BREAKING: Trump SEIZES RUSSIAN OIL SHIP Fleeing Venezuela

Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday? Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday.

The Bro Show.

Good to see you, Ryan. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate all the flexibility with the schedule, as you know, Ryan. Young children are constantly sick.

Who knew?

Who knew?

Yeah, it turns out that they're constantly sick.

And they get you sick, too.

Look forward to that.

Yes, apparently, yeah. We have a stomach plague sweeping through our household as we speak. So it's just grandeur.

It's gonna scoop out the area.

In the injetio.

So, yeah, that's right. Don't worry, I officially have not been yet afflicted with the plague, but thank you very much for having me, Ryan. We've got a great show for everybody today. everything at the top, which we're going to lead with the United States currently boarding a US, or a Russian flagged oil vessel in the North Atlantic. This is a very interesting situation.

It was previously unflagged, sanctioned US vessel, which officially reflagged. The Russian Navy actually sent a submarine, which has on its way to trying to intercept and to escort it to Russia. There are multiple other Russian flagged vessels now

that have been re-flagged. This is potentially sparting some major geopolitical tension with Russia over this new oil gambit in Venezuela. We're also gonna talk about China. There's been a lot of talk in China, it's particularly after the US decapitation of Maduro.

I can't say the Maduro regime, but at least going in, the extraordinary rendition. There's been a lot of geopolitical rethinking inside of China. I think that that obviously is potentially the most influential conflict on all of our lives.

10 times more important than Ukraine, than Venezuela, even than Israel and Iran to what will happen geopolitically the most tense region in the globe. But then of course we're gonna have to return to Venezuela because Ryan, we're getting an announcement from the president, some 30 to 50 million barrels of oil

by the current regime will be turned over to the United States.

We're all rich, congratulations.

Well, we're not yet sure about that because it's actually gonna be sold at a market price. I have a lot to say about that, because it's actually gonna be sold at a market price. I have a lot to say about it. It's actually kind of interesting from a general oil perspective, but it actually does show you what the designs of all of this are really about. And Ryan's actually gonna give us an update

about Venezuela as well, just kind of what's going on in the ground, some more dynamics that you and your team have been able to bring us. Greenland, we're gonna talk about Greenland. Stephen Miller saying that the United States is gonna take Greenland, some leaked reporting behind the scenes that Rubio said, look, we're not gonna invade Greenland.

But we do wanna buy Greenland, and that's part of the reason that we're saying. Maybe we'll trade that oil tanker for it. I wouldn't mind, that'd be a good deal. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, we're already there, right? We could take Greenland. And I will be reading for you from Seward's report on Greenland from 1868, one of my favorite documents.

Seward's non-folly. Actually, his real folly was not getting Greenland. I could talk a little bit about.

Seward's real folly.

I could talk a little bit about the stupidity of the U.S. Virgin Islands Greenland deal that we made back in the 1800s. And we're gonna talk about visas. So I have said here before, I do often feel personally attacked by the Trump administration from marijuana to gambling, like there's so much stuff. But this one might actually take the cake.

The USO1 Extraordinary Talent Visa is now overwhelmingly going to content creators and particularly OnlyFans models, so.

Who also vape weed.

Yeah, who often are, yeah, I mean, there's a strong, as you well know, as a Libertine yourself, the connection between degenerate pornography and degenerate marijuana is one in the same, and in fact, that is why I'm at war with all.

So yeah, we have a bunch of.

Only Fans.

Yeah, so now we just have a bunch of porn models who are now US01 visa recipients. So that's great. Remember, this is the Extraordinary Talent Visa

for those of you-

This is Anthony Weiner. Are not familiar. Like, this is the type of visa that's supposed to go to like one of those coders who's like, I created a company with 50 employees and worth all of this, and instead it's literally going to OnlyFans whores.

So yeah, it's great. The story I broke back in 2007 was Anthony Weiner created legislation to carve out more model visas. Did he really? Which I think this is what they're pushing right through. This is Anthony Weiner's legacy.

So it turns out there were signs there.

Anthony Weiner worked there.

Still wanted it.

