Due... sorry but you have no clue what you are talking about, Chávez and Maduro did what they did because opposition's leaders made a bunch of mistakes; in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. They have a huge responsibility in what happened to Venezuela. The worst thing right now is put one of those incompetent losers to rule the country.
While I support the candidacy of Machado for President of Venezuela, she has to win an election first; otherwise, her reign would be just as illegitimate as Maduro's was. Replacing one dictator with another person installed without an election doesn't work.
A thought: What if Machado returns to Venezuela and starts leading the democratic forces again, in protests against the continuation of the Chavista regime? Would she not be seen as a more legitimate leader if the removal of regime comes from within? Would the US put up with the regime suppressing pro-democracy street protests? I think it unlikely.
If Trump were to put her in office tomorrow, she would appear to be a US puppet and would actually owe him for it. But if she rises to power through a pro-democracy movement, then she owes him nothing, and indeed may be seen as opposing a US-backed authoritarian government. She won't be branded as an American puppet. She'll have a freer hand to enact the kind of reforms the country desperately needs. This may, ironically, turn out to be the best possible way she could obtain the leadership of the country.
It’s possible that he might work with the opposition but I sure wouldn’t count on it. He’s a typical macho politician that doesn’t respect women unless they play the bimbo . His greed for the oil and to dominate Latin America will prevent any kind of nuanced, intelligent decision that will be needed to get out of this new Iraq. And that’s exactly what it will be for him: a source of record low approval ratings that will allow the democrats to dominate for a long time if they get their ship together 😎
Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens next. Will the Chavista regime remain in power? Will the US stand by while the Chavista regime continues to suppress the pro-democracy opposition? I think it's going to get really, really awkward if you start seeing mass protests in Caracas and the regime shooting at people.
Over 60 Democratic countries did NOT recognize Maduro's rule in Venezuela.
In Jan 2025, Biden HIMSELF put a $25Million boundy on Maduro's head.
Biden also criticized Trump saying he would never do anything about Maduro.
Schumer compared Trump to Madero in 2020 stating they were the same and that Trump would never do anything about Maduro.
Now Trump has done something NOBODY else could do, something Biden couldn't do (because he was too busy sleeping and changing diapers and abandoning people in Afhganistan)...he Liberated, literally LIBERATED a country led by a despot, and now all the Left can do is complain.
The joke is on the Left.
Minnesota is full of corruption. NYC is full of social anarchists. The Leftist media is full of lies and broken logic turning on itself like a pretzel.
Meanwhile, Trump is staying true to his mandate and has not wavered one iota from what he said he would do. He is stopping crime, stopping drugs from entering the country, securing borders, and boosting the economy.
Meanwhile, all his opponents can do is blame him for the same things they have otherwise given a free pass to, to over a dozen presidents who have literally committed the same acts as Trump since WW2.
Agree with your main thesis about Machado, but not your attribution of motive to Trump. Oil makes no sense as a motive. As several other writers have explained, we don’t need the oil, it’s not high quality oil, their infrastructure is in tatters and very expensive to repair, the current output borders on minuscule and would take years to make "un-minuscule," etc., etc., etc. But I admit, that's rational thinking. For me, I am in the camp that it's good to be done with Maduro, but the how it was done and what comes next are troubling for this libertarian/pragmatist.
It makes complete sense as a motive. You’re just ascribing way too much competence onto Trump to say he knows the oil sitch isn’t that good and is lying. He believes the oil sitch is good because it would be good for his cronies and his presidency. That’s it. He’s a BS salesman by trade.
How many times does Trump have to say it’s the oil for everyone to get that he wants the oil? He believes the oil companies will eventually do as he says, despite that the risks and costs will be enormous. Mobsters, whether from St. Petersburg or Queens, never create wealth. They extract it. Gambling, extortion, robbery, protection rackets. Just as Bratva thug Putin stole wealth for himself and his vory cronies by stealing Russia’s oil, gas and mineral industries, Trump will enrich himself by stealing minerals, oil, gas, property from Latin America and Greenland. I’m sure “Trump Tower Havana” is already being planned.
Perhaps because not everything a head of state says is telling the full story. China, Russia, Iran and Cuba were all heavily involved in Venezuela in various nefarious capacities that can very easily be viewed by the US as credible threats within uncomfortable / unacceptable physical proximity to the US. "Because, oil" is a nice soundbite that everyone can understand and spend time debating and getting all hot under the collar but I would bet that it is nowhere near the largest reason (if it was, then this could have been done at a time when Vene's infrastructure wasn't as eroded as it is now).
