Anyone who’s followed Latin American politics over the past few decades is familiar with Abrams. He’s an unreconstructed, neo-con cold warrior with a checkered past across all GOP administrations since Reagan. He was a big player in the Iran Contra scandal. Most recently he was Trump’s Venezuela envoy from 2019 to 2021.
He is unsurprisingly happy to see Maduro gone but seems to be somewhat shocked by the incoherence of the day after planning (such as it is.)
[N]ow what? Again, the answer should be easy: The United States should be backing Venezuela’s democratic parties. They united last year under María Corina Machado as their candidate for president, and she would have won the election. When Maduro barred her from running, they united under retired career diplomat Edmundo González as a substitute candidate. Though he was almost unknown in Venezuela, he won a huge landslide because Machado backed him, and because he represented a return to democracy. The unity and effectiveness of the opposition last year were remarkable as it fought an election under the worst circumstances—with the danger of arrest, exile, or worse constantly present, with rallies broken up violently, with no access to state media. Its victory is both a tribute to the opposition leadership and a measure of what Venezuelans want.
But President Trump seems much more concerned with Venezuelan oil than Venezuelan democracy. In his press conference he went out of his way to belittle Machado, stating that she lacked the necessary “respect” from Venezuelans to govern. There is simply no basis for that judgment (or prejudice) given the election results, her courage in remaining in hiding in Venezuela month after month, and now her receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Instead, Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. Venezuelan democrats are now wondering whether Trump intends a deal with the remnants of the regime, in which they make all sorts of concessions on oil in exchange for being allowed to hang on.
That is a formula for disaster, and if that’s U.S. policy, Trump will have turned triumph into a new crisis. If Rodríguez hangs on, what of the rest of the regime? Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino is also under a drug indictment, as is interior minister and key regime thug and enforcer Diosdado Cabello. If they stay in office, Trump will have sold our souls for a small amount of oil production.
There is no reason to believe that those people are going to resign or be deposed through any legitimate means. Certainly Rubio and Trump seemed to say that if they do what Trump and his oil buddies want they can stay — otherwise they will unleash a “second wave” of violence. It’s now a full-fledged protection racket.
Abrams points out that a democratic government could, theoretically, accomplish the same their state goals. (Maybe — they might not be as thrilled with a bunch of oil companies coming in and exploiting their resources as people think…)
He is a neo-con so he still believes that you can enforce democracy, but be that as it may he’s not wrong that allowing the current government to stand as a puppet of the United States will not go well:
Everything Trump says he wants will be the product of a democratic transition in Venezuela. While news stories sometimes warn of another Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, those comparisons are foolish. Venezuela has a homogeneous population and a strong democratic tradition. There are no social or religious divisions of the sort we see in the Middle East. Democratic institutions existed and need to be revitalized, rather than invented. Last year’s election showed exactly what Venezuelans want, and the country is surrounded by democracies. The only thing that could produce massive unrest and more migration is if the regime holds on—with U.S. support.
He then offers some interesting speculation:
This seems so obvious that one has to wonder about the sources of Trump’s information. I understand his allergy to the phrase “regime change,” but that is precisely what is needed, and he is more than halfway there. Were there intelligence analyses suggesting chaos if the regime falls and saying Machado lacked wide respect? If so, they are the biased product of a bureaucracy strongly opposed to the kind of military intervention we saw this weekend.
Nah, he’s doesn’t care what the CIA thinks. And the only reason he’s not going for an all out regime change operation is because what he cares about is the oil and he thinks he can do business with the regime. Everything is personal with him and since Maduro didn’t lick his boots, he needed to go. If the rest of them give him a prize or something he’s fine with them.
This is almost certainly what happened:
Were there Venezuelan plutocrats or U.S. oil executives coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone? Were they the source of lies about María Corina Machado’s stature?
Who knows? It could just as easily be an influencer on Truth Social or Stephen Miller’s wife. Trump believes what he wants to believe.
As I said, Abrams is a neo-con who still thinks the U.S military invading a country will be greeted as liberators. And yes, there are some who see it that way. But they inevitably sour on the whole operation once it becomes clear that we are terrible at the Day After. For some reason these neo-cons never seem to learn that lesson. But maybe Trump’s crude avarice is showing even a few of these types that this method is fatally flawed? Maybe.
Stephanopoulos: He said, you cannot credibly argue that drug trafficking charges demand invasion in one case while issuing a pardon in another. What's your response?
Rubio: In the case of Maduro, look, it's very simple. This guy was indicted.
Stephanopoulos: He said, you cannot credibly argue that drug trafficking charges demand invasion in one case while issuing a pardon in another. What’s your response?
Rubio: In the case of Maduro, look, it’s very simple. This guy was indicted.
Stephanopoulos: Hernandez was convicted by a jury.
Rubio: I can’t just comment on it because I just wasn’t involved in those deliberations.
Stephanopoulos: Do you support it?
Rubio: I wasn’t involved in those deliberations. I haven’t looked at the case file. I haven’t looked at the arguments made by—I’ve got a bunch of other things going on
Except Trump said the U.S. is going to run the country.
BRENNAN: But you're describing the regime as still in place. I'm confused why the Trump administration only arrested Maduro. The chief thug who controls the police and has a $25m price on his head is still in place.
BRENNAN: But you’re describing the regime as still in place. I’m confused why the Trump administration only arrested Maduro. The chief thug who controls the police and has a $25m price on his head is still in place.
RUBIO: You’re confused? I don’t know why that’s confusing to you
BRENNAN: They are still in power
RUBIO: You’re gonna go in and suck up 5 people? They’re already complaining about this one operation
Huh?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Trump says the U.S. is going to “run Venezuela.” Under what legal authority?
RUBIO: We want a better future for the Venezuelan people.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I’ll ask again — what is the legal authority?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Trump says the U.S. is going to “run Venezuela.” Under what legal authority?
RUBIO: We want a better future for the Venezuelan people.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I’ll ask again — what is the legal authority?
RUBIO: We have court orders.
Welker: Regime change historically speaking has not gone very well for the United States. Can you assure Americans that this time will be different?
Rubio: We've got this phobia built up… I watched these experts and it's clown hour. Venezuela looks nothing like Libya. It looks… pic.twitter.com/JEgoOkiyTP
Welker: Regime change historically speaking has not gone very well for the United States. Can you assure Americans that this time will be different?
Rubio: We’ve got this phobia built up… I watched these experts and it’s clown hour. Venezuela looks nothing like Libya. It looks nothing like Iraq and nothing like Afghanistan
Lol. We have a phobia about regime change? Gosh, I wonder why?
