I'm not wihout reservations, but I generally think this is a good thing, for Venezuela, for millions of Venezuelans forced to flee in the last 20 years and now living in Colombia, the U.S., and elsewhere worldwide. Trump and secretary of state Rubio have expressed a commitment to steering Venezuela beyond the crisis period, to restoration and long term prosperity.
It's good for the U.S. too, because it stops drug trafficking and human trafficking into the U.S., and further deters traffickers in Mexico, Colombia, China, and Iran.
And it begins to close the door for hostile foreign powers that have been entrenching themselves for 20 years or more in Central and South America, such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, ISIS and Al Qaida. Trump has this innovative outlook to foreign policy, of doing an across the board full press on these hostile nations worldwide all a once, that weakening each weakens all the others. And especially, the need to re-establish the Monroe Doctrine and push these hostile foreign powers entirely out of this hemisphere.
A number of CIA officials, military generals, and other foreign policy experts interviewed in the last few days have been saying since the Meduro capture that if communism in Venezuela falls, an already unstable Cuban communist government (that is dependent on its ties to Venezuela) will fall too. And will finally snuff out communism in Nicaragua too. And China's relationship with other countries in the Caribbean and South America will fade away too. South American nations have for years already been uncomfortable with China's over-reach in their countries, and will pull away and rally to a Trump-led U.S. ascendancy in the Americas.
The logical person to allow to take power in Venezuela are the elected president Edmundo Gonzalez, and VP Corina Machado (who was manipulated by the corrupt Venezuelan legal system from being able to run for president, forcing her to instead drop to being the VP candidate). I hope that the possibility of keeping Meduro's VP (Delcy Rodriguez) in power is just something that is only being discussed out of fairness of considering all options, and does not actually come to pass.
And since Corina Machado has global approval and just won the Nobel Peace Prize several months ago, and the actual winner in Venezuela's 2024 election, I don't see much if any resistance by nations worldwide to her being installed as the legitimate elected leader that she is. . And if anyone needs confirmation of that, they could just hold another election in Venezuela to verify it
The illegiimate 2024 election in Venezuela has remarkable similarities to the illegitimate election of Joe Biden in 2020. And also to the 2022 illegitimate election of Lula in Brazil.
In each, the conservative was winning by a good margin well into the evening of the election, then in the very late evening and morning a highly questionable injection of votes turned the election overnight, and the liberal/Leftist candidate in each was narrowly declared the winner.
And there were in each irregularities, and resistance to any recount. And in each, legal threats and imprisonment to any who voiced opposition to the election's legitimacy, even on social media. Not just to voters, but also threats to government leaders who challenged the outcome. And Bolsanaro is now under house arrest in Brazil, as are many of his supporters and cabinet members.
Among others interviewed about the Venezuela events, I just saw Rep Salazar (R-FL) interviewed earlier on Newsmax, who was one of the co-founders of Univision, before she left news and ran for office, and she said without Trump, Venezuela would never have been able to get rid of Meduro. This is someone who understands politics, who understands the media (and the state abuse of it in Venezuela) and understands Latin America from covering it intimately for decades. And she has great optimism about Meduro's removal. And that none of this would have been possible under any other U.S. president.
The Venezuelans seems happy about this. Not much love in the country for that guy.
Dems will be mad about this because it something Trump did. Dems will have to change their stupid no king riots to NO KINGS EXCEPT FOR THAT VENEZUELA GUY. BUT NOT TRUMP!
"My friends have always been the best of me." -Doctor Who
"Well,whenever I'm confused,I just check my underwear. It holds most answers to life's questions." Abe Simpson
I can tell by the position of the sun in the sky, that is time for us to go. Until next time, I am Lothar of the Hill People!
No Kings still works just fine Lothar. You and WB may like an authoritarian as long as there’s an r in there but I don’t. Trump just pardoned the former ruler from Honduras that was convicted of similar things so I guess if you’re a pos from the right it pays off with Trump. I look forward to going back to it not mattering if the bad guy is more left or right when it comes to the law.
I wonder if we could ship Trump and company to any international trials that may be looming in the future?
No Kings still works just fine Lothar. You and WB may like an authoritarian as long as there’s an r in there but I don’t. Trump just pardoned the former ruler from Honduras that was convicted of similar things so I guess if you’re a pos from the right it pays off with Trump. I look forward to going back to it not mattering if the bad guy is more left or right when it comes to the law.
I wonder if we could ship Trump and company to any international trials that may be looming in the future?
What says it all, M E M, is that Venezuelans (both the millions of exiles here in the U.S who fled from Meduro, AND the Venezuelans still in Venezuela) are elated and cheering in the streets, as Lothar pointed out above. The only "authoritarians" are Meduro and his henchmen, and the Democrat-Bolsheviks who weaponized the FBI and DOJ against Trump and thousands of his supporters, and two fake impeachments to get Trump any tyrannical way they could.
You're like a zealot out of George Orwell's 1984, M E M. You will repeat any bogus talking point your party feeds you, and never question the obvious hypocrisy and whiplash-instant complete reversal of what your vicious party was saying just a week ago. Chuck Schumer and the other Democrat leaders are self-parody in their comments the last few days. For YEARS Dems were screeching for removal of Meduro to re-establish Democracy in Venezuela. Then the second Trump actually does it (something Obama never did in 8 years, something Biden never did in 4 years) Democrats scream panic about Trump surgically and perfectly orchestrating the very "tyranny" Democrats spent over a decade calling for.
I'm interested to see how things play out between the current acting president and the opposition. Machado seems to want to be involved, but I don't see a path currently based on how it is going.
