Trump, Miller and the Gospel of American Control

Because with Donald Trump the stupidest explanation is almost invariably the best, I think future historians will conclude after examining the evidence that Trump invaded Venezuela as part of a sustained tantrum over not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. I also believe that the odds are non-negligible that sometime in the next few weeks, Maria Corina Machado goes to Washington, and hands over her Nobel medal to Donald Trump at some deeply inspiring public ceremony, at which she acknowledges with tears in her eyes that he was the real winner because nobody has ever deserved the Nobel Peace Prize as much as Donald Trump. At which point she will be installed as Venezuela’s new president with the full backing of the US government and military.

And if you think this is an impossible scenario, you haven’t been paying attention for the last ten and a half years now.

I mean after all:

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.

The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Mr. Miller made his comments after his wife posted an image on social media over the weekend suggesting that the United States would soon take control of Greenland, and as Mr. Trump has renewed his own push for the island. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark urged Mr. Trump on Sunday to “stop the threats” to annex Greenland, in effect attacking a NATO ally.

The United States’ taking Greenland by force would rip apart the central agreement that underpins the NATO military alliance, of which Denmark and the United States are both founding members. Under that treaty, an attack on any member is treated as an attack on all members. Mr. Trump has previously said he would not rule out using the military to take Greenland.

Mr. Miller also echoed Mr. Trump’s intent to rule Venezuela and exploit its vast oil reserves after a U.S. raid seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas. Even some of America’s staunchest allies have criticized the raid, and the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said the raid had violated the U.N. charter.

“The United States of America is running Venezuela,” Mr. Miller said, dismissing international treaties enshrining a nation’s right to independence and sovereignty as “international niceties.” (What exactly is meant by “running” Venezuela is a matter of some dispute; Secretary of State Marco Rubio has shied away from the descriptor — even as Trump insists that the United States is very much “in charge” of Venezuela — and Speaker Mike Johnson, who has vigorously defended the military operation, has maintained that the United States is not engaged in military hostilities or an occupation.)

Mr. Miller’s language echoed a dark history of the United States’ governing weaker, smaller states in Latin America by flexing its military might. Mr. Miller asserted that a U.S. military blockade of the South American country of 28 million people would give the United States control of Venezuela.

“We set the terms and conditions,” Mr. Miller said. “We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”

Miller tells anyone who will listen that his animus against people with brown skin dates back to his days in high school in Santi Monica CA, where he claims Hispanic students “were mean” to him. Whoever gave Miller a wedgie in high school has much to answer for.

Meanwhile, Miller’s wife posted this map of Greenland on her social media site with the caption: SOON.

Katie Miller posts about the U.S. plans for Greenland on X.

January 5, 2026January 5, 2026

Senator Mark Kelley (D, AZ), also Captain USNavy (Retired) is a hero; Pete Hegseth is a big ZERO

BACKGROUND.

A few weeks ago Sen Kelly and five other members of Congress — all of whom are former or retired military — made a video reminding military personnel that they are not required to obey illegal orders.

Pete Hegseth, who is the most unqualified person to ever hold a senior government position, got his panties in a wad and threatened to punish Kelly. Why he focused on Kelly is a mystery but it doesn’t matter because Hegseth is an ignorant, dumb as dirt, cowardly piece of shit.

Now, Hegseth announced that the Dept of Defense will reduce the amount of pension the Kelly receives as a retired Navy Captain (O-6). Here is Kelly’s statement.

Sen. Mark Kelly: “Nothing more un-American”

Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly
Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution – including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out. I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that.

My rank and retirement are things that I earned through my service and sacrifice for this country. I got shot at. I missed holidays and birthdays. I commanded a space shuttle mission while my wife Gabby recovered from a gunshot wound to the head– all while proudly wearing the American flag on my shoulder. Generations of servicemembers have made these same patriotic sacrifices for this country, earning the respect, appreciation, and rank they deserve.

Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way. It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.

If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it. I will fight this with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.

11:33 AM · Jan 5, 2026

Meanwhile, there’s this:

January 5, 2026

Rubio — another of Trump’s lapdogs — lies about Venezuela and US plans for our hemisphere

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the administration’s message about its strikes on Venezuela to the Sunday talk shows this morning. It did not go well.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week under what legal authority the U.S. is going to run Venezuela, as President Donald J. Trump vowed to do, Rubio served up a lot of words but ultimately fell back on the idea that the U.S. has economic leverage over Venezuela because it can seize sanctioned oil tankers. Seizing ships will give the U.S. power to force the Venezuelan government to do as the U.S. wants, Rubio suggested. This is a very different message than Trump delivered yesterday when he claimed that the people standing behind him on the stage—including Rubio—would be running Venezuela.