JIM JORDAN: What fentanyl and other drugs have done to families in Ohio–
BASH: But fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela
JORDAN: Cozying up to China and Iran, which are part of that, certainly does
BASH: But that's different from what most people who voted for Trump heard him… pic.twitter.com/EOZsPtwqji
Bash: "[Trump] has been arguing since he first ran…that he was going to end forever wars and put America first. Now he says he's running Venezuela, he's totally open to putting boots back on the ground there, and he's signaling that Cuba and Colombia could be next. How is that… pic.twitter.com/rimRsuw5pk
Bash: “[Trump] has been arguing since he first ran…that he was going to end forever wars and put America first. Now he says he’s running Venezuela, he’s totally open to putting boots back on the ground there, and he’s signaling that Cuba and Colombia could be next. How is that America first?”
Jim Jordan: “I trust the president to make decisions that are in the best interest of Americans.”
BASH: The question is — what’s next?
JIM JORDAN: What I’m saying is, we’ll see. I trust Secretary Rubio, I trust Secretary Hegseth, I trust President Trump and him making decisions that are best for the American people
Remember the Trumpish bluster last year about Canada as the 51st state? And about Donald Trump acquiring Greenland from Denmark by hook or crook? After Trump’s toppling of the Venezuelan government, one might want to understand the reichsmarschall’s wife’s post above as more than trolling. It’s a threat against NATO member Denmark.
What we have before us is an addled president in failing health surrounded by a coterie of advisers eager to turn the U.S. into a hemispheric hegemon. At least until the music stops and Trump drops dead.
Reporters asked Trump to comment on the difference in treatment between former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, whom Trump pardoned for drug crimes, and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, militarily overthrown by U.S. forces over alleged drug crimes. Trump answered with a third-person non sequitur reflective of his desire to pursue “a highly personalized geopolitics,” writes Jonah E. Bromwich of The New York Times:
“The man that I pardoned was, if you could equate it to us, he was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly. He was the head of the country.”
Both Hernández and Maduro cases wound up before the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors asked that Hernández be allowed to die in jail for “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Instead, Trump pardoned him.
“Trump thinks he can use federal criminal prosecutions for any purpose, which is to say to promote his foreign policy views, to promote his vendettas, to promote his self-interest and to promote his perceived political interests,” said Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor who teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School in New York.
The Supreme Court gave Trump carte blanche as president to commit crimes. And so he has. Americans gave the felon and wannabe dictator another term to trample the Constitution. And so he has. American justice now is what Donald Trump says it is. So is American foreign adventurism.
Will Saletan writes at The Bulwark that Trump has already telegraphed his next colonialist moves. They are predicated on fighting drug trafficking for now. Later he’ll find justification for wherever his imperialist whims take him. As some day it may happen that a victimreason must be found, he’s got a little list.
Columbia: President Gustavo Petro had better “watch his ass,” says Trump.
Cuba: Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit.”
Mexico: “Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
Canada: Drugs that enter the U.S. through Canada “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat . . . to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
You get the idea. On his list of prospective Trump victims, Saletan includes practically all the Americas plus Iran and Greenland. On the latter, Saletan includes:
At the press conference, Trump said regime change in Venezuela was part of “our new national security strategy” to counter “growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere.” That sounds like what he said two weeks ago when he announced the appointment of an envoy to acquire Greenland. “We need Greenland for national security,” he declared at that time. “We have to have it.”
I am reluctant to reach the easy conclusion many have that Trump invaded Venezuela for oil. Or as a distraction from the Epstein files. It is a fool’s errand to explain irrational behavior like kleptomania or hoarding via rational thinking. It is akin to a category error. That’s not to say oil or distraction were not factors. Nothing Republicans like better than a twofer unless it’s a threefer. Mere riches are for losers. Trump wants to be a one-man, hemispheric hegemon.
Remember how ignorant and backward-looking Trump is. The man’s cognitive development stalled sometime in the late 1970s. He considers himself the world’s premiere expert on topics based on the thinnest gloss of knowledge or on what he heard during a recent conversation.
Trump doesn’t grasp Greenland’s size distortion in a Mercator projection. Marvel’s Peter Quill thinks of himself as Star-Lord. James “Rhodey” Rhodes on first observing Quill famously says, “So he’s an idiot.” As is Trump. He patterned himself after mob bosses. He now imagines himself a strongman in the mold of Vladmir Putin or Kim Jong Un. His attempts to emulate them, while highly destructive, are pathetic.
What seem like logical and obvious motivators to rational people may not operate the same way in Trump’s head. Windmills don’t work. Coal is clean. Perhaps being stuck in the age of oil embargoes makes snatching Venezuela’s oil attractive despite the U.S. not needing it. He’s not doing things because he needs a distraction from the Epstein files. As Digby wrote, He’s doing this stuff because he wants to do it!
Trump discovered as president that power was a stronger aphrodisiac than money. Putin became impossibly rich as the gangster-president of Russia. But riches are not why he’s invaded Ukraine; he wants to rule a restored Russian Empire. Trump the Pathologically Insecure is still desperate to join an international autocrats club that wouldn’t have an idiot like him as a member. Perhaps he believes creating a police state and some gunboat diplomacy finally will gain him admission. He’s seen how feared and powerful his crushes are and says, “I’ll have what they’re having.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) of Georgia is disillusioned. Once the MAGAest of Donald Trump’s faithful, she posted a lengthy tweet Saturday morning as Trump began his press conference on his attack on Venezuela and capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
I’ve served on the Homeland Security Committee for the past three years. I’m 100% for strong safe secure borders and stopping narco terrorists and cartels from trafficking deadly drugs and human trafficking into America.
Fentanyl is responsible for over 70% of U.S. drug overdose deaths and fentanyl comes from Mexican cartels made with chemical precursors from China and trafficked across the U.S. Mexico border.
Mexican cartels are primarily and overwhelmingly responsible for killing Americans with deadly drugs.
If U.S. military action and regime change in Venezuela was really about saving American lives from deadly drugs then why hasn’t the Trump admin taken action against Mexican cartels?
And if prosecuting narco terrorists is a high priority then why did President Trump pardon the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted and sentenced for 45 years for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into America? Ironically cocaine is the same drug that Venezuela primarily traffics into the U.S.
The next obvious observation is that by removing Maduro this is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies that will ensure stability for the next obvious regime change war in Iran.
And of course why is it ok for America to militarily invade, bomb, and arrest a foreign leader but Russia is evil for invading Ukraine and China is bad for aggression against Taiwan? Is it only ok if we do it? (I’m not endorsing Russia or China)
Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged. Especially the younger generations. Boomers and half of Gen X will cheer on neocon wars and talking points, but the other half of Gen X and majority on down see through it and hate it.
Americans disgust with our own government’s never ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going.
This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end.
Boy were we wrong.
As the baby boomers slip away both in votes and power, the electoral future will be decided for candidates that focus on American economic populism and promising prosperity for Americans only.
As of right now, neither party is offering the solution.
