In this episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” Tony Kinnett speaks with Andres Martinez-Fernandez of The Heritage Foundation on what comes next for Venezuela after the greatest military strike in recent history.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast.” Subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube page to watch past episodes.

TONY KINNETT: Let’s get into some of what this actually means for the rest of the country here in the United States and abroad. So, you’re going to need someone a little bit more learned on this than I am. I know very, very hard to believe. So, we’re going to bring on the one and the only Andres Martinez-Fernandez. He’s the senior policy analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation.

So, he reads this stuff all the time in English and in Spanish. Andres, busy weekend, huh?

ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Definitely, quite an eventful start of the year.

TONY KINNETT: So, let’s get right into it and not futz around anymore. There’s been the quibbling, the complaining from some isolated parts of the country that, “what does this have to do with America first?” Take it.

ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Well, I think it has everything to do with America first. And that’s protecting the American people from live, active, and deadly threats in our own hemisphere.

You know, people like to say that this is this is just like, you know, nation building in the Middle East and all the mistakes that we’ve made in the past with our foreign policy.

TONY KINNETT: Right. Anyone I don’t like is a neo-con and other stories to tell yourself.

ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: Right, exactly, exactly. But you know what, the reality is that the Venezuelan narco-threats, and the narco-threats within our own hemisphere, which are by far the most dramatic and deadly for the American people. You know we’re talking about 100,000 overdose deaths a year from narcotics alone.

TONY KINNETT: Right.

ANDRES MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ: And that’s not even getting into the weaponization of migration and instability that the American people and American cities have lived with for years.

All of this has really been ignored by the Washington establishment for decades.

You’ve never really seen a serious attention, as far as the foreign policy priorities of the United States to these issues, until President Trump decided that he’s going to break with........

© The Daily Signal