When Stephanopoulos asked Rubio if he was, indeed, running Venezuela, Rubio again suggested that the U.S. was only pressuring the Venezuelan government by seizing sanctioned oil tankers, and said he was involved in those policies. When Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press also asked if Rubio was running Venezuela, Rubio seemed frustrated that “People [are] fixating on that. Here’s the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes in Venezuela.” Historian Kevin Kruse commented: “Yeah, people are fixating on a Cabinet Secretary being given a sovereign country to run because the president waged war without congressional approval and kidnapped the old leader. Weird that they’d get hung up on that.”

When Stephanopoulos asked why the administration thought it didn’t need congressional authorization for the strikes, Rubio said they didn’t need congressional approval because the U.S. did not invade or occupy another country. The attack, he said, was simply a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro. Rubio said something similar yesterday, but Trump immediately undercut that argument by saying the U.S. intended to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and run the country.

Indeed, if the strikes were a law enforcement operation, officials will need to explain how officers managed to kill so many civilians, as well as members of security forces. Mariana Martinez of the New York Times reported today that the number of those killed in the operation has risen to 80.

Rubio highlighted again that the Trump administration wants to control the Western Hemisphere, and he went on to threaten Cuba. Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles articulated the extraordinary smallness of the Trump administration’s vision when he wrote: “We must also marvel at the titanic idiocy of our new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ for it turns America from a global power into a regional one by choice. I still can’t really believe they are going through with this for it is so batsh*t f-ing crazy, and does so much lasting harm to our interests.”

Shortly after Trump told reporters yesterday that Venezuela’s former vice president, now president, Delcy Rodríguez is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Rodríguez demanded Maduro’s return and said Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.” Indeed, U.S. extraction of Maduro and threats to “run” Venezuela are more likely to boost the Maduro government than weaken it.

In a phone call today with Michael Scherer of The Atlantic, Trump threatened Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Tonight on Air Force One, Trump told reporters that the U.S., not Rodríguez, is in charge of Venezuela.

Trump also told Scherer that he does indeed intend to continue to assert U.S. control in the Western Hemisphere, telling Scherer that “we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.” Greenland is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning it is already part of U.S. national defense.

Although he ran for office on the idea of getting the U.S. out of the business of foreign intervention, Trump embraced the idea of regime change in Venezuela, telling Scherer: “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.” He continued: “Rebuilding is not a bad thing in Venezuela’s case. The country’s gone to hell. It’s a failed country. It’s a totally failed country. It’s a country that’s a disaster in every way.”

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular with the American people “than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.” In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a “U.S. invasion of Venezuela,” with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed “sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.” Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved.

“By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,” Morris writes, “Trump had already lost the public.”

But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want, instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning.

Morris notes that a December CBS poll showed that 75% of Americans, including 58% of Republicans, correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval. By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes, but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: “I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—also a member of the Gang of Eight—told reporters that he hadn’t been briefed either and that the administration had deliberately misled Congress in three classified briefings before the strikes. In those briefings, officials assured lawmakers that the administration was not planning to take military action in Venezuela and was not pursuing regime change. “They’ve kept everyone in the total dark,” he said.

Nonetheless, Himes told Brennan that he thought Trump’s Venezuelan adventure would not go well: “We’re in the euphoria period of…acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible. This is exactly the euphoria we felt in 2002 when our military took down the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003, when our military took out Saddam Hussein, and in 2011, when we helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. These were very, very bad people, by the way, much, much worse than Maduro and Venezuela, which was never a significant national security threat to the United States. But we’re in that euphoria phase. And what we learned the day after the euphoria phase is that it’s an awful lot easier to break a country than it is to actually do what the president promised to do, which is to run it…. [L]et’s let my Republican colleagues enjoy their day of euphoria, but they’re going to wake up tomorrow morning knowing what? My God, there is no plan here any more than there was in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in Libya.”

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) was more direct: “The U.S. attack on Venezuela is illegal,” he posted. “Congress never authorized this use of military force. I will vote to stop it. This is insane. Health care costs and food prices are surging. Trump’s response is we’re going to run another country. Batsh*t crazy.”

January 5, 2026

Same imperialism, different day

Send in the Marines: Same Shit, Different Day, Readying Venezuela for Investment

From Brian Schwartz WSJ:

“Wall Street is already at the ready posts…about 20 business leaders, including those from some of the top hedge funds and asset managers, are preparing to go on a March trip to Venezuela to look at investment opportunities there incl in energy and infrastructure.”

Here’s a 1933 speech from Major General Smedley Butler, who died the most decorated US Marine in American history. He speaks about his role in using military might to clear the way for American Big Business.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

In Trump’s War in Venezuela, it’s more of the same shit, on a different day.

