Trump’s military attack on Venezuela was unauthorized by Congress. It was lawless. His actions deserve condemnation by the UN and world leaders.
He mocks the very idea of a rules-based international order. He mocks the idea that Congress is a co-equal branch of the federal government.
But he achieved three goals by his audacious actions.
- He completely changed the national discussion away from the Epstein files.
- He showed Congress that they are irrelevant.
- He played the one card that might lift his very low poll ratings: military action. The public usually rallies round the flag. Going to war–especially when no American life is risked–typically raises the President’s popularity. Will it work this time in the absence of a casus belli? (Reason for war?)
The great irony in the current situation was that he recently pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the ex-President of Honduras, who had been sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for sending some 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
Maduro should have had a better lobbyist or helped underwrite the Trump ballroom and he would be a free man.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has returned to the days of gunboat diplomacy, where it ruled the hemisphere by force.
Perhaps he has made a deal with Putin and Xi. Trump gets his hemisphere. Putin gets Europe. Xi gets Asia.
I think Orwell predicted this long ago.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How many people do not see that Putin will say I will do the same to Zelenskyy. Martha Ture Mt. Tamalpais Photographyhttps://mttamalpaisphotos.com The greatest joy in the world is in restoring the earth.
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I’d like to add more:
Convicted felon signs an executive order that makes narco-terrorism a thing.
DOJ sites a memo with a DOJ lawyer opinion that gives convicted felon the right to do this but you can’t see the memo because it is highly classified.
Convicted felon wants the oil. 303 Billion barrels of crude oil in Venezuela reserves. Yes …capital B.
No body should criticize him because this is genius.
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“Maduro should have hired a better lobbyist or underwritten a Trump ballroom.”
Venezuela did try to buy favor, donating state oil money (via Citgo) to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration — and it still didn’t work.
Maybe the check was too small. Or maybe the Trump administration wasn’t interested in influence — it wanted war.
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He wanted another check with oil barrels attached to it.
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I just read to superseding indictment against Maduro. Not only is he charged with narcoterrorism but he is charged with owning a machine-gun along with his co-conspirators.
https://apnews.com/live/trump-us-venezuela-updates-01-03-2026?version=1767458667887#0000019b-8471-dc77-a1bb-cefff7230000
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What is next???? Invasion of Greenland, Canada, and/or Mexico? What is next? Fascist play book to the “T”!!
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At the news conference, Trump implied that Cuba would be next.
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Cuba. Trump said so.
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As expected, Diane Ravitch hates Trump more than she dislikes (if she does) a Venezuelan dictator. Safe in her NYC residence, she can lament the brown people of Venezuela finally having realistic hopes of avoiding Cuban-style totalitarianism.
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In the long run, Trump is no better than Maduro or Putin. Next the US will be invading Greenland, Canada, and/or Mexico. Trump believes in Manifest Destiny. He believes it is his right to take over whatever he wants. Or whatever Steve Miller and the 2025 people tell him to take over.
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He just announced that the U.S. would step in and “run” Venezuela. Also, American oil companies would take control of Venezuela’s oil production “for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”
Imperialism at its best.
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Before he was kidnapped, Maduro armed his people, among whom he walked freely. Does that sound like the actions of a hated dictator? https://www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/2025/10/31/maduro-orders-mass-arms-distribution-to-citizens/
The reality is that Maduro is only hated by rich ex-pat Venezuelans living in western countries who stand to profit from whatever neoliberal stooge the U.S. installs. The actual people of Venezuela love Maduro which is why he was duly elected as certified by international election observers (something the U.S. does not permit). Massive crowds are already gathering in Caracas and other major cities to try to prevent the takeover of their country.
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Maduro was not duly elected in a free and fair election in 2024.
He disqualified the leading opposition candidate, Maria Machado, in 2023, not allowing her to run in the election.
The 2024 election was widely denounced as stolen by international organizations. His opponent had to flee the country to avoid being jailed and tortured.