So how has MAGA reacted to the Venezuela invasion? Are isolationists who flocked to Trump’s America First marketing dancing in the streets to Y.M.C.A.?
The unanswered question is how Trump’s core supporters will respond. They are voters who helped upend a half-century of Republican hawkish instincts and who viewed regime change as a discredited relic of a bygone era. What is clear, however, is that this is a moment of enormous reset for U.S. posture in global intervention, and one whose consequences are difficult to predict.
“We’re going to be running it,” Trump said of Venezuela from his private club in Florida. And, he hinted, Venezuela might just be his opening gambit.
“It” is the opposite of the what Trump promised them.
Trump, lured by the promise of an oil-rich nation he might control as a viceroy, saw nothing but upside for the U.S. energy sector. But what he was unsure of—even among his inner circle—was the tolerance for this type of expansionist viewpoint. While Trump’s advisers have described the policy as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, many of his most ardent supporters have been far less comfortable with the notion that the hemisphere should fall under American political and commercial dominance. In the simplest terms, it was game on.
Trump’s posture now is a return to colonialism. In a sense, Elliot suggests, “the first steps at unfurling a new American empire.”
“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end,” wrote an exasperated MTG.
Trump the Narcoleptic feels unfettered. The Supreme Court gave him carte blanche to commit crimes. Americans obsessed with the cost of eggs gave a convicted felon another term in the Oval Office. He’s cast aside his base. He no longer brags about the size of rallies. He’s going for empire like his buddy Vlad.
In an hour-long news conference explaining the strike to the American people, Trump made no concessions that he perhaps betrayed his campaign pledges. Instead, he warned that the aggression may not stop inside Venezuela. Specifically, he called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who condemned the operation. “[Petro] has cocaine mills. He has factories where he makes cocaine. … He’s making cocaine. They’re sending it into the United States,” Trump said. “So he does have to watch his ass.”
One would think Trump might have to watch his. MAGA true believers staged a failed insurrection five years ago over not getting what they wanted from the November 2020 presidential election. Trump summoned them and they came. He won’t summon them again. They won’t come.
If there is a judgment coming that separates the MAGA sheep from the MAGA goats, the America First true believers from “my Trump right or wrong” MAGAs, it is too early to tell. For his part, Trump seems not to care. He never did. MTG found out the hard way.
Too many people on social media are saying that the Democrats are all falling in line with Trump’s Venezuelan misadventure. That’s not true.
Lawyers Guns and Money had this:
Where are the Democrats right now? Friend of the blog Jamie Mayerfeld has done the research:
I saw someone write on Facebook: “Only a short matter of time before we see establishment liberals falling all over themselves to praise this action.” I don’t think this is correct.
Here is Pete Buttigieg: “It’s an old and obvious pattern. An unpopular president – failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home – decides to launch a war for regime change abroad. The American people don’t want to “run” a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one.”
I’ve looked to see what Democratic senators are saying on X/Twitter. One Democratic senator has supported the attack – John Fetterman, who is far away from being an establishment liberal.
Here’s what other Democratic senators are saying. Note that this is an incomplete list, because I’m sure that several more have added statements since I started looking.
Senator Chuck Schumer: “Nicolás Maduro is an illegitimate dictator. But launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.” And: “The idea that Trump plans to now run Venezuela should strike fear in the hearts of all Americans. The American people have seen this before and paid the devastating price.”
Senator Mark Warner: “Our Constitution places the gravest decisions about the use of military force in the hands of Congress for a reason. Using military force to enact regime change demands the closest scrutiny, precisely because the consequences do not end with the initial strike. If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president? Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”
Senator Van Hollen: “The American people did not ask for this act of war to bring about regime change in Venezuela – nor did Congress authorize it…. This war is a grave abuse of power by the President.”
Senator Adam Schiff: “Nicolás Maduro was a thug and an illegitimate leader of Venezuela, terrorizing and oppressing its people for far too long and forcing many to leave the country. But starting a war to remove Maduro doesn’t just continue Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our adversaries mirroring this brazen illegal escalation. For months, as the Trump administration massed American servicemembers and firepower in the Caribbean, and used military force to destroy vessels and kill those on board, I and others in the Senate forced bipartisan votes to stop the illegal misuse of our armed forces. We warned that the true motive was not drugs, but regime change in an oil-rich nation. Despite all of the administration’s false denials, those motivations are now clear. Acting without Congressional approval or the buy-in of the public, Trump risks plunging a hemisphere into chaos and has broken his promise to end wars instead of starting them. And in conjunction with his continued saber-rattling around the world and dropping approval ratings at home, the American people should be concerned that this is not the last time he will break that promise.The President has vowed that this is not the end of our engagement in Venezuela, saying that ‘we’ll be involved in it very much.’ Congress must bring up a new War Powers Resolution and reassert its power to authorize force or to refuse to do so. We must speak for the American people who profoundly reject being dragged into new wars.”
Senator Alex Padilla: “Let’s be absolutely clear: Trump’s military action in Venezuela is unlawful without approval from Congress. There’s no clear objective, no endgame, and no plan for what comes next. This is a dangerous recipe for chaos in the region. And while he escalates conflicts abroad, Trump is ignoring real crises at home — from rising health care costs to disaster recovery. This isn’t leadership.”
Senator Brian Schatz: “We have no vital national interests in Venezuela to justify war. We should have learned not to stumble into another stupid adventure by now. And he’s not even bothering to tell the American public what the hell is going on.”
Senator Ed Markey: “Trump must be held to account for this reckless, illegal act of war.”
Senator Maggie Hassan: “The people of New Hampshire do not want to be dragged into another foreign war, especially by a President who has failed to articulate a clear strategy or purpose for attacking a sovereign nation and, in so doing, destabilizing much of the Western Hemisphere and calling into question our country’s commitment to a rules-based international order.”
Senator Chris Murphy: “President Trump thinks he is above the law. He steals from taxpayers. He thumbs his nose at the law. And now, he is starting an illegal war with Venezuela that Americans didn’t ask for and has nothing to do with our security.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal: “If we’re starting another endless war, with no clear national security strategy or need, count me out. Maduro is a cruel criminal dictator, but President Trump has never sought approval from Congress for war as the Constitution requires—& our military deserves.”
Senator Andy Kim: “Americans across the political spectrum must reject Trump’s plan for the U.S. to “run the country” of Venezuela. This is a disastrous plan. We have seen this show before and it did not end well.”
Senator Tim Kaine: “President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro – however terrible he is – is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere.”
Senator Chris Coons: “There is no reason to believe that Americans are more secure today after this morning’s raid in Caracas than they were yesterday. I will not mourn Maduro’s removal from power, but the Trump administration owes our country transparency and a clear strategy.”
Senator Mazie Hirono. [Retweeted Chris Coons’s message.]
