What the raid on Venezuela teaches us about the Trump administration

The U.S. raid-and-capture operation in Venezuela that ended the rule of Nicolás Maduro and upended power politics in the Western Hemisphere was unusually complicated. The motivations behind it were perhaps even more complex – and so are the lessons that the Delta Force blitz provide for Americans and for governments across the globe.

Here are some of the important political currents running beneath the surface of the astonishing episode, which has provided a template for evaluating the early 21st-century Trump Corollary to the early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine – two policies that have no legal basis but still establish distinct American spheres of influence and behaviour and enforce them …

Share

US discussing options to acquire Greenland, including use of military, says White House

US President Donald Trump has been discussing “a range of options” to acquire Greenland, including use of the military, the White House said.

In a statement, the White House told the BBC that acquiring Greenland was a “national security priority”.

It comes after Trump repeated over the weekend that the US “needed” Greenland – a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark – for security reasons.

Update: Rubio Tells Lawmakers Trump Wants to Buy Greenland

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told lawmakers that President Trump plans to buy Greenland rather than invade it, while Mr. Trump has asked aides to give him an updated plan for acquiring the territory, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Mr. Rubio made his remarks in a briefing on Monday with lawmakers from the main armed services and foreign policy committees in both chambers of Congress. The same day, Mr. Trump told aides to deliver an updated plan.

Share

LILLEY: Mark Carney doesn’t have time to move slowly on new pipeline

 

Donald Trump said the Venezuelan oil industry could be booming again in 18 months. Here in Canada, we might have finished the first round of consultations on a new pipeline, but we won’t have concluded the court challenges to it.

This is the dilemma Canada is facing: We are still moving at Ottawa speed, meaning slow, while the Americans are talking about a breakneck pace in restoring Venezuela’s oil industry.


Carney has not changed his spots.

Venezuela: Trump announces plan to get up to 50M oil barrels

US President Donald Trump has announced that “interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over” between 30 to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the US.

“This ​oil ​will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, as ‍president of the United States of America, to ​ensure it is used to benefit the ⁠people ​of Venezuela and the United States!”

Share

Ukraine’s security guarantee is a paper tiger with crucial details missing

Coalition of the delusional

Progress. Success. A “very big milestone”.

For the first time in more than a year, Ukrainians, Americans and Europeans seemed to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Peace, they say, is closer than ever, because they are on the brink of agreeing to a security deal to deter a new Russian attack on Ukraine after a ceasefire.


No Carney at the signing?

Coalition’s Ukraine security guarantees include deploying troops if ceasefire is reached

Canada has promised a substantial ongoing commitment to the force that would backstop the peace deal. Precisely what kind of forces Canada would deploy is unclear, partly because the military, short of personnel and equipment, is in rebuilding mode.

Share

The Toppling of Villains Has Begun in Earnest. It Must Continue.

A little while ago, I had a column in this space that challenged the groupthink wisdom that assumes 2026 is going to be a bad year for President Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill. One of the items on which I rested my challenge is worth repeating today.

What I predicted was that the ruling regimes, both Iran and Venezuela, would go by the boards, and the benefits coming to everybody in America not affiliated with the Democrat Party would be manifold.

Share

AI deepfakes of Nicolás Maduro flood social media — depict Venezuelan dictator in jail with Diddy, among other vids

Within hours of President Trump’s announcement of the dramatic weekend capture of Nicolás Maduro, social media was flooded with AI-generated deepfakes showing the captured Venezuelan dictator in handcuffs and even sitting alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was previously locked up in the same jail where Maduro now is in real life.

Share

Danish PM Says if Trump Annexes Greenland it Will Be End of NATO

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that if the United States forcibly annexes Greenland, it would result in the collapse of the American-led NATO military alliance.

That’s what Trump wants.

h/t Mauser

Share

DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into Tim Walz

On Monday, Tim Walz announced he was dropping his bid for a third term as Minnesota’s governor amid an ongoing fraud scandal. I said that dropping out of the race wouldn’t save him from being held accountable, and sure enough, on Monday evening, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed the Department of Justice has launched a sweeping criminal investigation into Walz for his potential role in the fraud.

Share

Conrad Black: Maduro’s Removal an Astonishing Strategic Success for the US

The seizure and removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their official residence in Caracas, to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, with no American casualties, has been an astonishing strategic and tactical success.

It eliminates one of the few anti-Western governments in the world, reinforces the general move to the democratic right in Latin America, and strikes a deadly blow against the narco-terrorists who have severely provoked the United States. It probably cuts the lifeline from Venezuela to the dismal Marxist regime in Nicaragua, and has already been cited as a warning to the erratic president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, whom Trump has named as head of the vast Colombian illegal narcotics producing and exporting operation. Trump also revoked Petro’s visa to enter the United States after he gave a speech in New York, urging American armed servicemen to ignore orders to engage with Hamas and other terrorists.

