Tag: donald trump

Trump Rules Out Elections in Venezuela, Anticipates Sending Troops to Occupy Venezuela

President Donald Trump said the US had no plans to hold elections in Venezuela. He said elections are currently impossible, and the country must first be helped by the US. 

“We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” Trump said about the possibility of a vote in the next month. “No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health.”

The President explained that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and White House adviser Stephen Miller would be responsible for running Venezuela. 

While Trump is laying out a massive nation-building project, he insisted that the US was not at war with Venezuela. “No, we’re not [at war],” Trump said. “We’re at war with people that sell drugs. We’re at war with people that empty their prisons into our country and empty their drug addicts and empty their mental institutions into our country.”

Since returning to office, Trump has ordered extensive sanctions on Venezuela, the seizure of two oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, strikes on Caracas, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, all acts of war. 

The President went on to say that he is anticipating sending US troops to occupy Venezuela and enforce his will on the country. The US continues to conduct surveillance flights near Venezuela. 

Trump believes the rebuilding of Venezuela will take about 18 months and come at a massive cost to US energy firms. “It’ll be a lot of money.” The President continued,  “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

Venezuela’s heavily contaminated crude oil is difficult to reach and expensive to refine. Oil prices need to exceed $100 per barrel to make for companies to see profits. Crude oil is currently under $58 per barrel. 

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New reports indicate that the US is considering “some intervention” in the ongoing Iran protests

Over the past several weeks, political dynamics in the Middle East and beyond have taken a dramatic turn, raising the possibility that the United States may move from diplomatic pressure to more direct involvement in Iran.

Reporting from The Jerusalem Post indicates that U.S. policymakers are now actively weighing forms of intervention aimed at supporting the growing protest movement inside the Islamic Republic — a development that reflects a notable shift in strategic thinking in both Washington and Jerusalem.

According to the report, this reassessment is closely linked to recent U.S. action in Venezuela. The sudden removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro reportedly forced Israeli and American officials to reconsider long-held assumptions about what might be achievable in Iran.

“Until the intervention by U.S. President Donald Trump in Caracas, most Israeli officials did not view the protests against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as necessarily approaching the volume necessary to achieve regime change,” the article states.

It further notes that the protests were largely seen by both Israel and the United States as “insufficient to topple Khamenei” without external assistance (The Jerusalem Post).

The success of the U.S. operation in Venezuela appears to have altered that outlook. Sources cited in the report suggest that American officials are exploring limited, targeted options designed to strengthen Iranian protestors rather than engage in a full-scale military invasion.

At the same time, Israeli officials are reportedly analyzing whether the precedent set by Venezuela could justify increased coordinated pressure against Tehran.

Intelligence operations have also taken center stage in this evolving situation.

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Senate confirms journalist Sara Carter as new Trump drug czar

he Senate confirmed journalist Sara Carter in a party-line vote Tuesday as the United States’ new “drug czar,” who will help with the administration’s efforts to curb the fentanyl crisis in the country.

President Donald Trump nominated Carter, an investigative journalist who has covered the fentanyl crisis and border security, for the post last year. She will officially serve as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Carter was confirmed in a 52-48 split. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted against the confirmation. 

The journalist has received multiple national awards for her coverage of national security issues, including the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for her coverage of the brutality of the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartel wars along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“My work in the frontlines wasn’t just about telling stories, it was about mapping the enemy,” Carter told senators in September, according to Politico. “I have seen these predatory criminal empires operate with impunity in our hemisphere. That impunity ends now. This is not just a public health crisis, it’s a chemical war being waged against the American people.”

Carter will now play a critical role in overseeing federal policy and funding related to drug trafficking, substance use prevention, treatment and recovery. 

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Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

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International Law Experts Agree: Trump-Ordered Attack on Venezuela 100% Illegal

Protests have erupted in the US and around the world following President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, and international law experts on Monday joined in rebuking the deadly military operation, with several outlining exactly how Trump’s actions were unlawful.

At Just Security, University of Reading professor of international law Michael Schmitt, New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, and NYU Reiss Center on Law and Security senior fellow Tess Bridgeman explained that the US military’s bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro differs legally from the dozens of boat strikes the US has carried out in the past four months.

The attacks in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed more than 100 people and have also been violations of international law, according to numerous legal experts—but they “have occurred in international waters against stateless vessels,” wrote Schmitt, Goodman, and Bridgeman.

In contrast, the operation in the early morning hours on Saturday took place within Venezuelan borders and “is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter,” they wrote. “That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small states from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war.”

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Trump cuts off $10B in funding to five blue states for child care, social services over fraud fears

The Trump administration is cutting off more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding meant for a handful of Democrat-led states over concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens, officials told The Post Monday.

The Department of Health and Human Services will freeze taxpayer funding from the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and the Social Services Block Grant program.

At least $7.35 billion in TANF money will be prevented from going to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.

The CCDF funding block of nearly $2.4 billion affects all those states.

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There’s Compelling Evidence That Someone Connected to the Trump Administration Profited Off the Invasion of Venezuela by Placing Large Bets on Polymarket

Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have long garnered a reputation for facilitating cheating and insider trading — allowing an athlete, for instance, to place a bet on a game they could then lose on purpose.