Senator Mark Kelly. “The President of the United States just overthrew a foreign ruler and explained to the American people that this is about taking control of the oil reserves of a foreign nation. He said that the U.S. will “run the country” until a proper transition can take place and went right into how US oil companies will benefit from this takeover. He doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.”
Senator Ruben Gallego. “I said Trump wanted to start a war, and now he’s saying we’re going to occupy Venezuela. Enough. I authored a War Powers Resolution to hold the Trump administration accountable for its illegal actions in Venezuela. I’m going to force a vote. Only Congress has the authority to take this country to war.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth: “Donald Trump’s reckless and unconstitutional operations in Venezuela—including this morning’s arrest of a foreign leader—are not about enforcing law and order because if they were, he wouldn’t hide them from Congress. Maduro was unquestionably a bad actor, but no President has the authority to unilaterally decide to use force to topple a government, thrusting us and the region into uncertainty without justification, a defined end-state or a real plan for preventing the instability that could come next. His actions continue putting American troops, personnel and citizens at risk both in the region and around the globe. None of that serves our nation’s interests.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar: “I have strongly opposed sending American forces into harm’s way in Venezuela without authorization from Congress. We should not put Americans at risk in this way without careful deliberation among the people’s elected representatives. Wars for regime change can lead to unintended consequences. Right now we need a full briefing on how to avoid spiraling instability, and a vote to stop this unauthorized action from continuing.”
Senator Martin Heinrich: “Let’s be clear, President Trump has acted without any legal authorization from Congress. His “capture” of Maduro – no matter how terrible a leader Maduro is – breaks our nation’s laws, tarnishes our global leadership, puts Americans in Venezuela and our Armed Forces at risk, and sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Americans want lower costs, transparency, and justice — not endless armed conflicts and regime change wars. President Trump’s actions do not have the consent of the American people and should be condemned by Congress.”
Senator Ben Ray Luján: “Maduro was an oppressive, authoritarian ruler who devastated Venezuela and destabilized the greater region. Further plunging the southern hemisphere into chaos with no clear path toward peace and stability is not the answer. There is no reason President Trump can give the American people how last night’s actions make us safer and don’t lead to another illegal, unnecessary war. More importantly, this administration is setting a dangerous precedent for our own adversaries to use against Americans and our allies. We cannot stand on the world stage advocating for democracy and rule of law when we act like thugs. Congress cannot endorse the illegal actions of this administration that put our men and women in uniform in danger.”
Senator Jacky Rosen: “While Nicolas Maduro was an illegitimate and brutal dictator – and his ouster will be greeted with celebration by Venezuelans who were forced to endure horrific conditions under his regime – the Constitution is clear: only Congress has the power to declare war and authorize the use of military force in other nations, especially when there is no imminent threat to U.S. national security that requires immediate presidential action. This illegal regime change operation won’t make our country safer and risks destabilizing the region, dragging us into additional military conflicts, and increasing the amount of immigrants seeking refuge at our border. The decision to jeopardize the safety of our brave men and women in this way is a heavy responsibility that cannot be made without the input of the American people through their representatives in Congress. The Trump Administration needs to be held accountable and explain why it lied to us when it claimed in its briefings that regime change wasn’t the U.S. goal in Venezuela. Congress must also pass Senator Tim Kaine’s bipartisan War Powers Resolution next week to prohibit Donald Trump from carrying out additional strikes without our input.”
Senator Michael Bennet: “As I have long said, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is an illegitimate, brutal leader who lost, and then stole, the 2024 elections. Nevertheless, as a member of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, I have seen no evidence justifying the administration acting alone without Congressional authorization. I certainly have seen no justification for putting U.S. troops on the ground to “run the country” or rebuild and exploit Venezuela’s oil infrastructure for our own economic purposes…. the Trump administration’s trampling of our Constitution and unauthorized military action serve only to weaken U.S. democracy and make the world more dangerous. Congress must reassert its role in these decisions to prevent the President from his continued irresponsible conduct.”
Senator John Hickenlooper: “In disregard for the Constitution, President Trump launched a war in Venezuela without congressional authorization. A president pursuing regime change abroad creates an unnecessary conflict and puts American service members directly in harm’s way. American families are already struggling. This escalation shows that the President is willing to go great lengths to distract from the serious problems not being addressed here at home.”
More:
I guess it stands to reason that members of congress would be upset that he lied to them and failed to even let the congressional leadership know what they were planning. But while it’s certainly important that he didn’t get congressional authorization to do it, that’s not the most important point. Process questions obscure more than they illuminate.
The problem is that this is illegal, immoral, expensive and dangerous …. for no good reason. In fact, they can’t even articulate one that makes any sense — it’s drugs, it’s a stolen election, it’s oil, none of which are acceptable rationales for this operation. Neither can they explain what comes next and who is going to be involved. Those are the fundamental issues and they are huge.
For those of us of “a certain age”, that is to say, old enough to have actually witnessed the moon landing live on TV… the fact that “we” were even able to achieve this feat “by the end of the decade” (as President Kennedy projected in 1961) still feels like a pretty big deal to me.
Of course, there are still big unanswered questions out there about Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I’ll leave that to future generations. I feel that I’ve done my part…spending my formative years plunked in front of a B&W TV in my PJs eating Sugar Smacks and watching Walter Cronkite reporting live from the Cape.
Those particular memories resurfaced recently as I watched Richard Linklater’s charming 2022 animated memoir Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, which I stumbled across on Netflix:
Of course, 10 year-old Linklater didn’t land on the moon and return safely to the Earth just ahead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin; that’s the fantasy part of his tale. It was the earthbound elements of his narrative that triggered an emotional sense memory of being a kid again, living in suburbia in 1969 (and watching the moon landing on a boxy black and white television set). I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was imprinted at an early age by the comforting visage of Walter Cronkite delivering the nightly news, long before I could intellectualize what “journalistic integrity” meant-or how important it was.
While Cronkite’s name is synonymous with “CBS news”, he was just part of a pantheon that includes Edward R. Murrow, Douglas Edwards, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, Katie Couric, Connie Chung, Morley Safer, Marlene Sanders, et. al. For decades, CBS News was held in the highest regard; a trusted and reliable source for both straight-up reporting and hard-hitting investigative journalism.
You may have noticed by now that I am speaking in the past tense:
As part of a promotional rollout ahead of taking up the legendary CBS Evening News anchor chair, Tony Dokoupil posted a video message this week where he claimed that legacy media has ignored the views of the “average American.”
Meanwhile, CBS News’ editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is scoping out a private jet and a troop of armed guards to facilitate her participation in a multi-million dollar tour of the country.
The co-host of CBS Mornings since 2019, Dokoupil was officially named the new face of CBS Evening News last month, replacing the short-lived co-anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois. His tenure is set to begin Monday. Dokoupil’s promotion came after Weiss failed to poach a big name from another network to headline the ratings-challenged nightly news program.
