Greetings all. Sending along an interview I just finished with our good friend Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee. Adam is in the middle of it all right now and I’m grateful he was able to spend some time with us this afternoon.
A video recording of our conversation is above and a rough transcript is below. A few highlights:
The Senate Rebukes Trump’s Lawless Attack On Venezuela - We celebrated the Senate’s War Powers vote this afternoon that would force Trump to receive Congressional approval before military action in Venezuela. It’s a big public rebuke of Trump on a day where Speaker Johnson is also going to get rolled by a discharge petition that will restore the ACA subsidy cuts. As Adam says “people in general are tiring of Trump and he is weakening as a leader.”
Here is how the big blubbery babyman responded to getting his ass kicked in the Senate this afternoon:
Trump Has Abandoned Any Concept Of Rule Of Law, At Home And Abroad - Here’s Rep. Smith:
What we really need to talk about is the rule of law and government for the people, not just for the leaders. Because democracy, elections are done in a different way, different place here and there. It’s part of it. But it’s do you recognize the rule of law? I mean, you can work with countries that are not pure democracies if we’re trying to work towards better rule of law, more help for people. But Trump seems to be saying he doesn’t care about any of it. He just wants to be able to do what he wants to do, unencumbered by any law, any constitution, any institution…..
On The Killing Of Renee Nicole Good - More from Rep. Smith:
the abuse of state power. I mean this is Trump’s viewpoint. He’s in charge. And as the person in charge, he gets to do whatever he wants. And he wants to tell his law enforcement mechanisms, whether that’s the U.S. military showing up and snatching Maduro in the middle of night and blowing up boats in the Caribbean, or ICE agents, you know, raiding various cities across America. The cavalier attitude towards the use of force by those institutions of our society responsible for enforcing the law, whether it’s the military or ICE or DEA agents or whoever…..
………
the whole thing has been macho cavalier you do what you got to do no consequences. That has an effect on the mentality of the people out there enforcing the law. If you look at that video from yesterday… there’s no excuse for using deadly force. But they’ve been told you know, you’re in a fight for survival you know kill them before they kill you. And who’s “them?” A 37 year old mother driving an SUV in Minneapolis. Didn’t commit a single solitary crime, U.S. citizen. That’s the person who you have to kill before they get you. But that’s the mentality that Trump is drilling in to people across this country. And it’s making every single one of us less safe and more vulnerable (emphasis mine).
Enjoy this timely discussion with one of our important leaders in our ferocious fight for democracy freedom, Rep. Adam Smith, and keep working hard all - Simon
Transcript: Simon Rosenberg Interviews Rep. Adam Smith (1/8/26)
Simon Rosenberg:
Welcome, everyone. Simon Rosenberg here, Hopium Chronicles, right at the top of the hour, one o'clock Eastern time. I'm joined today by my good friend and friend of the Hopium community, Congressman Adam Smith, Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee in the House. Adam, welcome back.
Congressman Adam Smith:
Great to see you, Simon. Always appreciate the chance.
Simon Rosenberg:
So listen, there's a lot going on. And I want to start in our catch-up today with the news that just came out of the Senate, where the Senate voted 52-47 to deny Trump additional ability to go attack or intervene in Venezuela again. What's your quick reaction to that today?
Adam Smith:
Well I think it's a positive step. And as you and I have talked about I think it's indicative of the fact that people in general are tiring of Trump and he is weakening as a leader. Now, that's nowhere near where it should be… there are a manner of different things… tariffs leap to mind but other things that we should be restricting Trump on and that the Republicans in Congress should be stepping up on. But the fact that they are willing to vote against him and openly defy him is a positive signal, you know, just sort of writ large. But then specifically, I think it is a condemnation of his… you know, the Western hemisphere should be ours to dominate, you know, foreign involvement, dragging us into regime change, potentially nation building approach. I think the public doesn't support it. Now we have even a few Republicans who are willing to vote that way.
Simon Rosenberg:
You know, I've been calling him this week the Emperor of the Americas and Lord of the Western Hemisphere…
Adam Smith:
Don’t give me too many ideas, Simon.
