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A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck about 160 km (100 miles) west of Caracas on Wednesday evening, followed less than a minute later by a magnitude 7.5 tremor, the strongest since 1900, according to the US Geological Survey. The disaster hit a country already weakened by years of economic turmoil, which left much of its infrastructure fragile and complicated rescue efforts as aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding coastal areas. Local authorities have reported 920 people died and 3,360 were injured in the earthquakes, with the toll expected to continue rising. Matt Frei is joined by war correspondent Jon Lee Anderson to react as Trump pledges rapid US aid to the country. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #mattfrei #venezuela #earthquake #donaldtrump #trump #uspolitics #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
We're going to talk about Afghanistan and the EU later, but let's start with Venezuela
0:05
This is a country you know really well. I think you've been there quite recently
0:09
And we know that Venezuela has had its challenges. And of course, the beginning of the year, the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro by Donald Trump
0:17
The man is now in a very small cell in New York waiting for a trial. And then this earthquake comes along
0:24
From what you know, how is Venezuela under the acting president, Delce Maduro, coping with this disaster
0:34
Well, it's a very good question and one I'm straining to figure out myself
0:39
not least because I feel as though I might have to return there. Because, as you know, Matt, very often these catastrophic moments
0:49
whether it was the Katrina, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, the Haiti earthquake in 2010
0:58
these other moments, they very often become before and after moments politically in a country and for a region
1:05
And you'll remember that President Bush, W. Bush, didn't respond quickly. He was seen as not having responded quickly enough to the people of New Orleans
1:19
And this became a real watershed in his presidency. So I think there's a lot of eyes are on what's happening now, both in terms of this woman who has been left in place
1:33
She was Maduro's vice president. Trump, for some reason, decided he liked her and has kept her in place
1:39
Many people feel that she may have betrayed Maduro to Trump. She's been carrying out Trump's diktats ever since, but also freeing political prisoners
1:50
She's in a very strange position. And now suddenly these sort of double tap of massive earthquakes that have brought down, you know, many, many, many buildings and buried thousands of people under the rubble are testing her ability to respond
2:07
There already some criticisms that her army hasn moved quickly enough Trump of course came out immediately with a truth social post and said we going to help these new friends of ours with whatever we have
2:22
Our Department of War is going to do this and that. But so far, we haven't seen too much
2:27
But that's important, isn't it, John? Because, I mean, she will have to, you know, if she's getting some criticism
2:33
in Venezuela for being too close to Trump, you know, doing Trump's bidding. If there were rumors
2:38
that she might have thrown her old boss under the bus or, you know, or disclosed his location to help
2:43
Trump seize him, she needs to show that she's got something in return. And this is an obvious
2:48
opportunity for Trump to do so. And I just wonder if any of that promised money has shown up
2:54
Very little, very little. The inflation remains the highest in the world. I think it was 240%
3:02
I could be off by a couple of hundred percent. Once you get over 200, it sort of becomes all a bit Turkish at that point
3:09
So there's complaints about the cost of living. And nobody, when I was in Caracas, when I was there for nearly a month recently
3:21
could tell me, nor did they know, and this included people in the business community
3:26
and diplomatic community, where the money was coming to and from. That is to say, Trump himself has trumpeted the fact that, you know, we're pumping oil
3:36
We're getting millions of barrels of oil out of there. We've paid for our operation to get from Maduro many times over
3:44
He said that as recently as Friday, by the way. Look at what happened in Venezuela
3:49
We have a great and by the way, we're helping Venezuela. They had a tremendous earthquake
3:53
A lot of people killed and unbelievable. Right in Caracas. And we have a lot of people over there helping
4:01
We've had a great relationship. It was a one-day war. We hit them so hard, and one-day war
4:06
Now we've taken out millions of barrels of oil, and we've paid for the war many times over
4:13
But just as importantly, they are doing better than they've ever done. They're making more money than they've ever done
4:18
But it unclear what sort of money is being dispersed to the Venezuelan government And I underscore that Venezuela oil is now being pumped under the control of the United States
4:32
Many of the new contracts are going to U.S. and in some cases Trump-related firms
4:40
And that money is being sent to Scott Besant, who's the U.S. treasurer
4:45
And about as MAGA a guy as you can imagine. And then in turn, he supposedly is deciding how much money to disperse to the Venezuelan government of its own oil money for its budgetary purposes
5:00
But as I say, inflation remains sky high. There is economic activity in Venezuela
5:07
Everybody's scrabbling to get by. Everybody's selling something or doing something. And there's a general sense of change, although under surreal circumstance
5:18
change only in the sense that abstractly people understand that maduro is no longer there and the
5:25
americans are calling the shots but on but out but on the surface nothing has changed if you see what
5:32
i mean and now i feel that everything will because of the earthquake in these moments these first 72
5:38
96 hours of these catastrophes people's feelings are very raw and they're unforgiving and it's it's
5:47
imperative to whatever government in charge to immediately seem to be responding to the people
5:52
in every way possible. They're unforgiven. You mentioned Hurricane Katrina. I was there in New
5:58
Orleans when the hurricane struck and the picture that really kind of killed George Bush's presidency
6:04
and he had just achieved re-election, of course, but it really damaged his brand. It was the picture
6:11
of him flying at a lower altitude over New Orleans and peering out of Air Force One when
6:17
he should have actually landed the plane, got out and hauled some bags of ice, as he
6:21
had done when there was a hurricane that hit Florida six months earlier, because Florida
6:25
was up for re-election. His brother was the governor. So you've got to get that moment absolutely right
6:29
Let's move on then to US versus Iran. Overnight trouble between US and Iran The Iranians hit a tanker Singapore flag tanker called the Ever Lovely or something weird one of these weird tanker names
6:42
The Americans then responded with fire on Iranian facilities. They then fired back
6:48
But the ceasefire sort of seems to be holding. Am I getting the impression that, you know, Donald Trump, as he said famously a week ago, in the Middle East, a ceasefire means a little less shooting, but not a cessation of shooting
7:00
It's kind of accurate, isn't it? Well, he's defining it, isn't it
7:04
I mean, he refused to call it a war in the first place. A bit like Putin and Ukraine, right
7:11
Didn't Trump call the initial bombing campaign, which is fairly concerning in Iran, an excursion, didn't he
7:17
Yeah, he did. Listen, very quickly. I just want to bring you on because also your book is called
7:23
To Lose a War, The Fall and the Rise of the Taliban. It's an amazing book. I mean, an important read, a sobering read
7:29
the eu meeting with the taliban i just want to get you on this i mean are you outraged by that
7:35
look i'm outraged no not particularly i'm not i'm never outraged by the by the capacity of
7:43
of governments to to do perfidious things um in this case you know the eu has has i think it's
7:50
15 000 afghans they want to deport who have done committed crimes or whatever and and they sort of
7:57
you know, according to international law, they should be able to hand them back to their
8:01
host nation. The Afghan Taliban, of course, have no diplomatic religion, and they're holding out
8:06
whatever concessions they can grasp from the EU in order to say, OK, maybe we'll take them. So
8:12
it's the diplomatic, you know, daisy chain. That's what we're viewing here. And, you know
8:19
we've seen our governments cozy up to, you know, insalubrious regimes before. And it's only a
8:25
out of time, I think, before eventually, maybe because it has rare earths, Talibanistan will
8:30
also become, you know, a place of some diplomatic recognition. Until now, it's only Russia, of
8:37
course. Putin's Russia has granted them full diplomatic recognition. Everybody else is doing
8:42
kind of stotte voce, backroom stuff. But none of this is getting girls back into the school
8:47
back into classrooms. Not at all
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