Cuba isn’t a credible threat to Key Biscayne. US forces swept the Venezuelan military and Cuban mercenaries out of their way in minutes. Russia has no permanent military assets in the Western hemisphere. China’s Belt and Road initiatives in Latin America are an economic challenge, but Latin Americans seem disposed to going back to US aligned right-wing tinpot dictatorships without US military intervention. Americans have forgotten their own historical response to colonialism.
A very recent read from Renegade Resources (The Venezuelan Oil Narative is PURE THEATRE Tracy (Chi) Jan 03, 2026) is a fascinating read that presents some good arguments.
(Which I really should have referenced in my original response to your comment.)
I read it. I did my time in the intelligence community and still spend time there. The article is nonsense. The key to understanding all this is the Mafia, not the Joint Chiefs.
You have to understand understand the mind of a mobster. They have no interest in producing anything ever. But they understand extraction. It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done. Slum lords, casino operators, pimps, oil landsmen, priests, all the same animal. My life has brought me into contact, even into doing business with all of them. Parasites, not producers. Sucking money out of the ground is so them. Trump thinks all Exxon has to do is install pumps because he’s a moron.
Ericsson tried to get me to work for them in Venezuela. Venezuelan gangsters were sabotaging their cell towers. They’d send out a tech, the gangsters would kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Usually $150k. Ericsson would pay it, they’d release the tech unharmed. Rinse, repeat. The Venezuelan government then sent soldiers along with them, but eventually the soldiers went into business with the gangsters for a cut of the ransom. Eventually no technicians would work in Venezuela for any amount of money. The same happened to the mining folks that went to Afghanistan to go after the 2.5TUSD in rare earths there. The Afghans sabotaged everything, Blew up ore trucks. we couldn’t get so much as a plane load out. That’s why we packed it in and left. But we always have idiots like Bush oil guy) and Trump (casino and slum lord mobster) that think the next time we attempt colonial extraction will go differently. I strongly doubt Venezuela will go differently, but we’re clearly gonna try.
However, Greenland I think may well be irresistable because it actually could go differently. There are only about 70,000 people there that we can quickly exile at gunpoint. A brigade can do it in a month. No military will make a move to stop us. It’s estimated that Greenland’s rare earths can supply up to 25% of the global demand. So instead of China controlling 97% of the rare earth supply our Techbros need for their a AI driven technofascist revolution, we’ll dig it out of Greenland’s ice. Nobody will prevent it. And instead of paying Denmark of Greenlanders for it, we can just steal it. No mobster like Trump is going to walk away from that.
And here’s the fun part. On January 15th the world will buy a new Round of US Treasury binds, financing the US military industrial complex that we’re being driven down by Trump and Silicon Valley. Because everything, always, is about money, who has it, who wants it, what they’re willing to do to get it, and how they will use it when they have it. Like this guy:
And whether it happens now, next year, of three years from now, if the GOP controls America (assuming we even still have representative government, which I do not assume) or if J.D. Vance and his Techbros implement their “Technofascist State”, we will get around to taking Venezuelan oil, and Columbian oil, and Ecuadorian oil, and Brasilian oil. Because that’s what colonial empires do. Who’s gonna stop it? Hakeem Jeffries? Chuck Schumer? The 77 million morons who chose this because they thought “The Apprentice” was real?
"No military will make a move to stop us. It’s estimated that Greenland’s rare earths can supply up to 25% of the global demand. So instead of China controlling 97% of the rare earth supply our Techbros need for their a AI driven technofascist revolution, we’ll dig it out of Greenland’s ice. Nobody will prevent it. And instead of paying Denmark of Greenlanders for it, we can just steal it. No mobster like Trump is going to walk away from that."
The issue with rare earths (and other such critical materials) is not really access to the materials / minerals themselves (there is plenty outside of China - both in the US and with US allies), it's the manufacturing and processing of such materials / minerals that China has (because the West abandoned it and left it to China).
Nonetheless, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
From what I understand, over 60 countries did NOT recognize Maduro's reign and considered him illegitimate.
There have been sanctions placed against Venezuela and Maduro broke those sanctions by selling oil to Russia and China to fund his illegal reign. None of the money was going to the people.
Trump arrested him based on a Grand Jury trial that was held in the US to stand trial.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans around the WORLD (including personal friends of mine) are cheering Trump for his act.