Share

Trump’s Hint to Oil Executives Weeks Before Maduro Ouster: ‘Get Ready’

El Palito Refinery

President Trump had a vague but tantalizing message for a couple of American oil executives roughly a month before the U.S. captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro: “Get ready.”

Big changes were coming to Venezuela, Trump hinted.

Although Trump gave the executives a hint, he didn’t provide them with specific details of the strikes on Caracas that unfolded early Saturday, according to people familiar with the matter. Nor did he seek their advice on a plan unveiled the same day to have U.S. energy companies revitalize Venezuela’s dilapidated oil fields with multibillion-dollar investments.

Share

U.S. control of Venezuela’s oil reserves not a threat to Canadian producers, Carney says

Carney & Macron smile like idiots despite swamping their nations with 3rd World migrants possessing no ability to integrate. This is what passes for “Statesmanship” in our benighted era.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has played down concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost oil production from Venezuela will have an impact on Canada’s energy sector.

Mr. Trump has made it clear that the U.S. military action in Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro was precursor to taking control of the country’s vast oil reserves and its energy infrastructure. That could ultimately lead to a surge of Venezuelan oil on global markets which would pose a challenge to Canada’s oil production.

Share

‘A warning not an insult’: US doubles down on criticism of Europe

Forecast of Europe’s ‘civilisational erasure’ was part of call for pro-growth reform, says Trump official

Donald Trump’s administration has doubled down on its recent criticism of Europe, saying last month’s US national security strategy was an attempt to “jolt” an ally back to economic life.

The document was widely condemned in Europe as representing a seismic shift in the 70-year transatlantic alliance with its dark references to a purported threat of “civilisational erasure” with migration and censorship creating “strife”, “cratering birthrates” and “loss of national identities”.

Its threat to interfere in European politics and oppose what it termed as “elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe” was condemned as unacceptable by the president of the European Council of leaders, António Costa.

Share

John Ivison: Starkly different reactions by Carney and Poilievre to Venezuela are revealing

It seems clear that there was great excitement in the Poilievre household on Saturday morning, as news of the surgical strike by U.S. special forces in Venezuela filtered through.

Pierre Poilievre’s wife, Anaida, is Venezuelan, and like many of her fellow citizens, she likely rejoiced in the arrest and deportation of the illegitimate president Nicolás Maduro.

By 9:36 a.m. the Conservative leader had posted on social media his congratulations to American President Donald Trump for arresting the “narco-terrorist and socialist dictator.”


Summary: Trump bad, Poilievre bad.

Share

We need to prepare for the possibility that the U.S. uses military coercion against Canada

So, this is the “peace president?”

Donald Trump promised that under his leadership the U.S. would eschew “nation building,” “forever wars,” “regime change,” and violent foreign engagements more generally.

Yet since his second inauguration, he’s ordered military action in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq; bombed Iran’s nuclear weapons complexes; and blown up more than a score of boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean. In just the past two weeks, he has launched missiles against Islamic terrorists in northern Nigeria, declared that the U.S. was “locked and loaded” for another attack on Iran, and now decapitated Venezuela’s government.


Pssst … Elbow people …Canada is already a vassal state – of China and their stooges of the Laurentian elite, WEF and the rest of the globalist 5th columnists.

Canada can’t offer itself as a reliable ally to either the EU or America in any meaningful way.

We don’t even have a real “armed forces” just a DEI pantomime. A GI Joe and Jane non-binary action figure with removable anatomy!

The US may annex Canada simply to keep China and Russia out of the Arctic and America’s backyard.

It won’t take much. Who will sign up to defend Ottawa and their corporate cronies efforts to flood Canada with cheap 3rd World labour or lavish tax dollars on themselves & foreigners?

It’s not as if all those shiny new Canadians Ottawa imports are going to rush the recruiting offices.

The Canada of university studies departments does not exist.

Share

Bring in More Prosecutors: Finally Ending Minnesota’s ‘Never-Ending’ Somali Fraud Schemes Requires Reinforcements

Nick Shirley’s video tour of 10 Somali daycare sites in the Twin Cities has drawn attention yet again to the massive public programs fraud committed by an almost exclusive cast of Somali Minnesotans. Shirley may have made some mistakes, but he seems to be on to something.

Shirley’s video raises an alarm about the administration of the Child Care Assistance Program by Minnesota’s Department of Human Services. In 2019, a devastating report by Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of Legislative Auditor investigated a whistleblower’s claim that the program was riddled with fraud to the tune of $100 million. Legislative Auditor James Nobles limited his findings of fraud to amounts established in criminal convictions—$5 to $6 million at the time. However, Nobles called out the program for lax oversight and laughably inadequate controls. As he stated in a column last week, the department’s permissive approach “made it easy for fraudsters to steal.”

Share