Sunday, January 04, 2026

Venezuela is Chump's Austria

Donald Chump, our 21st century Hitler, has already illegally invaded Venezuela but he has plans for so much more.  Andre Damon (WSWS) notes:

The day after the United States carried out an illegal military attack on Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration unleashed a torrent of threats against countries on every inhabited continent, targeting not only Latin America, but North America, Europe and Asia.

In remarks to The Atlantic on Sunday, President Trump threatened Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as acting president on Saturday, with a fate “worse” than that of Maduro.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price,” Trump said. “Probably bigger than Maduro.”

Trump’s threat against Rodríguez came just hours after he had claimed at Saturday’s press conference that she had agreed to cooperate with US demands. Her public statements have been defiant, denouncing the US operation as “a barbarity” and calling Maduro Venezuela’s “only president.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” suggested that Cuba would be the next target of US military operations.

When asked whether Cuba was the Trump administration’s “next target,” Rubio replied: “The Cuban government is a huge problem.” Pressed again, he said: “They are in a lot of trouble, yes.”

Trump went even further, renewing his threat to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark and a NATO ally of the United States.

For those paying attention, this is how world wars begin.  And it's why you don't put an unemployable TV 'personality' into the White House.   AFP notes:


The prime minister of Denmark on Sunday called on President Trump to "stop the threats" about taking over Greenland after the U.S. president reiterated his wish to take over the Danish territory.

Since returning to White House a year ago, Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that making Greenland part of the United States would serve U.S. national security interests, given its strategic location in the Arctic. Greenland is also rich in key critical minerals used in high-tech sectors.

In an interview with The Atlantic magazine published Sunday, Mr. Trump reiterated his wish to take over Greenland.

"We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense," he told the magazine.

Later that night, Mr. Trump again told reporters aboard Air Force One, "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it."


Like Hitler, Chump's not bothered by rule of law and certainly not by international law.  He's a blood thirsty dictator suffering from dementia on a holy tear and the world has to stand up to him.  Again, there's no legal basis for what he did.  What he ordered the US military to do was illegal.  Joel Abrams (THE CONVERSATION) explains:


The legitimacy of the Maduro regime has also been called into question. There were disputed election outcomes in 2018 and 2024.

However, the legitimacy or otherwise of the Maduro regime is not a legal basis for a military intervention.

Rather, the Trump administration is relying on US domestic laws to justify its actions in Venezuela. A 2020 US grand jury indictment of Maduro and his wife for drug trafficking underpins the legal argument. 


At THE NEW YORK TIMES, David E. Sanger and Tyler Pager examine what this all means:

Mr. Trump’s actions on Saturday cast America back to a past era of gunboat diplomacy, when the United States used its military to grab territory and resources for its own benefit.

A year ago this week, he openly mused, also at Mar-a-Lago, about making Canada, Greenland and Panama parts of the United States. Now, after hanging in the White House a portrait of William McKinley, the tariff-loving president who presided over the military seizure of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, Mr. Trump said it was well within the rights of the United States to wrest from Venezuela resources that he believes had been wrongly taken from the hands of American corporations.

The U.S. operation, in seeking to assert control over a vast Latin American nation, has little precedent in recent decades, recalling the imperial U.S. military efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.

Mr. Trump and his aides claimed they had a legal basis for the immediate action he ordered on Friday, the extraterritorial rendition of Mr. Maduro. An indictment that dates to 2020 charged the Venezuelan leader with a series of acts related to drug trafficking. A refreshed indictment was published Saturday, one that included Mr. Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores.

But that indictment only deals with Mr. Maduro’s alleged crimes. It did not provide a legal basis for taking control of the country, as the U.S. president declared he was doing.


Chump better drop to his knees and pray to whatever god of commerce he worships that he dies from a stroke in the near future because he's not going to be able to travel outside the US after he's out of office.  His actions make him a War Criminal and like Henry Kissinger before him, he's not going to be a free range chicken, he's going to be like a calf sequestered in a veal pen for the rest of his life.  Laws are already in place, as Kissinger found out the hard way, which will confine him to the US or put him at risk of standing trial for his War Crimes.

From the right to the left, Chump is being called out.  THE DAILY BEAST's Katie Francis notes:


President Donald Trump’s former special envoy to Venezuela said he has little confidence in the president’s plans to “run” the country. “You know, nobody else used that word ‘run’ until he did,” Elliott Abrams, who served as the special representative for Venezuela during Trump’s first term, said of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech following the capture of Nicolás Maduro on Saturday. Speaking to host Manu Raju on Inside Politics Sunday, he continued: “And my thought is that that didn’t appear in some, you know, paper done through a long inter-agency process, that it just came out of the president, and that nobody else expected to run Venezuela. It would be extremely difficult.”

Tara Suter (THE HILL) notes:

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday labeled the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela an “imperial adventure.”

“Look, this is a long pattern and a particularly egregious example of a pattern of this administration not giving a hoot about the United States Congress, which, by the way, Jim Jordan just sort of gave the game away,” Himes told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” referencing an interview with the Ohio Republican that came right before his.

“I hope you can play that interview over and over and over again, because he gave the game away, right? He said over and over again, ‘I trust the president.’ … Now, he’s being asked to explain an imperial adventure —  I mean, you did a pretty good job — an imperial adventure from the guy who was going to be ‘America First’ and not get into stupid wars,” he added.


Hitler started with Austria, Chump started with Venezuela.  

The following sites updated:


 

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