Wikipedia sums up:
“Maduro ran for a third consecutive term, while Edmundo González represented the Unitary Platform (Spanish: Plataforma Unitaria Democrática; PUD), the main opposition political alliance. In June 2023, the Venezuelan government had barred leading candidate María Corina Machado from participating.[6][7] This move was regarded by the opposition as a violation of political human rights and was condemned by international bodies such as the Organization of American States (OAS),[8] the European Union,[9] and Human Rights Watch,[10] as well as numerous countries.[11]
“Academics, news outlets and the opposition provided strong evidence showing that González won the election by a wide margin[12][13][14] with the opposition releasing copies of official tally sheets collected by poll watchers from a majority of polling centers showing a landslide victory for González.[8][15][16] The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced[17] possibly falsified[18][19] results claiming a narrow Maduro victory on 29 July; vote tallies were not provided.[20]
“The Carter Center was unable to verify the CNE’s results, asserting the election failed to meet international democratic election standards.[21] The CNE’s results were rejected by the OAS,[8] and the United Nations declared that there was “no precedent in contemporary democratic elections” for announcing a winner without providing tabulated results.[22]
“Analyses by media sources found the CNE results statistically improbable and lacking in credibility.[23][24][18] Parallel vote tabulation confirmed the win by González.[25][26][27] Political scientist Steven Levitsky called the official results “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history”.[28]
“Protests occurred across the country and internationally, as the Maduro administration initiated Operation Tun Tun, a crackdown on dissent. Some world leaders rejected the CNE’s claimed results and recognized González as the election winner,[14][29][30] while some other countries, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Cuba recognized Maduro as the winner.[31][32]
“Maduro did not cede power,[33] and instead asked the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), composed of justices loyal to Maduro,[20][34][35][36] to audit and approve the results.[37][38][39][40] On 22 August, as anticipated,[38][35][36] the TSJ described the CNE’s statement of Maduro winning the election as “validated”.[37]
“The supreme court ruling was rejected by the United States, the European Union and ten Latin American countries.[41][42] An arrest warrant was issued on 2 September for González for the alleged crimes of “usurpation of functions, falsification of public documents, instigation to disobey the law, conspiracy and association”, according to Reuters.[43] After seeking asylum in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas, González left for Spain on 7 September.[44] Maduro was sworn in for a third term on 10 January 2025.[45] González flew to Spain where he received his right of asylum.[32]”
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LOL. Even Trump knows Machado has no support in Venezuela. She’s a right-wing nut job now known as a traitor for being willing to sell out her country to not only Trump but Nutandyahoo. Her Nobel “Peace” Prize was so transparently the start of regime change and you fell for it.
With all due respect, no one in the U.S. has any business deciding which world leaders are “legitimate” or not or “dictators”. This is the 20th regime change imposed on Latin America by the U.S., not to mention all the other regime changes elsewhere in the world. Legitimate or illegitimate is solely a measure of how much a given leader sucks up to the U.S. – and can change quickly as Gaddafi, Saddam and soon Zelensky have found (will find) out. The U.S. supports dozens of actual dictators who do far more harm than Maduro (who, again, armed his own people – not the act of a hated dictator afraid of being overthrown by his own people). The fact remains that Maduro was and is the recognized leader by the Venezuelan people and Venezuela is a sovereign country that has every right to use its own oil as it sees fit. Daring to stand up to international corporations to get a better deal for Venezuelan workers does not make Maduro (or Chavez before him) illegitimate or a dictator no matter what the rich gusanos may say. There’s a reason Chavez and Maduro both survived numerous assassination attempts – their people protected them.
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I oppose Trump’s actions. The President is required by law to obtain Congressional authorization before launching a military attack. He did not. What he did violated American law and international law.
But let’s be clear that the situation in Venezuela is grim. Despite its oil riches, more than 70% of its people live in poverty. It was not always a poor country.
The population of Venezuela is about 28-29 million. About 8 million Venezuelans left the country, a huge exodus, fleeing oppression and/or economic conditions.
The U.S. can’t kidnap the leader of every failing dictatorship. As I’m sure Trump said at some point, we can’t be the world’s policeman.