Simon Rosenberg:
[Laughs.] But let's drill down on this a little bit just in terms of what's also happening in the House today. There will be as many as three votes today and tomorrow that are all forms of rebukes of Trump. So it's not just the Senate. It's also the House starting off 2026 rebuking him as well.
Adam Smith:
Yeah, I think we've got a strong chance to pass the three year extension of the ACA tax credits that was forced onto the House floor by a discharge petition. That's good. And the overrides, I mean, a not as often noted part of what Trump is doing is just the pettiness and the abuse of power… he vetoed two bipartisan, widely supported bills in the House and the Senate because of his petty belief that people had defied him. A tribe in Florida had dared to challenge his creation of the Alligator Alley detention facility. And I forget why he's pissed at Colorado. It's hard to keep track of all of it. But he didn't veto him because of any substantive objection to what the bills were. So, you know, I think we'll see now if the House Republicans are willing to stand up to that type of abuse of executive presidential power.
Simon Rosenberg:
It would be remarkable if we began this, what has been a dark week for our democracy with four votes rebuking Trump. And I think that there's a meme. you see it in the reporting… they talk about it being a rare rebuke. But the Senate voted to repeal all of his tariffs. The Congress voted unanimously, except for one, to force him to release the Epstein files. And now we may start 2026 with a series of other powerful rebukes. It is encouraging, and I think consistent with what you've been saying, you said, is that people are growing tired of defending the indefensible. I think there really is a sense that he's just gone too far and taken too much.
I want to return back to Venezuela, Greenland, and sort of his ruinous foreign policy. You've been in… I think there's been a briefing… were you part of any briefing in the last few days? Tell us a little bit about what you learned.
Adam Smith:
Well I was at the the gang of 16 briefing that Rubio and others gave and then a similar briefing to the full House yesterday. Now, we haven't had as good an opportunity to ask them direct questions and get direct answers to some of these policies. But look, I think what Democrats have to understand is we're not defending Nicolas Maduro or the government of Venezuela. But the way Trump is going about this is dragging us into a series of policy… a series of policies that are putting us on the wrong course.
And just to step back for a moment, Latin America has had a lot of troubles over the last several decades. And how should we look at those? We tend to forget imperialism and what happened prior to the rise of Castro and Chavez. And that's part of the problem. One of my arguments is U.S. imperialism exploiting resources in Latin America for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is is what sort of led to Castro. I mean, the best example is Cuba. And I know a lot of folks are like, Castro's awful, he's got to go. What was there before Castro? A guy named President Batista, who we propped up, who was doing a horrible job of running Cuba. It was incredibly, totally exploitative. He came in in a coup in 1952, you know, and this gave rise to, you know, an alternative. Now that alternative, I think Democrats should acknowledge is god-awful. Extreme socialism and communism of the kind that Chavez and Castro, and also they tried in Argentina to some extent, doesn't work. It destroyed the economy. It upset the country. But it was powerful because it was seen as Latin America standing up for itself in the face of the US and the West trying to colonize and use imperialism against it.
Now here comes Trump saying, I took out Maduro. Why did I take out Maduro? Because we, the United States of America, are going to run Venezuela and we're going to get our oil back. I mean, (A) that's not going to help the people of Latin America. It's not going to deal with the incredible economic divide and the vast poverty that they have down there… and (B) it simply will once again empower some of those radical ideologies that hold themselves up as an alternative to that. We can choose a better path if we actually worked with partners in Latin America to improve the lives of everybody in Latin America, of everyday people, not just to exploit their resources and make money for the few. Then we could begin to deal with mass migration and the growth of drug cartels and human trafficking and all of that. But Trump's just going back to the 1950s and saying, we're here, we're going to kick your ass and take your stuff. And that's not going to help Latin America, but also the message it sends… you put out, I think, Stephen Miller's little interview, I think with Jake Tapper a couple of days ago, where he said, look, this is the way the world works. The strong take what they want. That's what we have to do. He's taking us back into the 19th century… even before. This is the nasty, brutish, and short life that we've worked so hard over the course of the last 80 years since the end of World War II to get past.