In an effort to make a splash and gain some publicity for his debut, the network is sending Dokoupil out on a 10-city “Live From America” cross-country kickoff tour during his first two weeks in the chair. Throughout his swing through the nation, CBS Evening News will broadcast from cities such as Miami, Dallas, Detroit, Cincinnati before wrapping things up in Pittsburgh.
According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, Weiss is planning on chartering a private plane to fly to each location for the “Live From America” tour this month. Besides taking Dokoupil and CBS Evening News executive producer Kim Harvey on the flights, Weiss’ personal security detail of five armed bodyguards will also be on board.
The increased involvement from Weiss on the CBS Evening News reboot in recent days has raised eyebrows over her desire to be on location for each telecast.
That potential additional expense comes after the news network laid off roughly 100 employees and is preparing for more crippling cost cuts from owner David Ellison and Paramount. It also seems to fly in the face of Dokoupil’s anti-elite mission statement for the show, according to sources who spoke to The Independent.
“Nothing says ‘meeting Americans where they are’ by flying around the country on a private jet costing millions of dollars,” one network staffer said. […]
This latest flareup within CBS News comes less than two weeks after Weiss came under fire for the 11th-hour spike of a 60 Minutes story that was critical of President Donald Trump’s administration, sparking a possible “revolt” among the show’s staff.
Since her arrival at the network three months ago, the self-described “radical centrist” – with minimal broadcast news experience – Weiss has drawn criticism from staff and media observers alike over many of her editorial decisions, which many have claimed is part of the new corporate ownership’s efforts to push CBS News in a “MAGA-friendly” direction.
Uncle Walter is spinning. Frankly, I’m glad he’s not here to see social media posts like this:
Or this…
Weasel words? I guess they’ll get back to us on that. There’s more:
…and finally [cue the fife and drum corps]…
Oh, I think I know where we are going here.
And that’s the way it is. All that in mind, I thought I would re-post this piece. Courage.
Breaking News: 10 Docs for World Press Freedom Day
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 3, 2025)
This just in: Today is World Press Freedom Day. Say what? (via the United Nations website)
World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference. Since then, 3 May, the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek is celebrated worldwide as World Press Freedom Day.
After 30 years, the historic connection made between the freedom to seek, impart and receive information and the public good remains as relevant as it was at the time of its signing. Special commemorations of the 30th anniversary are planned to take place during World Press Freedom Day International Conference.
May 3 acts as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom. It is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. It is an opportunity to:
celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
defend the media from attacks on their independence;
and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
If you’re a regular reader around these parts, I’m sure you’d concur that it couldn’t come a day too soon. Via Amnesty International:
Around the world, journalists are being silenced, jailed, and disappeared—simply for doing their jobs. From Guatemala to Hong Kong, Russia to Tunisia, governments are increasingly weaponizing vague laws, judicial systems, and the use of force to suppress the truth.
These attacks on the press are not isolated incidents; they are deliberate strategies to dismantle the very foundations of human rights. The erosion of press freedom is a warning sign—one that signals a broader slide toward authoritarian practices, including in the United States, where attacks against the media grow more hostile by the day. […]
President Trump is attacking the freedom of the press, including hand-picking which outlets can cover the White House and demonizing reporters. Before becoming president, he sued media outlets CBS News and the Des Moines Register for publishing something he didn’t agree with. He’s barred the AP from covering events at the White House because he disagreed with an editorial decision to use “Gulf of Mexico” instead of “Gulf of America.” He’s called on outlets to fire specific reporters for coverage that doesn’t paint him in the light he wants and has quipped that he’d jail reporters opens in a new tab as retribution for unfavorable coverage. In addition to dismantling Voice of America, he’s supported slashing funding for outlets like NPR and PBS.
What’s more, while President Trump is attacking freedom of the press and journalistic integrity, social media companies, including Meta and Elon Musk’s X, have been granted unprecedented access to the White House, have dismantled fact-checking programs on their platforms, contributing to the spread of disinformation, especially with such a high percentage of Americans getting their news from social media platforms.
To scrutinize and ultimately hold political leaders accountable, the press must have the freedom to report independent news without being blocked from access, punished, or intimidated. The government must respect and protect free and independent media and maximize transparency and access to information.
We are only 100 days into the new administration…so please join me in raising a glass to intrepid journalists everywhere who continue to speak truth to power, and do what you can to support their work. And for your perusal, I’ve combed my review archives and selected 10 documentaries that embody the spirit of World Press Freedom Day:
#Chicago Girl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator – Not long ago, the MSM relegated social media to kickers about flash mobs, or grandpa’s first tweet. Then, the Arab Spring happened, precipitating the rise of the citizen journalist. Case in point: 19 year-old Ala’a Basatneh, subject of Joe Piscatella’s doc. The Damascus-born Chicagoan is a key player in the Syrian revolution, as in “key stroke”. It’s not just about Ala’a, but her compatriots in Syria, some who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Timely and moving. (Available on Google Play)
Cartoonists: Foot Soldiers of Democracy? – French filmmaker Stephanie Valloatto’s globetrotting documentary profiles a dozen men and women who make their living drawing funny pictures about current events. I know what you’re thinking…beats digging ditches, right? Well, that depends. Some of these political cartoonists ply their trade under regimes that could be digging a “special” ditch, reserved just for them (if you know what I’m saying).
The film can be confusing; in her attempt to give all 12 subjects equal face time, Valloatto’s frequent cross-cutting can make you lose track of which country you’re in (it’s mostly interior shots). That aside, she gets to the heart of what democracy is all about: speaking truth to power. It’s also timely; in one scene, an interviewee says, “Like a schoolchild, I told myself: I shouldn’t draw Muhammad.” Then, holding up a sketch of you-know-who, he concludes: “Drawing is the correct answer to the forbidden.”
Forbidden Voices – Swiss director Barbara Miller’s excellent doc profiles three influential “cyber-feminists” who bravely soldier on in the blogosphere whilst running a daily gauntlet of intimidation from their respective governments, including (but not limited to) overt surveillance, petty legal harassment and even physical beatings. Despite the odds, Yoani Sanchez (Cuba), Farnez Seifi (Iran, currently exiled in Germany) and Zeng Jinyan (China) are affecting change (if only baby steps). (Available on kanopy)
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson – Director Alex Gibney takes an approach as scattershot and unpredictable as his subject; using a frenetic pastiche of talking heads, vintage home movies, film clips, animation, audio tapes and snippets of prose (voiced by Johnny Depp, who has become to Thompson what Hal Holbrook is to Mark Twain). This is not a hagiography; several ex-wives and associates make no bones about reminding us that the man could be a real asshole. On the other hand, examples of his genuine humanity and idealism are brought to the fore as well, making for an insightful and fairly balanced overview of this “Dr. Gonzo and Mr. Thompson” dichotomy. What the director does not forget is that, at the end of the day, HST was the most unique American political commentator/ social observer who ever sat down to peck at a bullet-riddled typewriter. (Full review) (Available on various streaming platforms)
Hacking Hate – Move over, Lisbeth Salandar…there’s a new hacker in town, and she’s stirring up a hornet’s nest of wingnuts. Simon Klose’s timely documentary follows award-winning Swedish journalist My Vingren as she meticulously constructs a fake online profile, posing as a male white supremacist. Her goal is to smoke out a possible key influencer and glean how he and others fit into right-wing extremist recruiting.