It made no sense to me why Trump would allow Meduro's VP Delcy Rodriguez in power, at least for a transitional period, when she is as illegitimate as Meduro is. And Machado (at least before the last election was tampered with by Meduro's team) actually won the election by about 72% of the popular vote, so is clearly the more legitimate new leader. AND she furher has worldwide recognition internationally with the Nobel prize for peace.
And I'm straining to make sense of it and come up with an explanation. The best I can come up with is even though Machado was legitimately elected 2 years ago, Trump doesn't want to just do what could be perceived, both in Venezuela, and internationally, as installing her as a U.S.-controlled puppet.
But with Meduro removed in an instant, Machado has had no time to plan how to lead Venezuela, particularly after the seismic shift after Meduro's instant removal. So I'm guessing Trump is leaving Delcy Rodriguez in power, so anything that goes wrong in the transition period won't be blamed on Machado, and she can be permitted to take charge after she's had time to fully prepare her government and actually lead.
That Dulcy Rodriguez's government was attacking people who openly celebrated that Meduro has been removed, I think puts a chilling effect on the unifying victory in Venezuela that Meduro has been removed. But I hope that once caught, the Trump administration has put a stop to that initial crackdown done by the remaining Meduro government in Venezuela, with a strong message that the U.S. military can come right back and take them out too, if they try it again.
Looks like there's at least some talk about getting something moving on her inclusion in the government. Seems like a lot of ground to cover before we see in real results though.
I looks like the second domino in Latin America is falling by he day, as a direct result of he Venezuela overthrow.
Even living in Florida for over 50 years and knowing a lot about Cuba through the large population of Cubans we interact here with daily, this video filled in a lot of back-story on Cuba over the last few decades, that I was largely unaware of.
Gufeld also nicely exposed the absurd hypocrisy Code Pink and other leaders of the American Left, proesting IN FAVOR of he oppressive Cuban communist government.
And it begins to close the door for hostile foreign powers that have been entrenching themselves for 20 years or more in Central and South America, such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, ISIS and Al Qaida. Trump has this innovative outlook to foreign policy, of doing an across the board full press on these hostile nations worldwide all at once, that weakening each weakens all the others. And especially, the need to re-establish the Monroe Doctrine and push these hostile foreign powers entirely out of this hemisphere.
A number of CIA officials, military generals, and other foreign policy experts interviewed in the last few days have been saying since the Meduro capture that if communism in Venezuela falls, an already unstable Cuban communist government (that is dependent on its ties to Venezuela) will fall too. And will finally snuff out communism in Nicaragua too. And China's relationship with other countries in the Caribbean and South America will fade away too. South American nations have for years already been uncomfortable with China's over-reach in their countries, and will pull away and rally to a Trump-led U.S. ascendancy in the Americas.
Just a little sidenote, China, for years, has been sending about 100 planes a day into Taiwan air-space, to intimidate Taiwan, and daily test Taiwan's defenses and response time, in preparation for an invasion.
Since the U.S. and Israel began their massive bombings on the IRGC in Iran about 2 weeks ago, and oil has ceased moving from Iran to China ( about 90% of Iran's oil is purchased by China, and a sustained cessation of oil flow to China from Iran for even 6 weeks would bring China to its knees) ... incredibly, China has ceased all air intrusions over Taiwan. Maybe because China is already in crisis over the sudden interruption of oil shipments, or maybe because they have gotten the message that the interruptions could easily be tightened by the U.S. and become much more severe. China is fiercely dependent on massive daily imports of energy and food, that they cannot possibly produce domestically.
The destruction of iranian missiles, drones, munitions and naval vessels weakens not only Iran, it weakens China, it weakens Russia. The drone factories that were helping Russia fight its war in Ukraine are not just stalled, those factories are permanently gone, There are no more drones coming from Iran to Russia in the future, not for many years.
The Ukraine/Russia war that was stalemated is now shifting in Ukraine's favor. And in a few weeks or so when oil begins flowing through the Persian gulf again and it is clear to every nation worldwide that Iran has been neutered, oil will not only flow hrough the Persian Gulf and drop back down in price, it will go even lower than before, below 50 dollars a barrel.
Which means the oil-revenue dependent Russian military will no longer be able to sustain a war against Ukraine, and that war will be forced to an end. And Russia will be rifted out of its close partnership with China.
And perhaps North Korea will be moved re-negotiate its situation with the U.S. and is neighbors as well. And even within China, as cited in the above video, all this accellerates popular distrust within China of their communist government, and weakens the CCP's ability to remain in control, and at the very least creates internal pressure for new Chinese leadership within the Chinese Communist Party. And China, and Xi Xinping, were unpopular and struggling to remain in power before the bombing raids into Iran even began. Before Trump's inauguration, China was the inevitable coming world superpower. How massively things have shifted, in just 14 months. Because of Trump's leadership, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, the drug cartels, Russia, North Korea and China are all weakening and imploding. Trump's full court press worldwide, weakening each one, weakens them all. And they are imploding, no longer able to supply and help each other.
Vicor Davis Hanson again, making almost the opposite arguments he just made in the above video . Arguing the possible negatives, if the Islamic Republic government does not surrender, with them knowing the anti-Trump Democrats and liberal media, and the political pressures for Trump to not do a ground invasion to finish the job in Iran against the remaining IRGC forces. That they could just wait Trump out, and rebuild their arsenal 3 or 4 years from now under a more feckless successor U.S. president. A realistic assessment of the possible outcomes in Iran.