So yeah, it has huge implications for Latin America, but it's also going to undermine peace and security globally and empower people like Putin and Xi to grab what they want. So this is a disastrous approach, whatever one may think of Nicolas Maduro. And I hope I know the people of Venezuela, a lot of people in Florida are like, we hate these people. They're terrible leaders, Maduro, Chavez, Castro. And they're right. But insist on something better. Don't let Trump simply take us back to another bad place.
Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, you raised two things I just want to drill down on. Number one is that he not only, you know, if you didn't like Maduro and Castro and the sort of the radical left of Latin America, Trump is actually setting up Venezuela to continue to be governed by this same political party. He just removed Maduro, but now they're being governed jointly, it looks like, by the same you know, just destructive and disastrous set of leaders along with Trump, right? So he's now cut himself into the deal and they've replaced one really bad leader now with a whole coalition of bad leaders. And so it's even blinding this notion that part of the reason we did this was to bring democracy to the region and a better life. It's just purely extractive.
Adam Smith:
Well, he's undermined the legitimate opposition. He's dismissed Maria Machado, the most popular opposition figure in Venezuela. He's made no effort to recognize, and I always forget the name of the guy who actually won the election in 2024 when Machado was blocked from running. He's made no effort to recognize any of that and also understand, and Rubio has been kind of, when pressed, honest about this. Trump's vision is basically because we have threatened them. (A) by blocking their oil and cutting off their lifeblood. (B) by doing the raid that took out Maduro. That they will now do what we want because they're afraid of us. That's basically his message. Yes, the people who are now in charge are every little bit as bad as Maduro, but they will be more pliable for us because they're afraid of us. Well, pliable to do what exactly?
At the moment, the only thing they seem willing to do is to let us get a cut of their oil, you know, not changing their policies, not improving their education system. They're not opening up democracy for free elections. They're not improving their health care system. None of that. They're just saying, OK, instead of brokering our oil through China, since we owe them a lot of money, you threaten us, we'll broker our oil through you. That's not going to lead anywhere. And then if, as Rubio will try to claim… that this is but the first step, eventually we will use our pressure to force them out and create a democracy. But it's one thing for the Chavistas who are left, who are running the place, to say, OK, we'll give you the oil. But it's a whole other thing if we say, give up power or we'll come in and take you out of power. Because then they're like, I'll take my chances. All right. I got I got the people right here around me who are threatening me. And then I got you from a distance who might. So it's just a flawed plan to begin with.
Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and also this notion that America any longer believes in democracy here or abroad is also, it's now a fabrication. I mean, it's an implausible argument given that really what Stephen Miller has articulated, as you pointed out in the last few days, the administration really seems in the last few weeks in this moment of desperation, the unpopularity, the failing domestic political agenda, the Epstein files, all these challenges they've had. They have declared the Constitution, domestic U.S. law, international law, the U.N. charter, our treaties, Senate ratified treaties, no longer apply to them. They are now operating completely outside of any sense of law… or rule of law. And so the idea that they'd be promoting democracy any longer is sort of an absurdity anyway.
Adam Smith:
Yeah, well, let me just broaden it from democracy, because when we focus on democracy, that sort of oversimplifies it to some extent. What we really need to talk about is the rule of law and government for the people, not just for the leaders. Because democracy, elections are done in a different way, different place here and there. It's part of it. But it's do you recognize the rule of law? I mean, you can work with countries that are not pure democracies if we're trying to work towards better rule of law, more help for people. But Trump seems to be saying he doesn’t care about any of it. He just wants to be able to do what he wants to do, unencumbered by any law, any constitution, any institution. That concentrates power in the hands of the few, which is bad just in general. But then if you're going to do that, you better hope that the few people that you concentrated power with give a rat's ass about anybody other than themselves. And that doesn't seem to be Trump. Trump is you know, trying to find a way to make as much money as possible off of this. He's cutting real estate deals. He's doing his crypto stuff. He's rewarding his friends, punishing his enemies… using the government to enrich himself. This is the oligarch, autocratic model of Vladimir Putin. That's what it is. And it's not something that we should want for our country and certainly not for the world.