Vingren is like a one-woman Interpol; her investigation soon points her to U.S.-based extremist networks as well, leading her to consult with whistle-blower Anika Collier Navaroli (the former Twitter employee who was instrumental in getting Trump booted off the platform) and Imrab Ahmed (another one of Elon Musk’s least-favorite people, he was sued by the X CEO for exposing the rampant hate speech on the platform).
This isn’t a video game; considering the inherently belligerent nature of the extremist culture she is exposing, Vingren is taking considerable personal risk in this type of investigative journalism (she’s much braver than I am). Especially chilling is the shadowy figure at the center of her investigation, who is like a character taken straight out of a Frederick Forsyth novel.
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel – Did you know Ray Bradbury was only paid $400 for the original serialized version of Fahrenheit 451 published in Playboy in 1954? That’s one of the interesting tidbits I picked up from this lengthy yet absorbing documentary about the iconoclastic founder and publisher of the magazine that I, personally, have always read strictly for the articles (of clothing that were conspicuously absent-no, I’m kidding). Seriously-there’s little of prurient interest here. In a manner of speaking, it’s mostly about “the articles”.
Brigitte Berman (director of the excellent 1985 documentary Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got) interweaves well-selected archival footage and present day interviews with Hefner and friends (as well as some of his detractors) to paint a fascinating portrait. Whether you admire him or revile him, as you watch the film you come to realize that there is probably no other public figure of the past 50 years who has so cannily tapped in to or (perhaps arguably) so directly influenced the sexual, social, political and pop-cultural zeitgeist of liberated free-thinkers everywhere.
I Am Not Your Negro – The late writer and social observer James Baldwin once said that “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.” Sadly, thanks to the emboldening of certain elements within American society that have been drawn from the shadows by the openly racist rhetoric spouted by the Current Occupant of the White House, truer words have never been spoken.
Indeed, anyone who watches Raoul Peck’s documentary will recognize not only the beauty of Baldwin’s prose, but the prescience of such observations. Both are on display in Peck’s timely treatise on race relations in America, in which he mixes archival news footage, movie clips, and excerpts from Baldwin’s TV appearances with narration by an uncharacteristically subdued Samuel L. Jackson, reading excerpts from Baldwin’s unfinished book, Remember This House. An excellent and enlightening film. (Full review) (Available on various streaming platforms)
Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres – Nothing against Ben Fong-Torres, but I approached this film with trepidation. “Please, god,” I thought to myself, “Don’t let ‘Fortunate Son’ be on the soundtrack.” Thankfully, there’s credence, but no Creedence in Suzanne Joe Kai’s documentary, which despite the implications of its title is not another wallow in the era when being on the cover of the Rolling Stone mattered, man.
OK, there is some of that; after all, journalist and author Ben Fong-Torres’ venerable career began when he first wrote for Rolling Stone in 1968. By the following year he was hired as the editor and wrote many of the cover stories. Fong-Torres quickly showed himself to be not only an excellent interviewer, but a gifted writer. His journalistic approach was the antithesis to the gonzo stylists like Lester Bangs and Hunter Thompson in that his pieces were never about him, yet still eminently personal and relatable.
Just like her subject, Kai’s portrait is multi-faceted, revealing aspects of Fong-Torres’ life outside of his profession I was not aware of (like his activism in the Asian-American community, and how it was borne of a heartbreaking family tragedy). (Available on Netflix and Prime Video)
Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins – Janice Engel profiles the late, great political columnist and liberal icon Molly Ivins, who suffered no fools gladly on either side of the aisle. Engel digs beneath Ivins’ bigger-than-life public personae, revealing an individual who grew up in red state Texas as a shy outsider.
Self-conscious about her physicality (towering over her classmates at 6 feet by age 12), she learned how to neutralize the inevitable teasing with her fierce intelligence and wit (I find interesting parallels with Janis Joplin’s formative Texas years). Her political awakening also came early (to the chagrin of her conservative oilman father).
The archival clips of Ivins imparting her incomparable wit and wisdom are gold; although I was left wishing Engel had included more (and I am dying to know what Ivins would say about you-know-who). (Available on various streaming platforms)
Rather – Few journalists have had such a long and storied career as Dan Rather; long enough for several generations to claim their own reference point. At the risk of eliciting an eye-rolling “OK Boomer” from some quarters, mine is “I think we’re dealing with a bunch of thugs here, Dan!” (others of “a certain age” will recall that as Walter Cronkite’s reaction to watching his colleague getting roughed up by security on live TV while reporting from the floor of the 1968 Democratic National Convention). For Gen Xers, he’s the inspiration for R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?”, which is what a pair of assailants repeatedly asked Rather during a 1986 attack in New York. To Millennials, he’s a wry and wise nonagenarian with over 2 million Twitter followers.
As evidenced in Frank Marshall’s documentary, the secret to Rather’s longevity may be his ability to take a punch (literally or figuratively) and get right up with integrity intact. All the career highlights are checked, from Rather’s early days as a reporter in Dallas (where he came to national prominence covering the JFK assassination) to overseas reporting for CBS from the mid-to-late 60s (most notably in Vietnam), to taking over the coveted CBS Evening News anchor chair vacated by Cronkite in 1981, and onward. An inspiring warts-and-all portrait of a dogged truth-teller who is truly a national treasure. (Available on Netflix and Prime Video)
None of it’s a “distraction.” He’s doing this stuff because he wants to do it!
He’s really doing it and it’s all illegal, corrupt, unconstitutional, destructive and dangerous.
All. Of. It.
That’s what it’s all about, now. Oligarchy. He always promised that by making him and his buddies even richer, everyone would reap the rewards. He’s getting the first part. The second, not so much.
Apparently, the fact that Trump has always made it obvious that he’s a racist, sociopath didn’t tip her off that he would eventually want to use the military to kill some people, including Americans if that’s what it takes to slake his thirst for blood, if given the opportunity. He certainly has never made it a secret that he thinks America can steal any resources it wants.
That’s what he meant by America First.