He said it was for New York. He said- One of the best stories in Washington history. I will truly never forget it. And then Ryan, a couple of your friends are gonna stop by. Because I just dropped in, I don't know as much about it. Why don't you tell the audience?

This is, this will be a fun, yeah. Emily listened to a season of Blowback Which would be. I think she really liked it. So we're gonna have Brennan James and Noah Kuhlman of Glowback, because their latest season is on Angola. But in that season, there turns out to be, they drew the same connection to Epstein and Iran-Contra as we did.

Angola is actually the kind of unspoken, an unspoken critical leg of Iran-Contra that got a little bit of coverage at the time, but never made it kind of into the headline scandal news. So we're going to talk about what another look at that history tells us about both Cuba, because I think there's actually a connection to what's going on now, and also what was Jeffrey Epstein doing? Where did he make his

money? How did he get his start?

Well, this is why we need Ryan here, because I confess, it's only a few paragraphs in a couple Cold War books about Angola.

Well, and you can stand in for the viewer here.

Okay, good, I'll do my best.

Also, they don't teach much Angola.

Thank you to everybody who has been signing up, supporting our show, breakingpoints.com. I mean, in insane times like this, I couldn't be more thankful for the entire team, and especially Ryan and Emily. Just not only our ability to just be able to have five days of shows, especially in crazy times like this,

but everybody's various different knowledge and all of that. And that's enabled by all of our premium subscribers, so breakingpoints.com if you're able to help us out. If you are watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel, and if you're listening to this as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend.

It really helps other people find the show. But let's turn now to the very fast-moving situation here between the United States and Russia, blowing up over Venezuela, of all things. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This is a video that all of you are watching. Keep in mind, all of this video is coming from RT. That's because it's Russian propaganda

and it's a Russian vessel, okay? So not that we're only choosing to bring it and that may actually cause us content problems with YouTube, but we will see. You know, it is the news after all Ryan. So what you guys can see in front of you is video that has been released by RT. This is from the tanker previously known as Bella 1. This was an unflagged oil vessel which was

sanctioned by the United States in connection with Iranian oil. The United States now have a Coast Guard and U.S. military vessel in the North Atlantic which has been chasing the Bella One, which has now been re-flagged as a Russian vessel. Russia has dispatched a submarine and other Russian naval assets to actually intercept the previously known Bella One and escort it into Russian territorial waters.

The United States has been in a fast and an aggressive pursuit of this ever since it actually broke the sanction blockade, wanting to seize much of the oil on board. So what has obviously escalated this now massively, it is now officially a Russian flagged oil vessel,

which comes with all kinds of superpower nuclear arm confrontations. Let's go with the next element that we can go and put here up on the screen. This was the news that as of this week, immediately after the decapitation, you know, rendition of Maduro, that the Belawan adopted the Russian flag along

with another tanker operating in Venezuela now known as the Hyperion, which made a similar change. At least three additional tankers that operated in Venezuelan waters have now switched to Russian flags, according to the Russia Vessel Registry, extending this pattern.

Earlier this week, one of those three actually disappeared. That's the Bella One now. Currently, despite the US blockade, all five are now subject to US sanctions for previously shipping Iranian or Russian oil, altering their flags, and declaring home ports in the Russian cities

of Sochi or Taganrog. I apologize if I say that incorrectly. The reason why I think this is the most important, Ryan, is that this is now a geopolitical, geostrategic thing, beyond just the Western Hemisphere. It's being said under that guise,

but actually this is the wet dream of Lindsey Graham and of much of the pro-Ukraine caucus. Russian oil has been the lifeblood of the Russian economy, not only to India and to China, but its ability because of its own navy, Russian submarines and others,

has prevented the United States and even the European powers from really effectively actually stopping the flow of Russian oil. And a US interdiction and now a US boarding, which has officially now happened. We have an image actually of that M3

while you talk, Ryan, that people can see. These are the first images released from RT, which show US military, US Coast Guard assets, aborting the, what is it now called? The Marinera, previously known as the Bella One,

which has now been seized officially by the United States, according to US reports. It's been boarded by the United States Coast Guard personnel as of literally five minutes ago when we started recording all of this. So this is a crude oil tanker

