Forgetting, for the moment, that nobody is talking about the Epstein Files at the moment, Trump announced that he’s now “in charge” of Venezuela, under his new flavor of the Monroe Doctrine, which he’s decided to call the Donroe Doctrine because there are few things he loves more than his name attached to things.
For background, the Monroe Doctrine was that the western hemisphere, the Americas, should no longer be subject to European rule, but should be independent of their colonial overlords. There was the Roosevelt Corollary, in which President Theodore Roosevelt decided to build the Panama Canal, legal niceties notwithstanding,* and the banana republics which were literally for the sake of bananas.
But if you thought we’d matured beyond seizing control for bananas, you hadn’t considered that Trump would decide that the Americas should fall within the sphere of American domination. It’s our hemisphere. We’re the big nation with the big guns, and countries within our ambit, like Venezuela, Columbia and, Cuba, to the south, and Canada and Greenland to the north, exist for our benefit because we can take ’em and they better do as he says or else.
Might makes right? The ends justify the means? Or is it really no deeper than Trump’s two motivations, self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment, because both are at the core of what he’s doing here. How would we know?
In Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as vice president under Maduro until his capture, has been recognized by the armed forces as acting president.
Rodríguez spoke to Rubio after the Delta Force operation to capture the Venezuelan president and his wife, in what Trump described as a friendly conversation. She offered a cautiously conciliatory statement addressing Trump on Sunday evening.
Why seize Maduro and leave Rodriguez, not to mention the rest of the regime, in place?
Trump administration officials have warned that Rodríguez could face more military action if she did not acquiesce to American demands, with the president himself telling the Atlantic magazine Sunday that she could pay a “bigger” price than Maduro, who is in detention awaiting trial on drug- and gun-trafficking charges in New York.
Or as David French explains it, “nice little country you have there. Shame if anything happened to it.” But if there was any legitimate interest in either ending drug trafficking (remember, there is no such thing as “narco-terrorism,” as it’s just a made-up word for the benefit of the ignoratti), why would the people who received 70% of the democratic vote not be given support to run the country?
The day before, Trump had effectively dismissed the prospects of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, including Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, whose stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, won more than two-thirds of the vote in an election last year that saw Maduro refuse to leave office.
“It’d be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump said when asked about Machado on Saturday, adding that she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”
There is, of course, no evidence of this claim other than its emitting from Trump’s yap. Those inclined to believe Trump no matter what will believe Trump no matter what. Those who prefer facts and reality will not.
Associates of Machado, who covertly escaped Venezuela last month with the help of the United States to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Norway, were caught off-guard by Trump’s comment, according to a person close to her team.
After all, winning 70% of the vote is a pretty good indication that they do, indeed, have the support and respect of the country, the remnants of the Maduro regime notwithstanding. Why not Machado?
Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in boosting Machado, despite her recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president has openly coveted.
Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people.
“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.
Is that it, the pettiest of hurt feelz kept Trump from allowing the people chosen by Venezuelans from taking the seats to which they had been elected? While there is much to be said about Trump’s fragile feelings and his choices based on who exalted him and who denied him his due, there may well be more here than mere offense at taking what Trump wants so desperately.
U.S. officials have insisted that Venezuela’s rich oil fields provide both incentive for Rodríguez to work with Washington and leverage if she refuses to play ball. But experts have been left puzzled by Trump’s pledge to take over the Venezuelan oil industry, returning “assets” to U.S. companies whose contracts were voided when the industry was nationalized decades ago.
Oil? You bet, oil. While Trump didn’t bother to tell Congress of his plan to invade Venezuela, he did let the oil companies know in advance.
As Mr. Trump did in his news conference on Saturday, Mr. Rubio focused in his Sunday interviews on oil as the main prize for the United States in its operation against Mr. Maduro. Mr. Trump said earlier that “we’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
“Companies will make that decision based on … whether it’s a good investment” over a timeline of a decade or more, Goldwyn added.
And when there’s money to be made, Trump gets a warm, fuzzy feeling, most likely due to some personal or familial connection to the profits. So he gets to smack Machado, who stole his Nobel, plus add to his crypto profits, plus send cheap oil to the United States to make the people adore him even more as the Arc de Trump is built.
In the meantime, there isn’t even a whisper of the name Epstein. Now there’s a doctrine for you.
When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, “Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”
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There are large proven reserves of oil down there. It is not “cheap oil”. It is an extra-heavy crude oil (Sometimes classified as bitumen-like) that requires extensive efforts with high energy inputs for production. Inputs (dollars in) are about 5 times greater than light sweet crude from the middle east. There is no magic valve they can turn that will drive gasoline prices down at your local Valero. This is a silly argument. The “timeline of a decade or more” is probably realistic.
Note a justification just comment on the economics:
The US refineries on the Gulf cost are set up to take the heavy crude produced by Venezuela. It is expensive and time consuming to update a refinery to switch to another crude. The US is already importing 6-8 million barrels a month to keep these specific refineries running.
The second problem is Venezuela style corruption has been taking future oil production offline. (from 3.5 million bpd to 860 thousand bdp ). This effects world oil prices. Especially now that Russian oil is slowing down. US style corruption tends to come at the back end (EG more production means more possible profit).
“Oh might makes right,
Until they see the light,
They’ve got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
‘Til some-body,
We like can be elected. . .”
The opposition’s tally showing they won 70% of the vote is no more official than the government’s result. A free and fair election would be nice rather than the U.S. illegally installing a new leader or capturing the bad guy for that matter. Not that any of this played any role at all in Trumper’s decision making process.
It’s not a new idea “that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides in 430-410 ish BCE. How primitive we remain.
A Manhattan jury may not convict Maduro. Not exactly Trump country. Roll around the consequences of *that* for a few minutes in your mind.
You think Trump will release him when Maduro”s lawyers file habeas corpus upon acquittal?
No and a Constitutional Crisis explodes.
[Ed. Note: Contrary to popular conspiracy theory, that’s not how juries work.]
I have been on a number of juries. They reflect to some extent the values of their community.
I fail to see where I advanced any conspiracy theory.
Remember that this is a law blog, and most people here are lawyers who are far more familiar with juries than you will ever be. You come off as a deluded fool who buys into the bullshit that juries in Dem cities don’t convicted Trump defendants. It’s idiotic. Juries do their best to give honest verdicts. Juries don’t like crime. Juries convict almost all the time, except when presented with the sort of garbage cases that are being brought to rub Trump’s tummy that are devoid of evidence because they’re insane crap.
So your suggestion that Maduro might be acquitted because the case is in New York is absolutely fucking idiotic, and you’re a conspiracy nutjob for entertaining something so fucking stupid.