Live with Lindsey Caughel and Will Witt! | Interviews

hello everyone this is will wit with Prager you today we are joined with Lindsay coggle who is a professional baseball player with the Seattle Mariners how are you doing today I'm doing great how you guys doing I'm doing great over here beautiful Los Angeles here in Florida right Orlando yeah it's probably a little bit hotter over here in Florida but whether it's good nonetheless there's no clouds in the sky so it's a good same here and so we have you on the air today talk about your experience in Venezuela you spent some time there just a little while ago why were you there in Venezuela yeah I spent about six weeks in Venezuela in 2016 from the beginning of October until the middle of November and then an additional six weeks this past year in 2017 from the beginning of November until the middle of December so all together about three months in Venezuela throughout the course of a 13 14 month span I was there playing baseball the first year I was there I was in a city called Marek I playing for the tiga days day at agua and the this past year this previous year I was there playing in Caracas which is the capital plan for the Leone's the Lions so it's there playing baseball in the Venezuelan professional baseball league that's awesome I'm sure there are so many people who have no idea about what's actually going on in Venezuela right now with socialism and how high prices have gotten on everything could you tell us a little bit about your experience in Venezuela yeah there's so much to talk about really I guess I'll start with the first time that I got there I landed at about 12:30 at night and I was contacted by a member of the front office of the team saying that I would have to sit in the airport and wait for them to come pick me up at about 5:00 in the morning because there was road work being done on the roads so I'd have to hang out in the airport for a couple of hours so I get off the plane and I'm in the airport by myself and one of the first things that I noticed was the overwhelming amount of military personnel that was present in the airport with IKS traffic across their chests and shotguns strapped across their chest and it looked to be like a probably 50 to 50 ratio of military personnel to civilians and it was something that you definitely don't see in America I was definitely taken aback by that when I first stepped off a plane but anyways i sat in the airport for five hours and I finally got picked up at 5:30 in the morning I walked outside I looked around in the mountains anybody who's been to Venezuela knows that it's one of the most beautiful places landscape wise that you can go to it's giant green mountains hugged up right on the coast next to the ocean it was really beautiful it was just object poverty everywhere I looked in the hills and the shanties and brand-new buildings and brand-new homes being built without running water just trash cans on top of the houses to collect rainwater to take showers with and we drive as the sun's coming up and get to the field and I find out at the field that the real reason that they had to come pick me up at 5:30 in the morning was because the roads were too dangerous to drive on in the middle of the night and people would throw rocks at cars and try to try to get cars to pull over to the side of the road so they could rob them or steal their vehicles and out of just utter desperation to try to feed their families or whatever means necessary but it was definitely right as I stepped off the plane it was an eye-opening experience right from the beginning for sure that's actually crazy seeing a lot of people with guns at the airport is completely different here than in Los Angeles here no one has guns switch yeah absolutely it was um yeah at our baseball games there would be a lot of people would still go to the baseball games there'd be about 15 - you know sometimes we'd play in front of 25,000 people the government funded the league because they wanted the people at the baseball games as opposed to in the streets protesting so the baseball games kind of kept the people busy to where they didn't have time to think about being out in the streets protests in the government but almost at every single baseball game a champ would erupt from the crowd Spanish that would be the government's going down the government's going down and it would get the Venezuelan players on our on my team pretty pumped up but it was uh there'd be ten armed guards with riot gear on every foul line so twenty guards on the field during the entire game just making sure that nothing happened and um you know it's weird coming out of a baseball game being done with a baseball game you're used to kids asking you for your autograph when you're done with the baseball game in America but after every single baseball game that I hadn't been a sway like kids weren't never neden and never asked for an autograph they were always asking for food so they'd always you know they'd always say it always get my attention and and look at me and in motion some food in their mouth and comida comida and try to get me to give them my leftover postgame spread so that they could eat so they didn't have to go hungry that night so that was also pretty humbling experience to witness that day in and day out after every single game it's just such a horrible situation there would you say that the people of Venezuela recognized that it's the government's fault and they dislike and distrust their government 100% absolutely Venezuela is full of wonderful passionate people very passionate people I would even describe them as as very patriotic people who have a lot of pride for their country and know if anybody knows about the history of Venezuela Venezuela used to be a wellspring of of wealth where people would go and vacation a lot of Americans in the 80s and the in the early 90s would go on vacation in Venezuela because it is so beautiful and a lot of people are very the only way you could describe them is hurt I think it's past the point of anger and moved into into hurt they're just they feel helpless and the people that have the means to leave the country are leaving the country I've talked to a lot of people that are getting their situations in order so they can go to Chile or to Spain and but they're