Russian flag boarded by the US taken you could all see that in those images So this is truly now an extraordinary event

Yeah

And people often say that if you want the real news you go to some place like the onion The onion had a headline the other day that said Maduro indicted in New York for felony oil possession and it's like aha that's funny because like that's really what he is under indictment for but there's no such thing as felony oil possession that that wouldn't be a thing the United States would do no literally we are currently trying to board these ships for what is a version of felony oil possession we are saying to the world, you know, how

dare you attempt to do commerce in energy? And what this is going to do is put a spotlight, you know, for the world on our sanctions policy, which, and our unilateral sanctions policy. There is a sanctions regime that exists in the world that the world accepts, and that is through the United Nations. You go to the UN, you go to the Security Council, you say, this country is doing a genocide, or this country is doing this, and we believe these companies and these people should be

sanctioned, and the General Assembly can actually take action on that, and then, as a globe, the countries then police that. The US has said, good idea, we're just gonna do it on our own because we control the dollar and we control SWIFT and money has to run through here, so do whatever you want, but if you want it to happen

in dollars or in SWIFT, then you're gonna have to follow our rules. So then a bunch of these ships are like, okay, well, we're not following any of your rules at all. That's what happened after the Russian war. And they'll create basically an entire ghost operations and use other banking systems.

Which is what's been happening for the last four years.

And we're like, we're still gonna enforce it. And at some point, the world has to be like, wait a minute, this is this is utterly insane You're chasing an oil tanker. So this oil tanker was Came came to a Venezuela and couldn't get through it tried apparently a bunch of different times to get through the little armada that we had out there and eventually gave up and and

Fled and then and then flipped to a Russian flag, but it was probably already a Russian ship But what they do is they yeah, they unflag it for these purposes. We do that. All these ships are flagged in like, you know, the Mariana Islands or whatever.

Well, just to explain even more, kind of as I understand it, there is actually current speculation, not only around the oil, but potentially it might've been something else on that ship. You know going back to the Cuban Missile Crisis or something that potentially was dispatched to try and help Nicholas Maduro and the Venezuelan regime that necessarily the Russians didn't want us to get our hands on so we don't know exactly

Okay, there is speculation. I don't know yet that for sure, but it is crazy. That's a Russian flagship that speculation comes from Rational Americans being like there's no way our government would be so crazy as to just be chasing an oil tanker like this. There must be something else on it. If there isn't something else, you have to adjust your priorities and be like,

oh, actually we are that crazy.

I think we are that quote crazy because what has happened has been this, and I'll explain this, which is, you know, you talked there about the UN and internet, and this is like my main divide, I think,

with the global left. Yeah, you don't like that either.

No, it's not that I don't like it, it's just fake, right? It's like if the US dollar, and if the US dollar is the prime currency of the world, then yes, US sanctions are actually the only thing that matters, and I will, all over Ukraine, I wouldn't do it because it's not important to the US at all.

I would maybe save all of this for the only conflict in the world that in my opinion really matters at all, which is China and it's Taiwan, because that's the one that's gonna affect my life the most. At the end of the day, who controls Donbass, or frankly, even all of Ukraine,

does not affect any person in this world, in America's life at all. But the chips in our computers and the flow through the sea in Taiwan, the South China Sea,

that affects everybody, including everybody here. Take good care of your battery.

I've said it. I've said literally, if there's a war with Taiwan, all of us are turning our laptops in, the government's gonna strip out the chips, all of us are gonna be on eBay buying 2006, you think I'm kidding, I'm not.

Your Xbox, all that stuff, it's all getting turned in. It's gonna be, it's all literally gonna be sanctioned and taken by the US government because they need it to operate, especially if it's a prolonged conflict. And that's part of the reason

we should do everything in our power to avoid that and to keep some of our power. This is exactly kind of people drunk with power over this idea of the Monroe Doctrine. Now again, the Monroe Doctrine I think was good policy. The Monroe Doctrine was invented at a time of European intervention into the Western Hemisphere. And the declaration from the Monroe Doctrine,

which was primarily authored and ideated by John Quincy Adams, was that as a power, we recognize spheres of influence. The Western Hemisphere is a sphere of influence for the United States, and we will not allow European great powers to come in here.