I think the people with Trump Derangement Syndrome really need a breather (not you, but those that are so highly critical of Trump that they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Understanding someone raised with mobsters is simple. Think like you’re a wannabe John Gotti. You want to rob a bank, or even another mob boss. Your crew has more hitters and more guns than anyone, but you still want easy scores that cost you the least. So you negotiate with some businesses for a cut of their action in exchange for letting them to continue operating (what Rubio said we’d do about the Maduro regime yesterday). You blackmail others, maybe kidnap someone they value. But hitting someone that can’t fight back is the ideal. What mobster can resist that? Maybe Trump will settle with Denmark, maybe not, but we’re getting those rare earths because the Techbros he’s surrounded with are convinced we gotta have them and they’ve convinced him. And they also have this fantasy of turning Greenland into technofascist utopia, as nutty as that sounds.
What’s truly “deranged”, by any objective American standard, is a press conference where an (already openly corrupt) president says “we will run” Venezuela after invading with no allied or Congressional input, asserting their popular democratically elected leader won’t be allowed to lead, so he can make oil deals with what remains of Maduro’s corrupt partners in crime, apparently. It’s easy to say “good on Trump” for ousting Maduro, also willfully short-sited. Considering the massive crypto bribery scheme he’s running, handing over proprietary tech to Saudi and China, and of course the corrupt pardon of the Honduran drug lord for having American oligarch connections. It isn’t derangement to be extremely wary of this President, it’s an understandable American reaction.
It has been reported that it’s the minerals, including gold, iron ore, bauxite, coal, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements. Also, large reserves of natural gas. The Trump sons are reportedly already setting up a company to assist corporations in extracting these minerals?
Due... sorry but you have no clue what you are talking about, Chávez and Maduro did what they did because opposition's leaders made a bunch of mistakes; in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. They have a huge responsibility in what happened to Venezuela. The worst thing right now is put one of those incompetent losers to rule the country.
What if "Trump's betrayal" is the best support he could offer Machado? Endorsement by a foreign aggressor ultimately isn't a good look for legitimacy
While I support the candidacy of Machado for President of Venezuela, she has to win an election first; otherwise, her reign would be just as illegitimate as Maduro's was. Replacing one dictator with another person installed without an election doesn't work.
A thought: What if Machado returns to Venezuela and starts leading the democratic forces again, in protests against the continuation of the Chavista regime? Would she not be seen as a more legitimate leader if the removal of regime comes from within? Would the US put up with the regime suppressing pro-democracy street protests? I think it unlikely.
If Trump were to put her in office tomorrow, she would appear to be a US puppet and would actually owe him for it. But if she rises to power through a pro-democracy movement, then she owes him nothing, and indeed may be seen as opposing a US-backed authoritarian government. She won't be branded as an American puppet. She'll have a freer hand to enact the kind of reforms the country desperately needs. This may, ironically, turn out to be the best possible way she could obtain the leadership of the country.
It’s possible that he might work with the opposition but I sure wouldn’t count on it. He’s a typical macho politician that doesn’t respect women unless they play the bimbo . His greed for the oil and to dominate Latin America will prevent any kind of nuanced, intelligent decision that will be needed to get out of this new Iraq. And that’s exactly what it will be for him: a source of record low approval ratings that will allow the democrats to dominate for a long time if they get their ship together 😎
The Venezuelan people will not accept replacing Maduro with the same regime, with trump encouraging it without bloodshed. They won’t go back.
Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens next. Will the Chavista regime remain in power? Will the US stand by while the Chavista regime continues to suppress the pro-democracy opposition? I think it's going to get really, really awkward if you start seeing mass protests in Caracas and the regime shooting at people.
That’s the most likely outcome so I think the people of Venezuela will have the leadership they voted for…
Over 60 Democratic countries did NOT recognize Maduro's rule in Venezuela.
In Jan 2025, Biden HIMSELF put a $25Million boundy on Maduro's head.
Biden also criticized Trump saying he would never do anything about Maduro.
Schumer compared Trump to Madero in 2020 stating they were the same and that Trump would never do anything about Maduro.
Now Trump has done something NOBODY else could do, something Biden couldn't do (because he was too busy sleeping and changing diapers and abandoning people in Afhganistan)...he Liberated, literally LIBERATED a country led by a despot, and now all the Left can do is complain.
The joke is on the Left.
Minnesota is full of corruption. NYC is full of social anarchists. The Leftist media is full of lies and broken logic turning on itself like a pretzel.