In the first term he was still restrained by the prospect of losing public opinion and his own lack of confidence in his decision making. That’s all changed. It’s not that he’s learned anything, it’s that he just doesn’t give a damn anymore. After all he has always gotten away with everything and even became president twice in spite of it.
Marge is belatedly realizing that he is full of shit. I don’t think she’s all the way there yet but the veil has obviously lifted. She’s still a right wing extremist in her own right but she’s left the cult. I will be curious to see if any of her fellow cultists will follow.
The day after the first boat strike last September, I wrote this:
America has never been even close to perfect, a fact the Trump administration is going to great lengths to obscure. They insist that any mention of the country’s flawed history demeans and ignores what it has done right, and therefore any failures must not be mentioned at all. In truth, President Donald Trump probably believes the simplified fables he learned as a boy in the 1950s — like George Washington and the cherry tree — are all anyone needs to know about American history. The consequences of this ignorance are putting the country, and the entire world, in grave danger.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously wrote in “The Life of Reason.” For instance, if Trump had an understanding of the Vietnam War — perhaps if he had joined many in his generation in protesting America’s involvement, or if his father hadn’t arranged for him to avoid the draft with a dubious medical deferment — he would know what led to nearly 60,000 Americans, and millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, losing their lives. He would understand that creating a pretext for war leads to disaster.
The U.S. became involved militarily in Vietnam in the 1950s as part of the growing anti-communist crusade during the Cold War. According to the “domino theory,” countries around the world would fall to communism one-by-one — unless America stopped its spread. By 1964, with U.S. “military advisers” on the ground supporting the South Vietnamese government against the communist insurgents of the North, President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers decided — foolishly, in retrospect — to commit U.S. troops. To do so, they used two isolated incidents of North Vietnamese patrol boats attacking a naval destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
It was only later the country learned there had only been one incidental attack, and the second was created as pretext to call it a provocation that required a massive American response. Johnson ordered U.S. Navy planes to bomb North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and called on Congress to authorize the use of force. With congressional support, and within a few months, there were more than 100,000 American troops on the ground in Southeast Asia — and we all know how it turned out.
Unfortunately, some American leaders learned all the wrong lessons from that debacle. After 9/11, President George W. Bush had little trouble getting approval to invade Afghanistan to go after the perpetrators. But his administration then wanted to use the patriotism — and war fever — ignited by the terrorist attacks to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 but had been on the radar of right-wing hawks ever since the 1991 Gulf War. They manipulated intelligence that was just as thin as the Gulf of Tonkin incident to fashion a pretext for war, and after a lengthy, vociferous debate, the administration managed to get Congress to authorize the use of force. And we all know how that turned out too.
These have become infamous examples of how the government can lie the nation into war, and as bad as they both are, at least the administrations attempted to adhere to the notion of following domestic law; they knew they needed congressional authorization. While they failed to get actual declarations of war, as required by the Constitution, they realized it was important to preserve the idea of using actual legal authority for military force.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration decided that such norms and measures were a waste of time. A U.S. naval ship blew up a vessel in the Caribbean that the president claimed belonged to a drug cartel and was being used to smuggle illegal narcotics. Its crew of 11 were killed. Trump proudly released the video of what can only be called a murder by the U.S. government, posting on Truth Social that it was done “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.”
This president has made it clear: He believes he has unlimited power, is answerable to no one and is not required to even pretend that he needs any authority other than his own to do anything. That odious power grab has now escalated to military action, and is the latest of the administration’s moves in the Caribbean.
This president has made it clear: He believes he has unlimited power, is answerable to no one and is not required to even pretend that he needs any authority other than his own to do anything. That odious power grab has now escalated to military action, and is the latest of the administration’s moves in the Caribbean.
I speculated at the time that they were pressuring Maduro to leave the country or provoke him into overreacting, justifying a regime change. (I think Suzy Wiles validated the first one.)
The point is that this entire thing is completely unjustified, illegal and unconstitutional. They did not not even notify Congress that they were sending in troops to grab him last night.
Trump is unrestrained by any rules, laws, international agreements, the constitution or public opinion. To the extent he believes in anything he believes that money talks and might makes right. There’s nothing more complicated about him than that.
Since Sept. 1, the United States has been blowing up boats in the Caribbean Sea and killing people on board with apparent impunity. The current known death toll stands at 32. According to President Donald Trump, the dead — and those the Navy continues to target — are Venezuelan “unlawful combatants” and “narco-terrorist” members of the Tren de Aragua gang and are alleged to be transporting drugs bound for America. This amounts to war on drug cartels, Trump has said, allowing the U.S. to act in self-defense.
As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has written, this “phony war” is indicative of the twisted pathology of Trump’s worldview. Reporting over the last week has made it clear: The danger of this situation going sideways becomes greater every day. And considering America’s history in the region, such an outcome almost seems pre-ordained.
Last week, Adm. Alvin Holsey, who heads the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations in Central and South America, resigned less than one year into his three-year term. Although the Pentagon did not give a reason for his departure, the New York Times reported that he had raised concerns about the boat attacks, as well as the larger drug counter-mission.
Holsey’s is a high-ranking resignation, but he is not the first to resign or be forced out over the strikes against Venezuelan boats. On Oct. 15, CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s destruction of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, with “multiple current and former JAGs telling CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful.” Doubts have also been raised within the defense department’s Office of General Counsel. The Pentagon has denied these reports, saying there is unanimous agreement that the strikes are lawful.
They are not. As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, “[W]hen you kill someone, if you’re not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name at least. You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without any evidence of a crime.”
The president, though, does not seem to feel any moral obligation — or pressure — to produce any evidence, and over the weekend he inadvertently revealed the vacuity of the administration’s arguments. “It was my greatest honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” he said in a social media post. While two were killed, Trump announced that the “two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”
Can we see the problem here? He killed two people because they were allegedly unlawful combatant terrorists with whom we are at war. But then he sent their two compatriots back to their home countries for prosecution? How does that make any sense?
On Saturday night, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, went public with an accusation that in September, the U.S. murdered an innocent Colombian fisherman whose boat was in distress. Trump responded that Petro is an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.” He announced that he would immediately halt all counter-narcotics aid payments to Colombia — which seems counterproductive — and, needless to say, he also vowed to raise tariffs.
On Sunday, Hegseth announced yet another boat strike. This time, its three passengers were alleged to be members of yet another gang — the Colombian Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), which has long been a designated foreign terrorist organization. The timing certainly suggests the strike could be another of Trump’s patented paybacks, this time to the Colombian president with the “fresh mouth.” It appears that America has escalated its military mission to include yet another South American nation.
If all of this weren’t enough, last week Trump declared that he had approved covert operations in Venezuela, which certainly challenges the meaning of the word covert. The CIA has a long and checkered history in the region over many years, but I don’t think any president has been dim enough to announce it in advance. American interference in Latin American affairs has almost always led to total disaster. It’s hard to imagine that this crazy scheme won’t end up being the worst of all.