Trump said at his news conference earlier today that he deposed Maduro to recover the oil that Venezuela “stole” from us. The oil belonged to Venezuela, not American oil companies.
But there’s no reason to romanticize Maduro. He was a brutish tyrant known for imprisoning and killing his opponents.
Sadly, there are many leaders who are far worse, starting with Putin and Iran’s mullahs. (There are massive protests in Iran right now over economic conditions, but the mass media is paying almost no attention to them.)
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I don’t know why I bother as you seem to be constitutionally incapable of seeing the truth about the west, but for some reason I need to keep trying.
Let me explain it this way. Imagine you move to a new city and you quickly discover it’s run by the mob which is extracting wealth and resources from the people. Workers have to “donate” to the boss’s campaign fund to keep their jobs. People have to bribe officials to get needed services. Wages are deliberately held low while profits go only to the mobsters. Appalled by that decision, you decide to run for mayor to clean things up.
Backed by the people, you win. Now, who are your opponents? The mob, right? How do you handle them? Harshly if you want to survive. You confiscate their property and return it to the people. You jail them. Sometimes you have to rough them up a bit and maybe even kill a few of the worst. Is that you “brutish tyrant known for imprisoning and killing [your] opponents”? Or is that you fighting the mob to protect the people? Since the mob still controls the media, it will be painted as the former, but your people will know the truth and that’s why they’ll protect you – your only hope against the mob that’s going to do its best to take you out.
By supporting Machado, you support the mob (the western imperialists) who are trying to steal Venezuela’s resources. She has openly proclaimed her intention to sell off oil and other resources. We know from vast prior experience that if (when it now appears), the people will not receive any benefit from those profits. Wages will fall, government services will be cut or privatized. We’ve seen this playbook over and over. The few places that manage to avoid western domination are always portrayed as brutal dictatorships while we look the other way from actual brutal dictatorships like Saudi Arabia that we’re allied with.
Anyway, for further reading: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/01/venezuela-and-truth/
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If you are addressing me, Dienne, I don’t recall endorsing Machado or anyone else. I endorse the rule of law.
As for your comments about the evils of “the West,” I like the West. I like it a lot.
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You have definitely praised Machado, calling her a brave freedom fighter.
As for your defense of the West, well, nuff said, I guess.
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Machado is a brave freedom fighter.
That’s why she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
That’s why she had to slip out of Venezuela to get to Norway.
Maduro wanted her dead.
I repeat:
I love the West. If I loved someplace else more, I would live there.
I love New York City. That’s why I live in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is fabulous.
The other day, we took a friend for a drive in Brooklyn. We drove through Chinatown in Sunset Park; through a Mexican neighborhood; through a Yemeni neighborhood; through an Irish neighborhood; through an Italian neighborhood; through a Hasidic neighborhood; and more.
Brooklyn is fabulous!
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She was given the Nobel Violence Prize as a set up to what just happened, which killed 40 people so far with far more to come if this goes down the way U.S. interventions always do. Hardly “peace”. And there’s nothing brave about her. She has the might of the entire western empire behind her.
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It’s brave to stay in Venezuela when Maduro wanted to capture her and very likely kill her.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her courage in staying instead of fleeing.
You seem to think that Trump controls the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize. If that were true, he would have won it.
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This goes well beyond Trump. The western world has had its knickers in a knot that Venezuela sits on all that oil and won’t bend the knee to ever since Chavez, who survived numerous assassination attempts. Maduro was the one at risk of death, never Machado. Regime change in Venezuela has been the intention of both U.S. parties and the EU for decades and none of them cared how it got done.
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Machado is the “Curveball” of Venezuela. There’s always someone willing to sell out their own country.
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Here’s anti-imperialist journalist José Luis Granados Ceja’s perspective on the legitimacy of Maduro’s election, from an interview today on the The Katie Halper Show:**
“I think we’ve seen, from imperialists, a disregard for Venezuela’s institutions since 1998, when Hugo Chávez was elected. And the point I always make is that the Venezuelan opposition has cried fraud in every single election it didn’t win. There have been more than 20 electoral processes, and in all of those they won only two: the referendum on changing the constitution and the 2015 National Assembly. Those are the only two occasions when they didn’t cry fraud.