Meanwhile, Trump is staying true to his mandate and has not wavered one iota from what he said he would do. He is stopping crime, stopping drugs from entering the country, securing borders, and boosting the economy.
Meanwhile, all his opponents can do is blame him for the same things they have otherwise given a free pass to, to over a dozen presidents who have literally committed the same acts as Trump since WW2.
I think that just about covers it.
No it doesn’t : the Epstein files 😂🤞😀😡🙂🩸😀😊
Agree with your main thesis about Machado, but not your attribution of motive to Trump. Oil makes no sense as a motive. As several other writers have explained, we don’t need the oil, it’s not high quality oil, their infrastructure is in tatters and very expensive to repair, the current output borders on minuscule and would take years to make "un-minuscule," etc., etc., etc. But I admit, that's rational thinking. For me, I am in the camp that it's good to be done with Maduro, but the how it was done and what comes next are troubling for this libertarian/pragmatist.
You might this interesting
https://open.substack.com/pub/endtropy/p/venezuelan-historical-primer-friend?r=2cr5z&utm_medium=ios
Thanks yes, interesting. I knew some of that, esp the CITGO transaction, but there is a lot of interesting detail there.
It makes complete sense as a motive. You’re just ascribing way too much competence onto Trump to say he knows the oil sitch isn’t that good and is lying. He believes the oil sitch is good because it would be good for his cronies and his presidency. That’s it. He’s a BS salesman by trade.
How many times does Trump have to say it’s the oil for everyone to get that he wants the oil? He believes the oil companies will eventually do as he says, despite that the risks and costs will be enormous. Mobsters, whether from St. Petersburg or Queens, never create wealth. They extract it. Gambling, extortion, robbery, protection rackets. Just as Bratva thug Putin stole wealth for himself and his vory cronies by stealing Russia’s oil, gas and mineral industries, Trump will enrich himself by stealing minerals, oil, gas, property from Latin America and Greenland. I’m sure “Trump Tower Havana” is already being planned.
Perhaps because not everything a head of state says is telling the full story. China, Russia, Iran and Cuba were all heavily involved in Venezuela in various nefarious capacities that can very easily be viewed by the US as credible threats within uncomfortable / unacceptable physical proximity to the US. "Because, oil" is a nice soundbite that everyone can understand and spend time debating and getting all hot under the collar but I would bet that it is nowhere near the largest reason (if it was, then this could have been done at a time when Vene's infrastructure wasn't as eroded as it is now).
Cuba isn’t a credible threat to Key Biscayne. US forces swept the Venezuelan military and Cuban mercenaries out of their way in minutes. Russia has no permanent military assets in the Western hemisphere. China’s Belt and Road initiatives in Latin America are an economic challenge, but Latin Americans seem disposed to going back to US aligned right-wing tinpot dictatorships without US military intervention. Americans have forgotten their own historical response to colonialism.
A very recent read from Renegade Resources (The Venezuelan Oil Narative is PURE THEATRE Tracy (Chi) Jan 03, 2026) is a fascinating read that presents some good arguments.
(Which I really should have referenced in my original response to your comment.)
I read it. I did my time in the intelligence community and still spend time there. The article is nonsense. The key to understanding all this is the Mafia, not the Joint Chiefs.
You have to understand understand the mind of a mobster. They have no interest in producing anything ever. But they understand extraction. It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done. Slum lords, casino operators, pimps, oil landsmen, priests, all the same animal. My life has brought me into contact, even into doing business with all of them. Parasites, not producers. Sucking money out of the ground is so them. Trump thinks all Exxon has to do is install pumps because he’s a moron.
Ericsson tried to get me to work for them in Venezuela. Venezuelan gangsters were sabotaging their cell towers. They’d send out a tech, the gangsters would kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Usually $150k. Ericsson would pay it, they’d release the tech unharmed. Rinse, repeat. The Venezuelan government then sent soldiers along with them, but eventually the soldiers went into business with the gangsters for a cut of the ransom. Eventually no technicians would work in Venezuela for any amount of money. The same happened to the mining folks that went to Afghanistan to go after the 2.5TUSD in rare earths there. The Afghans sabotaged everything, Blew up ore trucks. we couldn’t get so much as a plane load out. That’s why we packed it in and left. But we always have idiots like Bush oil guy) and Trump (casino and slum lord mobster) that think the next time we attempt colonial extraction will go differently. I strongly doubt Venezuela will go differently, but we’re clearly gonna try.