Since transmuted into, we can do whatever we want, we can depose any president or any of that, that's how we operate. Often, actually to bad effect, actually in Latin America.

Latin American countries initially read it to say, oh good, basically you're saying that we should have sovereignty and independence just like you, the United States,

has sovereignty and independence. Well, this has always been the primary tension with US policy in Latin America, especially during the Spanish-American times, right? Because Spain was literally an empire which colonized them. And many of them, Bolivar, for example,

was a great admirer of George Washington and of the American Revolution. There's a statue of him here. I know the Bolivarian, if you've ever been to Colombia or any, they take that very seriously. And it's inspiring in some ways,

the idea of self-determination. But the conflict has always also been at the heart of America for, let's say, quite literally turning republics into banana republics or having explicit and coups taking over and inspiring the breakaway of Panama

so we could do the Panama Canal. And I understand that. That's like, we have to be a real nation, we have to be an idealistic nation. But in this particular case, you really just have to ask, why is enforcing this on Russia now so important

to this Venezuela dream, where we have now overthrown Maduro, or we have captured Maduro. We have kept the vast majority of his people in power. We are trying to strike this kind of oil deal and we're gonna get to some of the details

of that in a minute where they have to kick out China and Russia and all that, which I'm skeptical that that will actually happen without actual full-blown regime change. The question is, is like, when you do things that are truly extraordinary,

should it not be for things that are of your absolute vital national security interests? And in this case, you overthrow Maduro. You are now sparking, I wouldn't say conflict with Russia, but tension with Russia on the high seas, the North Atlantic, over a crude oil vessel

when the United States is a net exporter of oil and the price of oil remains at an all, this is not 1972, right? This is not the OPEC gas prices. There are not gas lines.

Oil is cheap.

In fact, one of the problems the administration has is that because the price of oil is so low, a lot of oil, which is fine. I'm fine with that. I think everybody, cool.

Jeep oil is good. Your buddies in Texas are not fine with it.

I know that, yeah. Everybody down in Midland is like, yo, we need the price of oil to go up, okay? They're like, I need to buy some more Ford F-150s. And the car dealers of Midland, I weep tears today. Jokes aside, the point around this is, If you were to say, we're gonna have imperial retrenchment, let's say from a security guarantee with Russia,

literally happened yesterday, or sorry, with Ukraine, happened yesterday, we didn't have as much time to put it in the show, that happened yesterday, the United States was now gonna provide a security guarantee for Ukrainian sovereignty, at the same time the United States

is providing a security umbrella over one of the most rogue states in Middle East history, Israel, all right, which is currently happening with Gaza, the West Bank. We're diplomatically providing cover there. We're also trying to project power in Japan, Taiwan, and to prevent a Chinese takeover of that.

This is imperial, and then we're like, oh, and we're going to start running Venezuela. We're not capable of that. This has always been kind of the theory behind retrenchment. And yes, of course, we are an empire. But the point of being an efficient, really managed empire is to say, look at the balance sheet and say, what's the actual most

important thing? Where do we focus all of our resources? And instead, this is actually keeping the complete overextension of NATO, of Ukraine, of the Middle East policy, and the obsessions of the neocons, also with these ideological quasi-Monroe doctrine policy here of Venezuela. And you put it all together,

and you actually just see the potential for conflagration now everywhere, like with Russia. And that is the problem, is do you trust that these are competent people in power, now currently after the evidence of the last year, that are capable of managing all of those conflicts

and the ability to make sure that the second order effect, which will usually pops up somewhere on the other side of the globe, especially after something like this that could, let's say, nukes the Ukraine peace deal. This is why you don't get involved in the first place, and if you do, you need great plans. It needs to be well considered.

And what I don't understand genuinely is why the U.S. seems to be antagonizing and instigating a global conflict when we have not reshored our supply chains effectively such that our entire Defense or sorry war industrial base. We don't say defense anymore our war industrial base The supply chain leads through Taiwan and China

so the supply chain leads through Taiwan and China. So you would think if you were a rational warmonger you would at least wait 10 years until you've built your semiconductor plants and you've gotten your rare earths lined up and you feel like if hostilities broke out that you could produce the types of things that you need to not only continue the war effort, but continue having the economy that we have. Because the economy that we have,

like when chips were stalled for six weeks, people couldn't buy dishwashers, people couldn't buy laundry machines. The auto industry shut, yes, exactly. 2020, auto industry just paused.