So that’s just been the narrative. There were far more irregularities in the recent Honduran election and in the Ecuadorian election, and there was no call for checking the election tallies in those cases.”
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When has the U.S. military’s deposing the leader of a sovereign nation ever led to anything other than totalitarianism, chaos, or both?
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Your comment shows what happens when far Left ideology combines with historical illiteracy. Let’s see: the U.S. had a major role in deposing Hitler and Mussolini. Same for destroying the Japanese war lords from the 1940s. Resisting post-WW II Soviet expansion made possible the eventual liberation of eastern Europe.
Put down your Howard Zinn books and make a serious effort to know something before you comment publicly.
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Unlike you, I will use no ad hominem or stereotypical characterizations. I wish only to remind you that Japan attacked the United States, and, when the U.S. declared war on Germany and Italy shortly thereafter, the European Axis powers were slaughtering tens of millions while occupying a vast area of continental Europe and threatening the United Kingdom.
I’d like you to answer my question. You have not yet done so, as World War II did not involve the U.S. military’s deposing the leader of a sovereign nation.
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I am amazed–and probably should be flattered–that a sizable number of Trumpers read my blog and chime in to denounce me for whatever offended them. The tip-off is that in their tiny brains they call me “far left.” If I am their idea of “far left,” I assume they have never met or read anyone who actually IS far left.
It ain’t me, Babe.
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Japan, Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union were sovereign nations, but not democratic nations. You and Diane Ravitch are so blinded by hatred for Trump that you have taken the sideof a quite ruthless dictator.
Yes, Diane Ravitch is now far Left on all issues except for the existence of Israel as an independent state. I often come across people on the far Left in person and online: Diane and they are peas in a pod.
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You, Madam, are an idiot. Think. Reflect. Wash your mouth out. Get an education.
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Thank you very much, Ms. Mischke, for setting me straight on my own emotions and their effect on my cognition. Without your insight, I would have lived out my days in pathetic self-ignorance.
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There is way too much rewriting of history going on here –past and present!
To set the record straight, for example: It was King Victor Emmanuel III (and the Italian government) that deposed Mussolini. No one deposed Hitler since he committed suicide –which he did after realizing that Russian troops were virtually at his doorstep in Berlin and he was about to lose the war. Also, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, it was Hitler who declared war on the US not the other way around. And no, Diane is not the far left.
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Thank you for the corrections and clarifications. I apologize for my contribution to the inaccuracies. Ms. Mischke, if you’re listening, would you like to join me?
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The overthrows of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese war lords would not have occurred without the successful operations conducted by the U.S. military. So the U.S. government was indeed very involved in deposing those tyrants. Give away your Howard Zinn books and educate yourself on real history.
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If you blame America for the fall of the Axis powers when it was Japan and Hitler who dragged our country into fighting in World War II, where more people in history were killed than in any other war in history (60 million according to the ultra right wing Victor Davis Hanson –& yes, I’ve seen many of his lectures)– then you have a very warped sense of values. Most people in the world saw the Allied win, defeat of the Axis, fall of their dictators and end of WWII as a good thing, especially those in freedom and democracy loving countries. Your views are not really all that surprising though since Trump’s base includes Nazis.
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BTW, I gave the death figure in WWII provided by Victor Davis Hanson here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/q51lilXaO9U precisely because he’s a right wing scholar who also taught at the right ring Hillsdale College. However, others say “World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians.”
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For anyone interested in learning the real truths about World War II from people who know what they are talking about regarding this topic, I recommend viewing the following:
1. “In Defense of World War II” Discussion at Hoover Institution where Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens address issues raised by World War II revisionists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isAu6TteFjI
2. “More WWII ‘Revisionist’ History” Discussion with Hanson on Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek9RLG_OIY8
and
3. “Why World War II Matters:” Lecture from Victor Davis Hanson at Hillsdale College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opDuw4OZ3Q
Although I strongly disagree with Hanson’s politics (he is a Trump supporter), he’s a very well read scholar and an expert on WWII whose conclusions are based on empirical evidence, so I have a lot of respect for him and his views regarding these matters.
