Mad King Trump Says He Is El Presidente De Venezuela Ahora
Let’s check in on that junta!
With the war at home distracting from Donald Trump’s threats to take over Cuba, Colombia and Greenland distracting from the Epstein files distracting from all of Trump’s many other failures and sinking approval ratings, what’s going on with Venezuela? Many shambolic things!
It was just a little over a week ago that the US did a “law enforcement operation” down there, killing at least 74 Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers and three civilians, and ending with El Presidente Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores being choppered to the Brooklyn detention center to await trial on drug charges next to Luigi Mangione. With Flores’s face bruised like somebody beat the shit out of her, BTW.
And now Trump has just posted that he is the acting president of Venezuela.
Lest you think there were going to be free elections there any time soon! Why, the very notion makes Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s soulless husk squeeze out a laugh-like sound!
“Elections? Well der duh duh eh eeeyuck, heh heh heh, look …”
A week in, the regime still cannot settle on any reasonable explanation for why the US is there in the first place, or what the plan going ahead will be, probably because Dear Leader has no idea. First Trump claimed he did the NOT A WAR down there because Venezuela was doing hostilities by sending drugs America’s way in impossibly small boats, and also that the boats are not hostilities when it comes to the definition of having to ask Congress for war powers.
Trump had also declared that Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was to be in charge under transitional control of American leaders. Though when Rodríguez publicly balked at the second part and called Maduro’s arrest “shameful” and a “kidnapping,” Trump huffed to The Atlantic, “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” death-threat-ishly.
Did he just depose her in his imagination? It’s anybody’s guess.
No one is on the same page, Dear Leader’s own brain cannot settle on one. So below him underlings scramble to assemble a plot and sell it based on his droppings like Scattergories. Category: what Trump would probably say about this mess he made if his mind was not pudding.
Anyway, next Marco Rubio claimed the coup was about “law enforcement” (as if the US courts have any jurisdiction) and that the whole junta was a one and done event, set it and forget it!
While Pete Hegseth posted it was all about the Donroe Doctrine, Trump did it just because he can, muthafuckahhhhsss!
And conspiracy theorists like DOJ weirdo “weaponization czar” (LOL) Ed Martin have been fantasizing that Maduro has secret proof that the ghost of Hugo Chavez rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden with space lasers, or something.
But surprise, Trump then pivoted from the drugs to insisting the putsch was actually about getting Venezuela’s oil all along. But now that doesn’t seem to be panning out either, because US oil companies are not too gung-ho to be involved. There’s the whole no-political-stability issue, but also Venezuela’s oil is Not High Quality and therefore takes more to refine, and it’s just not worth it to them to invest in hopes of maybe getting reimbursed someday by the government run by a guy famous for never paying his bills.
Like Trump himself, Venezuela is sour crude. And as the Washington Post has pointed out (gift link), getting Venezuela’s oil production back to producing at peak levels could cost as much as $100 billion. So unless world oil prices go up a hell of a lot, investing there does not math. Even here in the USA, with the finest refineries in the world, oil companies have been holding back from drilling new wells because there’s so little profit in it.
Trump had implied that oil companies were begging him with tears in their eyes to let them rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure, but at his meeting with executives on Friday, they did not exactly greet him as a liberator.
Here’s the whole thing, if you want to watch it.
Or let us just jump to the most ass-puckering cringe parts, starting with the world’s most powerful dementia patient interrupting the meeting to get up from his seat and putter to the window to explain to the assembled CEOs and media where the glass door leads, and moan about his $400 million* Beautiful Ballroom.
In. Dust. Tree.
Next let us Kegel together to Trump being told directly (at 28:40) by the CEO of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, “If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable.” UNINVESTABLE!
Let’s do another set of reps while Trump (at 1:16:30) gets reminded by a Halliburton executive that the reason US companies left Venezuela in the first place in 2019 was because of Trump’s very own sanctions.
Er doy doy!
Bonus, Trump reading out loud a note from Marco that was supposed to be private. DERP!
On his plane down to his golf club afterwards, Trump’s takeaway was that he was OOOOH so big mad at ExxonMobil! He is going to tell the largest oil company in America to KEEP OUT from Venezuela for being TOO CUTE!
Surely the first time the words “Exxon” and “cute” were said in the same sentence since “Look at all the oil the Exxon Valdez spooged all over those cute little ducklings!”
Exxon didn’t break up with him, he is breaking up with Exxon! Chevron is his best friend now! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez is trying to keep peace between Trump, herself, and Venezuela’s four-family ruling alliance that has effectively held power in the country since 2013.
Trump is also planning to meet this week with anti-Chavista leader María Corina Machado. She stole the Nobel prize that was rightfully his, but it would seem he’s softened after she offered to share it with him. (Which the Nobel Committee had to explain this weekend is Not A Thing.) And Machado is in Vatican City today meeting with Pope “Bob” Leo XIV, because the Catholics are involving themselves in this thing too now. Marco and JD are going to be so confused! And hey, what about Edmundo González Urrutia, who the US and other countries recognize as the winner over Maduro in the 2024 election, is the reason Maduro is considered illegitimate, and is still in exile in Spain? Any plans to bring him back? For some reason everyone seems to have forgotten that guy exists.
Meanwhile Venezuela is in a state of emergency and uncertainty. Trump loves to keep the whole world guessing.
As the regime is learning at home, seizing power is one thing. But holding onto it when the majority of the country hates you is a whole other thing. There’s no “one and done” with regime change, silly Marco.
What will next week bring for Venezuela? Nobody knows!
The end!
*Yes, the price of the ballroom has gone up even more, and Trump wants to add an addition to the West Wing now too. And yes, US AG for DC Jeanine Pirro is now also investigating Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell for gross and willful allowing of building renovations to go over budget at the very same time. Double standards is what being Dictator Day One is all about!
[Politico archive link / Telegraph archive link / Washington Post gift link]
How 'bout we DON'T watch the videos.
We DON'T look at the photos.
We DON'T read what this senile fuck has to say.
We DON'T listen to what his cultist's say.
Is that OK with everyone?
Seriously. One of the arguments the media made against Biden’s reelection is that he “might” lose his grip on reality and that could have serious consequences for our country. (This is an actual thing I heard someone say)
Trump posting that he is acting President of Venezuela certainly qualifies as losing your grip on reality? No?