just really hurt they have a lot of pride for the country and they they really hate to leave but something that they feel like they have to do in order to to live a better life than what they're living now I mean there were plenty of times where I would walk into the convenience store and there would not be bottles of water so I'd have to I'd have to make sure that I prepared the day before by taking bottles of water from the field or filling up bottles of water wherever I could whenever they had it I had made sure I had to stock up and buy them in advance but there were plenty of times where I went into their version of what would be our CVS or Walgreens and there was no water on the shelf so that was another interesting experience for I would say the the things that I tell people that I noticed the most where the the military presence was absolutely unbelievable I stayed in a hotel what was considered to be one of the nicest hotels in the country and there were plenty of days where I where I woke up and I didn't have running water or didn't have hot water the hot water wouldn't turn on or I couldn't flush my toilet and but I there was a mall there was a three-story mall underneath my hotel that I was able to walk around that I felt pretty safe but you walk around this mall and you're walking past military guards you know every 30 feet and it's something that takes a little while to get used to another thing was just walking into restaurants and then tank telling you that they didn't have certain food for the day like chicken or marinara sauce it would be like walking into Olive Garden in America and them saying we don't have any chicken today or we don't have any you know alfredo sauce and it lots of times I'd go to restaurants and what would be a four-page menu would be condensed into a little tiny write-up of five choices that you would get for food items that you could pick from based off what they had in stock on that particular day you didn't know whether they were gonna have more chicken the next day or not and it was a it was kind of kind of crazy to see that happening and then the long lines that I noticed at ATMs and at banks money was almost impossible to come by when I was there they moved to a system where most everybody had bank cards because I talked to a couple of the locals and they said that in order to pay for anything there he'd have to bring stacks I mean stacks of food and the lines I mean stacks of money and the lines at the ATMs would be people would wait for two hours and the most that you could take out in any given day while I was there was five hundred thousand bees and just to put that in perspective when I got there in 2016 a plate of chicken and rice and avocado and plantains was I think three thousand bees and when I left six weeks later it had gone up to seven seven eight thousand bees so it had more than doubled in the six weeks that I was there so fast forward thirteen months later I come back to the country in the same plate of chicken and rice and beans and plantains is forty-five thousand bees and I left six weeks later in the middle of December and the same plate of food was a hundred and five thousand bees so in the course of fourteen months the inflation had went from three thousand to one hundred and five thousand and still only able to get out five hundred thousand bees from the ATM at one given time so enough to pay for five lunches and then you have to stand in line the next day and do it all over again for two hours so it was um luckily for me I was able to to trade my money uh on the black market but if I was trading my money through the government exchange rate at the airport or anything like that it I wouldn't have been able to feed myself so the government is in control the exchange rate and they they don't really do a good job of accurately representing the inflation that is happening in that country so it's it's runaway inflation and it's it's only getting worse I think I just saw on the news a couple of weeks ago that the hospitals are no longer allowed to put as a cause of death for children starvation because if the hospitals were allowed to put starvation as a cause of death then it would raise a lot of red flags in the national and the and the worldwide community so it's a serious situation that's happening over there I saw it firsthand and it's there's a lot of desperation and a lot of sadness on on the faces of the people that are over there in Venezuela but overall they're wonderful people that are going through a really tough time for sure I don't know how flex I mean 75% of people on average lost 19 pounds and that's ridiculous you had two million people leaving the country it's it's horrible sad situation what's going on there and we really appreciate you telling everyone what's going on there there's so many people who just don't realize it yeah there's a anybody who who complains about like the system of the economic system that we have here in America should should think twice before doing so and and have a little bit more gratitude for what we do have like being able to walk into a building and and turn the lights on and know that they're gonna turn on there was plenty of times where they were rolling blackouts in the city and or just being able to take a hot shower I know those things people take for granted but or just being able to walk into Olive Garden and know that you're gonna be able to get chicken if you want chicken and those are things that the people are struggling with there or just walking into Walgreens and being able to get a bottle of water and you know those people are going going without a lot and it's a sad situation but hopefully the the government can turn around and they can they can get back on the right track but it only looks like it's gonna get worse before it gets better unfortunately yeah if you want to see the detrimental effects of socialism just go visit Venezuela and Prager you actually has a video with a Debbie D'Souza on Venezuela what's going on in the country and really how bad it's gone so check out that video if you haven't seen it Lyndsey I want to thank you for talking to me and thank you for talking to our audience today there's great insight yeah I appreciate it thank you guys very much yeah this is will wit with Prager you thank you everyone