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One more short video from Hanson: “They killed millions and still lost”
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Trump said that we will be running Venezuela? What!!!!!! So we will be running Venezuela until we put a US puppet to run the country, I’m guessing?
Oh wait, this is nothing new, remember the Mexican-American war which we initiated and which resulted in the US annexing half of the Mexican nation. We treat the nations south of the border as vassal states to be invaded, used, abused, manipulated and annexed at our whims.
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Joe,
I thought that Trump was turning the clock back to 1925. I was wrong.
He’s turning the clock back to 1825, when we ran all of the hemisphere with military force whenever we pleased.
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There’s a protest today at Times Square at 2:00. Are you going?
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About That New Ballroom…
“Trump Isn’t Building a Ballroom!
It took me a minute to place it, but then I remembered: Oracle’s underground data centers in Jerusalem. Built in 2021 for Israeli military intelligence. Nine stories into bedrock, designed to survive missile strikes, built to house AI systems that make life-and-death decisions in real time. Ninety thousand square feet. $319 million. Nearly identical specs to what Trump just announced.
That’s the moment I started digging.”
https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/trump-isnt-building-a-ballroom
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We’ll soon be at war with Oceania, Eurasia, *and* Eastasia.
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Orwell!!
Exactly!!
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Is this a signal that Trump doesn’t need Putin anymore? Maduro was a Putin puppet.
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Or is it a sign that Putin does not need Maduro in the new world of old world spheres of influence?
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Anyone who has seen this before, and some of us have seen this so many times before, looks to the years ahead with utter horror.
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Ironically, Trump assured his rabid audiences that he opposed foreign expeditions.
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HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VENEZUELA —>
First, you need to know what brought Maduro to power in Venezuela’s 2024 elections:
The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly opposed Maduro going into the July, 2024, elections and wanted Maria Corina Machado to run for president.
BUT, Maduro controlled Venezuela’s election council and had the council ban Machado from being on the ballot.
So, Machado’s ally, 74-year old Edmundo Gonzales, went on the ballot as a stand-in for Machado.
Machado and her allies anticipated that Maduro and his election council cronies would try to falsify the results of the election, so at every voting station Machado’s party collected the QR codes from the ballots that were cast.
After the election, the QR code data showed that Machado stand-in Gonzales had won the election with an overwhelming 67% of the popular vote — but Maduro’s cronies on the election council ignored the data and officially declared that Maduro had won with 51% of the vote.
Maria Machado continued to lead the popular opposition to Maduro and eventually had to flee Venezuela, fearing assassination or imprisonment. For her brave opposition to Maduro’s dictatorial rule, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Machado the Nobel Peace Prize.
TRUMP’S SCHEME
What the Venezuelan people want now is to have Machado take her place as the president whom they overwhelmingly elected…BUT…
Trump says that won’t happen “because she doesn’t have the support of the people.”
Nearly 70% of the Venezuelan people voted for her…but Trump claims she doesn’t have the support of the people. Typical Trump.
Trump makes that fake claim because if Machado becomes president, she will use Venezuela’s oil riches to raise the standard of living for the Venezuelan people.
But, Trump wants the oil riches to go into the wallets of the U.S. oil companies who finance Republican political campaigns.
So, in spite of the fact that the corrupt ministers who ran things for Maduro remain as corrupt as ever, they are getting a Good Deal from Trump: If they act as the face of the government and let U.S. oil company executives actually run things behind the scenes, they can continue to get rich and enjoy the good life.
Meanwhile, the lion’s share of the Venezuelan oil wealth will be funneled to U.S. oil companies.
You see, this was never about drug-running. It’s always been about the oil. It’s always been about money.
With Trump, everything is always about money.
(Copy and share this.)
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Nailed it. Nice job explaining things. I will share it.