However, Greenland I think may well be irresistable because it actually could go differently. There are only about 70,000 people there that we can quickly exile at gunpoint. A brigade can do it in a month. No military will make a move to stop us. It’s estimated that Greenland’s rare earths can supply up to 25% of the global demand. So instead of China controlling 97% of the rare earth supply our Techbros need for their a AI driven technofascist revolution, we’ll dig it out of Greenland’s ice. Nobody will prevent it. And instead of paying Denmark of Greenlanders for it, we can just steal it. No mobster like Trump is going to walk away from that.
And here’s the fun part. On January 15th the world will buy a new Round of US Treasury binds, financing the US military industrial complex that we’re being driven down by Trump and Silicon Valley. Because everything, always, is about money, who has it, who wants it, what they’re willing to do to get it, and how they will use it when they have it. Like this guy:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/chinese-billionaires-surrogacy-pregnancy-7fdfc0c3?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqevHV56kI36rEEPHTFpF7WiipRalHvJDyvLviA2Lm_OiR7IMDFwzO1clR2iQEA%3D&gaa_ts=695d4904&gaa_sig=CImQML6fVSmu-EtREGAjfCZoUXdqLlcCS1uwv8x8OoW_B-DzXMuhtSDBMbTDDx1iBZF8jziFiUbjG4frtBWnPQ%3D%3D
And whether it happens now, next year, of three years from now, if the GOP controls America (assuming we even still have representative government, which I do not assume) or if J.D. Vance and his Techbros implement their “Technofascist State”, we will get around to taking Venezuelan oil, and Columbian oil, and Ecuadorian oil, and Brasilian oil. Because that’s what colonial empires do. Who’s gonna stop it? Hakeem Jeffries? Chuck Schumer? The 77 million morons who chose this because they thought “The Apprentice” was real?
Interesting take. Regarding this:
"No military will make a move to stop us. It’s estimated that Greenland’s rare earths can supply up to 25% of the global demand. So instead of China controlling 97% of the rare earth supply our Techbros need for their a AI driven technofascist revolution, we’ll dig it out of Greenland’s ice. Nobody will prevent it. And instead of paying Denmark of Greenlanders for it, we can just steal it. No mobster like Trump is going to walk away from that."
The issue with rare earths (and other such critical materials) is not really access to the materials / minerals themselves (there is plenty outside of China - both in the US and with US allies), it's the manufacturing and processing of such materials / minerals that China has (because the West abandoned it and left it to China).
Nonetheless, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
From what I understand, over 60 countries did NOT recognize Maduro's reign and considered him illegitimate.
There have been sanctions placed against Venezuela and Maduro broke those sanctions by selling oil to Russia and China to fund his illegal reign. None of the money was going to the people.
Trump arrested him based on a Grand Jury trial that was held in the US to stand trial.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans around the WORLD (including personal friends of mine) are cheering Trump for his act.
I think the people with Trump Derangement Syndrome really need a breather (not you, but those that are so highly critical of Trump that they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Understanding someone raised with mobsters is simple. Think like you’re a wannabe John Gotti. You want to rob a bank, or even another mob boss. Your crew has more hitters and more guns than anyone, but you still want easy scores that cost you the least. So you negotiate with some businesses for a cut of their action in exchange for letting them to continue operating (what Rubio said we’d do about the Maduro regime yesterday). You blackmail others, maybe kidnap someone they value. But hitting someone that can’t fight back is the ideal. What mobster can resist that? Maybe Trump will settle with Denmark, maybe not, but we’re getting those rare earths because the Techbros he’s surrounded with are convinced we gotta have them and they’ve convinced him. And they also have this fantasy of turning Greenland into technofascist utopia, as nutty as that sounds.
What’s truly “deranged”, by any objective American standard, is a press conference where an (already openly corrupt) president says “we will run” Venezuela after invading with no allied or Congressional input, asserting their popular democratically elected leader won’t be allowed to lead, so he can make oil deals with what remains of Maduro’s corrupt partners in crime, apparently. It’s easy to say “good on Trump” for ousting Maduro, also willfully short-sited. Considering the massive crypto bribery scheme he’s running, handing over proprietary tech to Saudi and China, and of course the corrupt pardon of the Honduran drug lord for having American oligarch connections. It isn’t derangement to be extremely wary of this President, it’s an understandable American reaction.
It has been reported that it’s the minerals, including gold, iron ore, bauxite, coal, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements. Also, large reserves of natural gas. The Trump sons are reportedly already setting up a company to assist corporations in extracting these minerals?