January 4, 2026

Warning: This is a long article with big words and ideas that require rational thought. Trump supporters likely will not understand it.

The big obstacles to Trump’s plan for a Venezuelan oil windfall

There’s a familiar ring to President Donald Trump’s plan to send U.S. energy giants to Venezuela to use the wealth generated from rekindling long-stalled oil production to stabilize that country and cement American energy dominance: Similar ambitions accompanied the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The quick riches promised did not materialize there, as firms grappled with years of political turmoil and security threats, struggled to negotiate workable contract terms and confronted vexing infrastructure inadequacies. Venezuela may not be any easier, industry analysts warn.

69“One of the clear lessons from Iraq — and it is not unique to Iraq — is that you need to have stability and be able to assess risk before you can start production,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm. Until then, he said, companies may not be enthusiastic about making the billions of dollars in investments required in Venezuela.

It’s unclear which firms Trump was referencing at a news conference Saturday morning, when he said: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go and spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure.”

Chevron, which operates there now, declined to comment on plans.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited the country and saw their assets seized after refusing to meet the terms of Venezuela’s government nearly two decades ago. ExxonMobil did not respond to requests for comment.

“It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments,” ConocoPhillips spokesman Dennis Nuss said in an email.

But the appeal is clear. Venezuela has one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, estimated at 300 billion barrels.

“Every major oil company in the world and some of the smaller ones will look closely at this because there are very few places on Earth where you could increase production so much,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University. “But first you need political stability and clarity.”

He said restoring peak oil production there would cost up to $100 billion and take about a decade. And that is assuming there is enough political stability for companies to operate unencumbered during that entire period.

There are other obstacles. The oil in Venezuela is a heavy form of crude that is more difficult to process and carries a heavier carbon footprint than oil pumped elsewhere. Venezuela’s power grid is on the brink, creating an uncertain outlook for oil production, which requires massive amounts of energy. Also, Russian and Chinese firms partnered with Venezuela after U.S. companies left the nation, complicating the reestablishment of U.S. firms.

Returning to Venezuela has hardly been a central talking point of U.S. oil companies.

In this era of relativly low oil prices and uncertainty about how robust future demand will be amid an on-again, off-again global energy transition from fossil fuels, firms are anxious about reinvesting tens of billions of dollars more in pumping in Venezuela absent assurances that their investments would be secure for at least a decade, according to industry analysts.

Trump’s removal of Venezuela’s leader and plan to put the U.S. in charge of the country for now does not ensure that, despite his sweeping promises.

“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Trump said. “The oil companies are going to go in. They’re going to spend money there that we’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We’re going to get reimbursed for all of that. We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend.”

Today, the nation’s oil production is a fraction of what it could be and its infrastructure is badly frayed because of domestic turmoil, the departure of foreign oil companies and related international sanctions. The nation is pumping a mere 1 million barrels of oil per day, less than 1 percent of global output. That is also less thana third of its peak production under the Hugo Chávez regime and a quarter of what experts say it is capable of generating.

That oil has largely been purchased byChina.

The only American company operating in Venezuela is Chevron, with its production constrained by considerable Venezuelan government restrictions.

“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” said a statement from Bill Turenne, a company spokesman. “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

While acknowledging that firms have reason to be reticent, Monaldi, of Rice University, pointed to forecasts showing Venezuelan oil could be crucial to meet rising global demand over the next decade.

But none of that can happen overnight.

“Oil companies do not operate in a vacuum and we are years from significant volume increase,” said Pedro Burelli, a critic of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro now living in the United States, and a former board member of the Venezuelan state oil company. “Regulations and contracts matter as U.S. oil companies are publicly traded companies with shareholders who will demand rational investment decisions.”

Oil companies have even been reluctant to increase their rig counts here, despite Trump’s repeated calls for more drilling, amid demand uncertainty and dropping market prices. U.S. oil production soared during the Biden administration, but the pace of growth has slowed since Trump returned to office, with some forecasts predicting declines this year.

Book said oil companies will be looking to sign contracts that they are confident will be honored for the long-term, and there is no government in Venezuela that right now can honor such a contract.

“Before you make all these big investments and start running operations, you also need a stable country with reliable electricity, functioning ports and an available workforce,” he said. “A lot of factors go into pulling this off.”

Trump may have further complicated the outlook for U.S. oil firms returning to Venezuela by declaring that he does not believe the popular opposition leader there, María Corina Machado, commands the respect to run the country immediately following Maduro’s ouster.

Machado has been a vocal proponent of helping U.S. firms re-establish operations in Venezuela. One of her energy advisers, Evanan Romero, a former Venezuelan oil executive and government minister, stressed in an interview that if the oil firms wish to return, “we will welcome them.”