Now there’s compelling evidence that someone with inside information about the Trump administration’s regime change plans in Venezuela used that foreknowledge to profit massively from the conflict.

As spotted by researcher Tyson Brody, an unidentified user bet tens of thousands of dollars on various predictions that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro would be imminently “out” or that the US forces would show up “in Venezuela by” a specified date during the runup to the incursion.

The account “existed for only one week and quickly became the biggest ‘yes’ holder in the Maduro out market,” Brody tweeted.

The evidence of insider trading is compelling, to say the least, given the highly suspicious timing. The account invested over $30,000 less than two days before the United States launched its invasion to kidnap Maduro and his wife and “profited $400,000 in less than 24 hours,” as sports entrepreneur Joe Pompliano calculated in a post on Bluesky.

“Seems pretty suspicious!” he added. “[Secretary of defense] Pete Hegseth making some beer money on the side?” Brody joked.

“Insider trading is not only allowed on prediction markets; it’s encouraged,” Pompliano argued.

Who was behind the Polymarket account remains a mystery. Accounts on markets like Polymarket are anonymous, and payouts are in cryptocurrency, making them hard to track.

As Semafor reported over the weekend, news organizations also had early intel of the US raid on Venezuela, but held off publishing the information so as not to put US troops in danger.

In other words, could it have been an insider at a New York or Washington newsroom who was trying to make a buck — or was it an operative inside the Trump administration?

Prediction markets have long raised concerns over exactly these types of situations. Case in point, one Polymarket user made $1 million in 24 hours in early December after betting on Google’s 2025 Year in Search rankings. Per Forbes, the account had a “near-perfect record of 22 correct predictions out of 23 attempts.”

As The American Prospect points out, critics of the Trump administration have long accused officials of dabbling in similar behavior. The administration has also allowed the prediction market to flourish by dropping enforcement cases in the crypto world and failing to introduce meaningful regulations.

Even Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the president’s social network, Truth Social, entered the prediction markets business last year, showing a pointed appetite for the space.

“Of course insiders shouldn’t be able to get rich off of policy decisions — but even more concerning is the possibility that people are skewing policy outcomes in order to make their bets pay off,” Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka told The American Prospect.

One thing’s for sure: while insiders profit, those without that privileged information lose out — and when the bets are on a deadly conflict, innocent people stand to suffer as well.

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US spy jet mysteriously circles drug smuggling hotspot off Mexico’s coast as Trump threatens military action

The US Navy’s P-8 Poseidon was spotted circling a drug-smuggling hub off Mexico‘s coast on Monday morning.

Flight tracking websites spotted the aircraft conducting surveillance and reconnaissance operations miles offshore from Tijuana.

The city has long been plagued by violent organized crime and is considered a major corridor for cartel operations. 

The P-8 took off from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington, flew through Oregon and California, made several loops off the Mexican coast and southern California, and then returned to base.

Equipped with advanced sensors capable of detecting both surface and underwater targets, the P-8 is often used to monitor suspicious vessels and maritime movements. 

The flight comes just days after Donald Trump issued a warning to Mexico over drug trafficking, suggesting a military action similar to one carried out in Venezuela over the weekend. 

The President said drug cartels continue to dominate large parts of Mexico and criticized the government for failing to confront them decisively.

‘The cartels are running Mexico, whether you like it or not,’ he said. ‘It’s not nice to say, but the cartels are running Mexico.’

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Moaist Propaganda Shill and Tech Millionaire Neville Roy Singham Reportedly Funded Marxist Group that Organized Anti-US Protests After Tyrant Maduro Was Arrested on Saturday

In August 2023, The New York Times published a rare informative and honest piece of journalism. The New York Times exposed the so-called anti-war group Code Pink as a Communist China shill or front group.

Kristinn Taylor reported at the time.

Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, 68, has deep roots in the Democratic Party, having served as the campaign manager for the 1992 presidential campaign of former California Governor Jerry Brown. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Evans served as a host for Obama fundraisers in Hollywood with her then husband Max Palevsky (who passed away in 2010 at age 85) and as a campaign bundler.

Evans married Singham, 69, in 2017.

Trump was the only U.S. president to not start any new wars in his first term, yet the so-called antiwar group Code Pink stood against him in his first term – and now in his second term.

It is clear Code Pink is not an “anti-war” group. Instead, Code Pink is a shill for the communists.

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Kamala Harris Humiliates Herself Condemning Capture of Maduro

It’s been over a year now since her humiliating loss to President Donald Trump, yet for some reason, Kamala Harris still hasn’t figured out that she’s a joke and should fade away into the sunset rather than subject herself to future embarrassment for opening her mouth.

Like many other Democrats who have decided that opposing the capture of a dictator is the hill they want to die on, Kamala took to X on Saturday to condemn Donald Trump’s successful military operation that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

I guess she’s still on the DNC email list for the latest talking points.

“Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable,” she claimed. “That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before. Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price.”

Her post continued:

The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to.

This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman. If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.

The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home.

America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.

As I pointed out yesterday, Trump has not gotten us into another war. This was a surgical strike that accomplished its objective without a hitch. The statement is curiously similar to pretty much every other Democrats’ statement on the successful mission.

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