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My God you couldn’t have that much more wrong. The Venezuelan people hate Machado because she has promised to sell them out to the very powers that Chavez and Maduro have protected them from. Even Trump is smart enough to see that Machado has no power in Venezuela. She’ll be ripped to shreds if she shows up there without significant protection. She is not a freedom fighter. She is a profiteer and a traitor.
No one on this blog likes Trump, but I think you would all agree that it would be treason to call for an enemy of the U.S. to come invade the U.S. and overthrow him. That’s exactly what Machado did when she called on Trump and Nutandyahoo to invade Venezuela. And we’ve all seen the aftermath of what happens when the U.S. invades a country. The Machado worship on this blog is sick.
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Before the capture — specifically in mid-December 2025 — Machado told CBS News that she would “welcome more and more pressure” on Maduro so that he would understand he had to leave office. Since the pressure coming from Trump took the form of boat strikes, I take that as support for those actions.
When Maduro was kidnapped, she said, “Venezuelans, the hour of freedom has arrived!”
The waters here are gray and murky. She applauded the very thing that Democrats are now railing against.
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WHAT HAPPENS IF — MORE CERTAINLY “WHEN” — the people of Venezuela demand that they govern themselves, instead of being governed as a U.S. colony, and they demand that Maria Corina Machado be their President?
First, you need to know what brought Maduro to power in Venezuela’s 2024 elections:
The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly opposed Maduro going into the July, 2024, elections and wanted Maria Corina Machado to run for president.
BUT, Maduro controlled Venezuela’s Election Council and had the Council ban Machado from being on the ballot.
So, Machado’s ally, 74-year old Edmundo Gonzales, went on the ballot as a proxy stand-in for Machado.
Machado and her allies had anticipated that Maduro and his Election Council cronies would try to falsify the results of the election, so at every voting station Machado’s party collected the QR codes from the ballots that were cast.
After the election, the QR code data showed that Machado stand-in Gonzales had won the election with an overwhelming 67% of the popular vote — but Maduro’s cronies on the Election Council ignored the data and officially declared that Maduro had won with 51% of the vote.
Maria Machado continued to lead the popular opposition to Maduro, but she eventually had to flee Venezuela, fearing assassination or imprisonment. For her brave opposition to Maduro’s dictatorial rule, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Machado the Nobel Peace Prize — the Prize that Trump felt he should have won.
So, nearly 70% of the Venezuelan people voted for Maria Machado by proxy…but Trump claims she doesn’t have the support of the people. Typical Trump — revenge that she was given the Nobel Peace Prize that he felt he should have been awarded.
If Machado becomes president, she will use Venezuela’s oil riches to raise the standard of living for the Venezuelan people.
But, Trump wants the oil riches to go into the wallets of the U.S. oil companies who finance Republican political campaigns.
So, in spite of the fact that the corrupt ministers who ran things for Maduro remain as corrupt as ever, they are getting a Good Deal from Trump: If they act as the face of the government and let U.S. oil company executives actually run things behind the scenes, they can continue to get rich and enjoy the good life.
Meanwhile, the lion’s share of the Venezuelan oil wealth will be funneled to U.S. oil companies.
You see, this was never about drug-running. It’s always been about the oil because Venezuela has THE WORLD’S LARGEST RESERVES OF OIL at 330 BILLION BARRELS. That is far more than even Saudi Arabia. It’s always been about the oil.
And it’s also about creating a big issue to distract We the People from the growing disaster for Trump with more than 5 MILLION Epstein papers coming down the pipeline.
SO, BACK TO THE QUESTION — WHAT HAPPENS if the Venezuelan people, who by proxy elected Maria Corina Machado as their president by an overwhelming vote of 67%, take to the streets to demand that their choice becomes their president and runs their country instead of them being mere colonists of U.S. oil companies? Will Trump and his oil minions send thugs to hammer the people of Venezuela? That’s what Trump’s buddy, Putin, would do.
(Copy and share this on social media.)
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A Wag the Dog diversion, but it will also prove extremely lucrative to a bunch of Trump’s pals.