[I guess we know what that was all about now, don’t we? — digby]
Perhaps the most famous American fiasco in the region was the Bay of Pigs. Conceived under President Dwight Eisenhower and greenlit in the early months of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, the aim was to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. But it was a debacle of epic proportions and massive embarrassment for the U.S. Castro remained in power until 2008.
But the most grotesque of U.S. interference in the region was the government’s complicity in the so-called “dirty wars” of Argentina and Chile in the 1970s. Under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Secretary of State (and Nobel Peace Prize laureate) Henry Kissinger approved the repression of Argentina’s left-wing under the military junta that had overthrown the democratically elected government. At least 10,000 people were disappeared, murdered and tortured. In Chile, the U.S. backed a coup of the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. The result was the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose spy master brought together all the right-wing governments in the region — including Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay — in support of Operation Condor, a campaign of repression against leftist movements and assassinations of individuals throughout the region.
But the apparent template for Trump’s obsession with Venezuela was America’s invasion of Panama in 1989, which removed dictator Manual Noriega from power. According to official numbers, 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed in the invasion. Local tallies, though, placed the number “close to 1,000. Noriega was eventually arrested and brought to the U.S., where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. Since Noriega was actually a CIA asset, one might have thought the government could have removed him from power without all the fireworks. He was released to France in 2010…
Presidential administrations have meddled in Latin America for decades. While Trump is clownishly crude in his approach, he certainly isn’t the first president to use a “splendid little war” to prove U.S. dominance. And like all those before him, he’s almost certainly going to create a whole lot of human misery in the process.
And so it begins again, only this time America is an international pariah and the country is run by an unprecedentedly immoral, power-mad president and a group of flunkies determined to cash in on the bonanza of corruption in which he and his family are engaging. It’s a Mafia administration.
Update — Looks like the GOP is behind him:
House Intel Chair Rick Crawford: "What these folks need to understand is we got a president here who's not screwing around … this is actually what the Western Hemisphere neighborhood needs" pic.twitter.com/U6uvuyi9Ux
THE U.S. MILITARY LEARNED A LOT of important lessons from the Iraq War—ones that our civilian leaders would be well advised to ask about, and our military leaders ought to reinforce with their civilian counterparts.
The first is that military victory does not equal political success. Toppling a regime can be fast; stabilizing a country never is. The most successful cases of American “regime change” took years: The American military occupied part of Germany for four years after the end of World War II. In Japan, the occupation lasted seven years—and American forces remain stationed in both countries to this day.
The second lesson is that dismantling or hollowing out state institutions creates chaos by design. Police and military forces do not simply vanish without consequence. Neither do bureaucracies and economic systems. Left behind are armed men, unpaid officials, and populations desperate for order.
Another lesson is that external actors always rush into the vacuum. Iran, militias, criminal networks, and proxy forces did not wait politely in 2003. Likewise, Venezuela has friends in Cuba, China, Russia, and Iran, and the region is chock full of organized, sophisticated criminal groups, as the administration well knows.
We should have also learned from our time in Iraq that legitimacy cannot be imported. Governments derive legitimacy from their own people, not from foreign flags, friendly ex-pats, or external timetables.
Finally, time horizons stretch. What is brief in planning becomes prolonged in practice. Months turn into years, years turn into decades.
The United States eventually adapted in Iraq, learning painful lessons about counterinsurgency, governance, oil economies, and coalition warfare. But that learning came at enormous cost—in lives, credibility, and strategic position. The tragedy is not that Iraq was hard. The tragedy is that we acted as though it would not be.
If regime change is being seriously considered, we have learned that the military will have to plan for a significant, sustained force presence and a draining long-term internal security mission. The military and our country’s civilian leaders will have to accept that casualties will occur and continue long after any combat operations end.
And then there’s this which Trump didn’t seem to even consider:
ONE OF THE MOST CONSISTENT FAILURES in regime-change planning is the absence of honest red-teaming, i.e., calculations of the enemy’s options to respond. Regimes facing existential threats do not capitulate quietly. They repress harder. They mobilize nationalism. They seek external patrons. They sabotage infrastructure. They create humanitarian crises that complicate intervention and fracture international support. Dense urban populations, of which Venezuela has plenty, increase civilian risk. Long coastlines enable smuggling and external interference, and Venezuela’s is 1,700 miles long, the same distance between Boston and Key West. Criminal networks embed themselves in political and economic life, and thrive when the government is dysfunctional. Armed paramilitary groups enforce loyalty through fear. Foreign intelligence services exploit chaos. None of these issues is hypothetical. These are predictable dynamics. Ignoring them does not make them disappear. It ensures surprise.
American leaders owe the public clarity about the risks they are willing to accept with any actions against Venezuela. Not precise numbers, but honest ranges. Not promises of gratitude by the Venezuelans, but acknowledgment of resistance. Not assurances of quick exits, but recognition of long commitments. History offers little support for claims that populations universally greet external regime change with enthusiasm—particularly in Latin America, where memories of U.S. intervention run deep.
Anyone advocating regime change in Venezuela is implicitly advocating for a long, bloody, expensive commitment—whether they acknowledge it or not. If the United States justifies regime change because it dislikes a government or covets resources, it erodes every argument it makes against aggression by others, such as Russia attacking Ukraine or the potential of China attacking Taiwan. Norms do not survive selective application.
The most important question is not whether regime change is desirable in the abstract. It is whether the United States is prepared—politically, militarily, morally, and financially—to own another country’s future for years. Clausewitz warned that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Regime change is the transformation of another country’s politics by all the means at our disposal. If ends are unclear, ways improvised, and means insufficient, the outcome is not strategy. It is a gamble.
It’s a bad gamble. These people are stupid and crazy.
Trump said that the “people behind me” meaning Rubio, Hegseth, Ratcliffe and Caine, would be running the country.Ok.
Nobel Prize winner Maria Corinna Machado will not be running the country:
“I think it’d be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman but she doesn’t have the respect.”
She had been one of the staunchest supporters of Trump’s aggression against Maduro. Bad call. He obviously has some right-wing billionaire buddies who obviously have a puppet in mind.
Some highlights:
Trump: "We're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the pop — proper transition can take place. So we're gonna stay until such time as — we're gonna run it essentially." pic.twitter.com/ilA2zoS4bI
Trump: "All the way back it dated to the Monroe Doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. But we've superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Document. I don't know. It's Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it." pic.twitter.com/5YdM2iAS6W
Trump on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum: "The cartels are running Mexico. She's not running Mexico. We could be politically correct and be nice and say, 'Oh, yes, she is.' No no. She's very frightened of the cartels. They're running Mexico. And I've asked her number times,… pic.twitter.com/7OlEtQgMyf