People were literally buying Fords, Ryan, with no computers inside of them, with the promise that we'll install it later.

Like, that's the reality that we're gonna live in. That's why used vehicles back in 2020 have like doubled in price. That's just from a little tiny pause during the pandemic. If China's just like, okay, you're doing war all over the place? Okay, fine. Before we go to China, and I know this is, we need to get this out.

This flows into the next one.

We need to get this out soon, so I'll just keep like wrapped here, but that is the perfect point, is let's say you're somebody like, I believe in spheres of influence, you know, I'm somebody who largely,

I think international law is fake, I think everything is, doesn't mean that you should just do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. There's never been a true limiting principle on power. What has always been a check against power? There's always power, right? And so not only that, if you look, let's say at the most competent realpolitik statesmen,

people like Bismarck, people like Eisenhower, the genuine managers of empire, they always recognize checks, balances, vital security interests, the ability to be very cogent and even in terms of potential overextension to never do so and to maintain some sort of balance.

What we're acting like right now is completely drunk with power that we don't have. So that's the final word I wanna make here is that during the 12-day war, the United States spent 25% of its, 25% of that interceptor, its entire stockpile,

was depleted in 12 days, in a war that we were not even involved in. Whenever it comes to shells.

No offense to Iran, third or fourth rate power.

Sixth rate power, whenever it comes to something that we're dealing with right here. Whenever we think about artillery, munitions, we don't even have enough to supply all of Ukraine.

Yeah. Okay?

We had to overthrow Imran Khan.

We literally, exactly. Pakistan is more of them. And blackmail South Korea to send all of their shells. We have nothing for an actually prolonged conflict. That is, why do you think I've been freaking out about Ukraine and Israel? Because we are blowing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Let me tell you an inside story about Midnight Hammer, and I have this confirmed, is that the actual op plan for CENTCOM was a 35-day bombing campaign against Iran.

That's the Israeli attack on Iran.

No, no, no, this was, Midnight Hammer was our attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

The one that came after Israel.

Yes, the op plan for the United States, 35 days of bombing. You know why we couldn't do that? We don't have any munitions. We don't have for a 35 day bombing campaign. There is also a story I was told about Midnight Hammer where just Midnight Hammer, one B2 bombing raid,

required so much logistical headache and stretched them to the brim that it almost broke in terms of having to resupply, having forward deployment, like all of that. Not to mention what just happened here with Maduro. So can we do extraordinary one-time limited operations?

Of course, this is America. We're the best at that. We're like a high precision, tooled, F1 race car. That is not one, that is not what wins wars. What wins wars is, I mean, the Nazis are a good example. They had plenty of, I mean,

they literally had the first jet aircraft in World War II. Doesn't matter, because we can just roll B-17s as many as we possibly want. You want the Ford factory that just cranks out, you know, fine enough stuff compared to this high precision stuff which has been nuked.

Currently, the Defense Industrial Complex, because that's what's really super expensive. F-35 is another good example. So put all of that in the context of what we're dealing with.

Corrilla's air campaign against the Houthis is also a good example. That was supposed to last like three or four months and it ended up lasting just a couple of weeks because they're like, oh, this isn't doing damage.

We thought it was and we're running out of stuff. And we ran out of stockpiles. And that was against the Houthis, a non-state actor. Now we're screwing with Russia, with China.

I mean, knocking our planes off of ships.

That's right, we lost two separate aircraft. In incidents, this is-

$75 million each or something.

People look at Midnight Hammer and the Maduro thing and they're like, very, very significant event, and who knows how the Kremlin will react. I'm not predicting war or any of that, but at the very same time, they're trying to do some deal in Ukraine.

I mean, why would you make a deal whenever this is the BS that you would have to deal with? whenever this is the BS that you would have to deal with? So we'll see. Let's get on to China.