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And likely to enrich Big Oil while costing American taxpayers billions of dollars for what is sure to be a multi-year occupation.
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For sure. One promise that T***p is keeping bigly is taking care of Big Oil in exchange for big campaign contributions.
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If we “run” Venezuela, it will be like our “running” of the Philippines: a protracted, nasty war that no one recalls or wants to recall. What will really happen is that Trump will install his Pinochet, and no one here will care.
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MILLIONS of documents…
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I quote verbatim from a Facebook posting of a Venezuelan citizen:
If you are American and you’re curious about why Trump forced Maduro out, you should read this first…
(An analysis by a Venezuelan who left Venezuela)
Because unless you are Venezuelan, you are missing almost everything that matters.
I am Venezuelan.
I left my country in 2013, when Hugo Chávez died and Nicolás Maduro took power.
I didn’t leave because I wanted to “try life abroad.”
I left because I could see what was coming, and staying meant watching my future shrink year after year.
So when Americans ask, “What do Venezuelans think about Trump forcing Maduro out of the presidency?”
Let me answer that question honestly, without slogans, without moral theater, and without pretending this is simple.
Most Venezuelans feel relief.
Not because we love Trump or because we believe the U.S. does things out of pure love for freedom.
And not because we are naïve about geopolitics, oil, or power.
We feel relief because we have lived through something Americans have never experienced: a country where nothing works, where elections don’t matter, where money stops being money, and where time itself feels broken.
Now, before someone jumps in to say “but not all Venezuelans agree,” let’s be precise.
Yes, there is a minority that doesn’t agree.
And that minority usually falls into one of three groups.
– Some were doing business with the regime.
– Some were personally comfortable inside the system and insulated from its worst consequences.
– And some were pushed into such extreme poverty that survival depended on obedience.
This last group matters, so let me explain it clearly.
Millions of Venezuelans were reduced to depending on a government-issued food box.
A box with rice, pasta, oil, sometimes expired food.
A box that arrived irregularly. A box that was used as leverage.
People were told, explicitly or implicitly: “If the government falls, this goes away.”
That is hostage psychology!
When misery reaches that level, people don’t defend the system because they believe in it.
They defend it because they are afraid of losing the only thing standing between them and hunger.
So yes, some people opposed change.
But that opposition was not free, informed, or dignified.
It was coerced by collapse.
The rest of us lived something else entirely.
Since Maduro took power back in 2013, Venezuela lost roughly 80% of its economy.
We lived through years of hyperinflation where prices didn’t rise monthly or yearly. They rose daily.
Sometimes hourly.
Salaries became meaningless. Pensions became symbolic.
Entire professions disappeared.
We protested. We marched. Thousands of people got k* and tens of thousands more were illegally incarcerated as political prisoner.
Just because they didn’t like Chavez or Maduro.
We also voted because we believe in democracy.
In 2015, the regime lost parliament by a massive margin. The result was ignored.
We voted again. In 2024, the opposition won overwhelmingly, roughly 70–30. The result was ignored.
Imagine winning every swing state in the U.S. and then being told, “No.”
That is not politics.
And still, we didn’t rise in arms.
We tried to stay constitutional. Peaceful. Legal.
During all this time, around a third of the country left.
Families were torn apart.
My own father died in exile.
Children grew up without grandparents.
Entire cities aged overnight.
So when Americans say, “But foreign intervention is wrong,” understand this:
From the inside, Venezuela are already occupied by Iran, China, Cuba, Russia, who are using our beloved country as shelter for terrorism, d* trafficking, and as a foothold in American continent.
No Venezuelan I know is celebrating bombs, humiliation, or chaos.
What we are reacting to is the possibility that the lock might finally open.
We know the U.S. has interests. Oil. Minerals. Strategy. Power.
We are not children.
But we also remember a time when Venezuela was functional, prosperous, and connected to the world.
When people came to our country instead of fleeing it.
When a future didn’t feel irresponsible to imagine.
So if you are American and confused by Venezuelans celebrating, don’t ask whether they “support intervention.”
