VENEZUELA: Trump’s Fever Dream… Oil baby, Oil!

By Rob C.

Art by Sinisa Pismestrovic

TL;DR: In a move that makes the 19th-century “Banana Republic” era look like a period of peaceful diplomacy, President Trump has officially launched an illegal invasion of Venezuela, kidnapped its sovereign leader, and declared that the U.S. will now “run the country” to secure “our” oil. Between the extrajudicial murder of 115 people on supposed “drug boats” and the total abandonment of his “no more foreign wars” pledge, the “Fondling Father” has confirmed that international law is just a suggestion—and American corporate greed is the only law that matters.

America woke up this morning to the news that our very own “ Genghis Don” - a man who famously struggles to stay conscious during his own cabinet briefings—has somehow found the vitality to order a full-scale military kidnapping. In a “brilliant operation” (his words, naturally), U.S. forces invaded Caracas, snatched President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and are currently whisking them toward a New York courtroom. Now, let’s be clear: Maduro is a proper piece of shit who has spent years running his country into the dirt. But unless I missed a very quiet amendment to the Constitution, “being a bad guy” does not actually grant the 47th President the legal authority to treat a sovereign nation like an episode of Law& Order.

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The justification for this lawlessness is, predictably, a cocktail of lies and “narco-terrorism” charges that would make a good fiction novel. The administration is leaning hard on the claim that Maduro is a “drug kingpin,” despite the inconvenient fact that Venezuela isn’t even a primary producer of the cocaine flooding our streets. To prove his “toughness,” Trump has spent the last few months ordering military strikes on small civilian boats in the Caribbean, murdering more than 115 people without a shred of public evidence that these vessels were carrying anything more dangerous than fish. In the Trump version of justice, we don’t bother with the Coast Guard or due process; we just use multi-million dollar missiles to perform extrajudicial executions on suspected smugglers and call it “America First.”

But the real “fever dream” moment came just a week ago when Trump accused Maduro of “stealing our oil.” It’s a fascinating bit of geography, isn’t it? The last time I checked the map, Venezuela was not a suburb of Miami, nor is it a territory of the United States and neither Greenland or Canada. The idea that another country’s natural resources belong to us simply because we want them is the purest form of the “Colonialism” logic our UN ambassador is currently trying—and failing—to defend on the world stage.

History, of course, explains why the target is on Maduro’s back. Decades ago, Hugo Chávez committed the ultimate sin against the American Corporate State: he nationalized the oil industry. He had the “radical” idea of removing U.S. oil giants like Exxon and Chevron so he could use that wealth to fund social programs for his own people. While Chávez managed the actual economics with the grace of a three-legged elephant in a blindfold, the crime wasn’t the mismanagement—it was the audacity to prioritize Venezuelan citizens over American corporate profits. The U.S. has a long, bloody resume of punishing foreign leaders for that specific transgression, and Trump is just the latest CEO-in-Chief to send in the debt collectors.

So much for the candidate who promised to end “forever wars” and bring our troops home. It turns out “America First” actually means “American Corporations First,” and if that requires a military occupation and a kidnapping, then so be it. Watching this administration claim they are “saving” Venezuela while they dismantle our own democracy is a level of gaslighting that would be impressive if it weren’t so dangerous. We are currently watching the death of international law in real-time, managed by a man who thinks the Epstein files are his private little secret and that sovereign borders are just lines on a map waiting for a “Trump” logo.

Don’t let the “Oil-for-Influence” swap go unchallenged: Hit like, share, and subscribe to help us keep the spotlight on the newest US colony! 🛢️🚢⚔️

— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.