixon Foundation for this meeting.
Matthew Foldi:
Are you going to run for president of Venezuela again?
President Guaidó:
I have already been interim president at 35. I mean, the youngest one in the history of Venezuela, the youngest one National Assembly, President. I want to serve my country. I want to vote. I also want to be free. And the ultimate goal is to be happy, the happiness you know, experience peace, but, and this is a quote from Simon Bolivar, who said, I can give you any title, any title, President, Professor, whatever, but only be a citizen. I want to be a citizen in Venezuela, with my duties, with my rights, and also for my kids, and also for Latin America, for the Americas. So if I have to serve my country in any way, we’re gonna do it.
Matthew Folid:
Thank you, Juan Guaidó, and Bonnie Glick, you guys have been terrific.