For a populist President who campaigned against the foreign entanglements of his predecessors and raged against nation building, it’s stunning that he would launch a military action against Venezuela that the vast majority of Americans oppose, at least without authorization by his reflexively compliant Congress. Trump traditionally says his critics suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. This weekend’s secret assault on Venezuela to kidnap Nicolas Maduro and pledge to “run Venezuela” simply suggest it is Trump who is deranged.

The indictment of Maduro by the District of Attorney of New York, Southern District, makes clear: Nicolas Maduro was a criminal, a narco-trafficker, a partner of drug cartels responsible for thousands of deaths in the United States and elsewhere, a despotic and fraudulently-elected “president” of Venezuela. Now, in a stealthy and powerful military action, the United States has captured him, brought him to the United States, imprisoned him in Brooklyn and arraigned him. That he will stand trial is a good thing.

But, despite the chest-thumping and testosterone-fueled assertions of Donald Trump, Defense (oops, War) Secretary Pete Hegspeth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, all the rest of their outrageous pronouncements and claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Take Trump’s announcement that the United States will take over Venezuela until a proper transition can take place. Meanwhile, he declared, U.S. oil companies will take over Venezuelan oil operations “for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.” Sounds like a return to 19th century colonialism to me. According to experts, activating Venezuelan oil reserves, deteriorating for at least two decades, could take years to move into production and market distribution. So, our populist President will risk American lives for the benefit of American oil corporations? And how long will the United States and Trump’s oligarchical inner circle stay in Venezuela, and how much will it cost? Will U.S. military provide a long-term stabilization force, at sea if not on land?  

We may find out this week if Trump will respect the War Powers Act if Congress gets a spine and acts on it.  Every President from Truman to Biden has launched a military strike without Congressional authorization. I don’t know of any who immediately announced the intention to run the country we attacked. And, even where they eventually got Congressional buy-in, the long-term efforts – think Iraq and Afghanistan – failed abysmally.

Notably absent from Trump’s press conference was Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, who would have to defend her 180 from her 2019 Twitter post saying “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders, so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.” Not surprisingly, it went viral after Maduro’s capture.

Gabbard isn’t the only one who could be called out for hypocrisy. As recently as October, Trump Chief of Staff Susy Wiles said that an attack on the Venezuelan mainland would require congressional approval. Now she’s a key player in keeping the Trump team in line behind the President’s lunatic moves.

As a practical matter, how exactly will delusional Trump secure that control over another sovereign country? He may have lopped off the head of the regime, but the regime is still in place. Maduro’s cronies, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez (who has already declared herself interim president), Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino López (who reportedly has deep ties to Vladimir Putin) and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello (head of security, meaning Maduro’s enforcer), as well as Maduro loyalists in the Venezuelan military (who also profited from the drug trade) are already under similar indictments and not about to leave quietly.

Trump has already rejected bringing back opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate María Corina Machado and has made no move toward Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the legitimate winner of the 2024 Venezuelan election. So what’s our authoritarian president’s next grandiose plan if not turning to those who have steadfastly been fighting for democracy and against Nicolas Maduro?

Naively, Trump has also said that those Venezuelans who fled to the United States to escape Maduro’s violence can now return, but early comments from Venezuelans living in Florida indicate that repatriation is impossible until there is a democratic government in Venezuela. Apparently Trump thinks he can do business with Vice President Rodriguez as he is with ISIS terrorist-turned-ally Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria.

Beyond the pursuit of Venezuelan oil (perhaps on the false promise of lowering already-lower energy prices in time for our own election), Trump and Rubio hypocritically insist a major goal was ending the flow of fentanyl into the United States. But the main source of fentanyl and its components is China. Will they try to take out President Xi? And, if drugs were so central to this recent operation, how do they square this with Trump’s December 1 pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in prison in the United States for 45 years for running 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and related gun charges. He, too, was implicated in widespread corruption.

Without evidence other than personal pique, Trump speciously rationalizes the Hernandez pardon by claiming the prosecutors who brought him to trial and won a major conviction didn’t treat the former Honduran president fairly. Yet it is the same team, the Southern District of New York, that is trying the case of Maduro. So, yesterday’s bad guys are magically today’s good guys?

Perhaps the worst aspect of this insanity is the potential global fallout and what this move signals to Russia and China. Despite Donald Trump’s promise to end “forever wars,” he has warned Mexico to “get its act together;” warned Greenland that our taking over there is a matter of national security, ours not Greenland’s; and made threats to move against Columbia and Cuba. It’s reasonable to fear that such warnings will greenlight Putin to finish off Ukraine and move against Estonia and Poland and promise disinterest if China moves against Taiwan and, indeed, all of the South China Sea. Trump is washing his hands of our allies and international agreements that have kept the lid on world war since the 1940’s.

Trump keeps claiming he has aced three or more cognitive tests, even identifying a giraffe. But passing a cognitive test is a low bar, not a ticket to mensa. But a repeat schedule of tests, far from indicating cognitive capability, suggests some insiders may believe his mental health is worth monitoring. However, I’m not reassured. I won’t hold my breath waiting for someone in that inner circle to resort to the 25^th Amendment procedure for declaring a President to be unfit. Nor would I even lay down money on a bet that Congress will find its backbone and assert its Article I powers and responsibilities.

We can only pray that, at a minimum, voters will remember this fall and in 2028 that the party in power would rather underwrite an illegal oil grab for a bunch of oligarchs than ensure access to affordable medical care for financially struggling Americans. And we must cross fingers that Russia and China are somehow delayed in regional aggression that Trump has green-lighted.

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