Ask what kind of suffering makes people accept risk in exchange for hope.
Because this reaction didn’t come from ideology but from exhaustion.
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This is a convincing first-person account. I understand the relief that comes from replacing utter desperation with hope. However, the writer should have no illusions that liberating the people of Venezuela is “why Trump forced Maduro out.”
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Trump made his motives clear. He thinks that the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry in the 1970s was theft because American oil industries owned the land and the oil.
The Washington Post had this story today:
Vance was echoing points long expressed by Trump, who said late last year that the expropriation of U.S. oil company assets justified a “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers arriving and leaving Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions. The blockade would remain, he wrote on Truth Social, until the South American nation returns “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
“They’re not going to do that again,” Trump told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
But U.S. companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves of crude, and officials didn’t kick them out of the country. “Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver. Nationalization was the culmination of a decades-long effort by administrations of both the right and the left to bring under government control an industry that an earlier leader had largely given away.
The right-wing strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, the military dictator who ruled Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935, granted concessions that left three foreign oil companies in control of 98 percent of the Venezuelan market. The country became the world’s second-largest oil producer and largest exporter; oil accounted for over 90 percent of the country’s total exports.
Gómez’s successors tried to seize greater control over the country’s economy. Under President Isaías Medina Angarita, authorities approved a law in 1943 that required foreign oil companies to relinquish half their profits to the government. A 1958 pact signed by Democratic Action, the Democratic Republican Union and the Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee ensured the country’s major political parties had access to oil profits. By the time Venezuelan lawmakers began debating nationalization legislation in 1975, Rodríguez said, the “writing was on the wall.”
“Nobody was going to resist Venezuela carrying this nationalization to its end, and the U.S. was much more interested in having Venezuela be a provider of oil — relatively cheap oil — than to have a production collapse in Venezuela,” Rodríguez said. The change, consequently, was “relatively uncontroversial.”
President Carlos Andrés Pérez, a social democrat, signed the bill into law that August. In January 1976, Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. took over the exploration, production, refining and export of oil.
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Thanks for posting this, Alex. This is heartrending. That having been said, I can’t agree more w/Bill & Diane below, & other reasons for this action as mentioned in the main post. Just wondering if Venezuelans scheduled for deportation will now be allowed to return to Venezuela. Of course not!
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How much of all this is just a pretense regarding Cuba: a way to cut off its fuel supply?
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Cry harder you leftist hag! We’re gonna be “kidnapping” dozens more of these vermin over the coming months, and there isn’t a damn thing you leftist parasites will do to stop it! If you ask me, I say just take Maduro scum sucker out front and blow his brains out and be done with it! I love how you vermin always shed tears over the biggest pieces of shit on the planet.
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Hahahaha. Another MAGA know-it-all chimes in.
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Huh? No one here is shedding tears for agent Krasnov.
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Regardless of the different media source’s information regarding the reasons for ousting Madura; there’s one vital point that overrides the total conversation:
Declaring war is in the hands of Congress. Not the president.
Congress was not notified of this action. In fact; it was deliberately misled by the Administrative Branch.
The declaration that Venezuela is at war with us with their drug trade or that this was a “legal” action rather than an action of “war” is nothing more than the usual litigation, stall, stall, stall tactic that we’ve come to expect of Trump and his administration.
I heard him on his phone call to Fox, saying that the Democrats would cry, “But the Constitution…!” about this action. As though that would be the wailing of a no nothing child. And the hosts chortled along with him.
Whether you LIKE the outcome of an action or not…the fact is that there are a set of laws set in place in order to protect us from overreach from any branch of our government. Our Constitution has set up a definite framework. And this administration is treating it like it’s toilet paper.
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Thank you, Gitapik. I agree completely.
The Trump team said they couldn’t ask or tell Congress–not even the bipartisan Group of 8–because someone might leak.
The major newspapers had the story in advance and decided not to publish so as not to endanger American troops.
Someone in Trump’s closest circle leaked.
Whatever the administration does must be within the framework of law.
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