Simon Rosenberg:
Adam, is there any scenario in your mind where if we follow through on what Trump is trying to do, where he's dividing the world up into four or five great powers, China, Russia, the U.S., some combination of the Gulf Arab states and Israel and the Middle East, and that we all get ours and we all compete with one another and we walk away from this global rules-based order that America started building over 80 years ago. Is there any scenario in your mind where we're more prosperous and we're safer and we're more free than where we have been over the last 80 years?
Adam Smith:
Absolutely not. I mean, because what's made us more prosperous and free is our system of partners and alliances and global stability. Now, as we've talked about before, we've had a bit of a problem domestically in that that wealth that has been created has not been fairly distributed. We haven't built the type of healthcare system, education system, fair economy for jobs and making sure workers get their fair share. But those are domestic policy issues. We generated a hell of a lot of wealth from having a stable, internationally connected, rules-based order. And also a lot of very unpredictable and bad things happen if Vladimir Putin and and President Xi and China start deciding that they can just grab whatever sovereign territory that they want. It leads to greater conflict and greater division. Now, look, the rules-based international order can be overstated. It hasn't been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it was what replaced what came before which was hundreds of years of ever escalating world wars, culminating in World War Two, which just about extinguished the planet. So I think it would not be better to move in this direction where this makes us better.
Simon Rosenberg:
And you mentioned to me earlier when we were talking before we began that you see a connection between this conversation and what happened in Minnesota yesterday. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Adam Smith:
Yeah, the abuse of state power. I mean this is Trump's viewpoint. He's in charge. And as the person in charge, he gets to do whatever he wants. And he wants to tell his law enforcement mechanisms, whether that's the U.S. military showing up and snatching Maduro in the middle of night and blowing up boats in the Caribbean, or ICE agents, you know, raiding various cities across America. The cavalier attitude towards the use of force by those institutions of our society responsible for enforcing the law, whether it's the military or ICE or DEA agents or whoever. Trump, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, they all beat their chest like we're going to kick your ass, basically. No accountability for the people with the guns. Look, given that power, it's an incredible responsibility for anybody who is in that type of a law enforcement position. Your government has said you have the right to kill somebody in the right set of circumstances. You should take that responsibility incredibly seriously.
But go back through all the social media memes and videos that they put out. You know, Apocalypse Now coming into Chicago with helicopters and you're supposedly blowing up Chicago. Pete Hegseth doing a connection to Yurtle the Turtle about blowing up boats that I don't even want to get into… the whole thing has been macho cavalier you do what you got to do no consequences. That has an effect on the mentality of the people out there enforcing the law. If you look at that video from yesterday… there's no excuse for using deadly force. But they've been told you know you're in you're in a fight for survival you know kill them before they kill you. And who's “them?” A 37 year old mother driving an SUV in Minneapolis. Didn't commit a single solitary crime, U.S. citizen. That's the person who you have to kill before they get you. But that's the mentality that Trump is drilling in to people across this country. And it's making every single one of us less safe and more vulnerable.
Simon Rosenberg:
Listen, I know you've got to run back for votes today. It's an incredibly busy day. I'm grateful for the time that you took out of this day, given how much is actually happening. And Adam, thank you for your incredibly important leadership in a time of challenge for the country. I see you out there on TV fighting it out every day. Just grateful for your leadership and thanks for spending time with us today.
Adam Smith:
Yeah, well, thanks to you, Simon, into the Hopium community. You guys have been really driving, you know, a lot of the best messaging and also that the political steps necessary to begin to win back power so we can stop this madness.
Simon Rosenberg:
Well, and listen, we had a huge win today, you know… congratulations to Senator Cain for another big win. He's been working his butt off and has been putting points on the board for the country in the last few months.
Adam Smith:
Amen. Thanks, Simon.
Simon Rosenberg:
See you everybody. Thanks. If you liked this today, please hit like, share with all your friends and subscribe to Hopium. Keep working hard everybody. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but as hard as this has been the last few days, and it's been hard, we could end up having a very good day today in Congress. Take care all.
