President Trump’s words seldom reveal much truth. He’s attached to the moment without future or past and offers his wishes and desires as if they were factual. It’s a psychological issue whether he knows that what he’s saying is untrue or if he’s a kind of “method” salesman who is fully committed to his spiel. Thus, “The economy has never been better.” “Inflation isn’t real,” and “America, which was a laughingstock under Biden, is now ‘Hot’ and the envy of all.”

If his words are unreliable, his actions absolutely reveal often uncomfortable truths. In other words, pay little attention to what he says and focus on what he does. In today’s post-action news conference, Trump quickly revealed our real motive and plan. We will run the country until they’re ready to take over and choose leadership that is acceptable to us. (I’m neither kidding nor exaggerating). We will repair their oil industry and use the revenues to rebuild Venezuela, only after we repay ourselves for the repairs and make our big oil companies whole in recompense for their unremunerated nationalization. Any leftover money may go to the people.

From the very start of his seemingly irrational obsession with Venezuela and Maduro, he explained, unconvincingly, that it was about Maduro attacking us with Fentanyl, recently labeled a weapon of mass destruction. He was poisoning us just to make money. (See & Compare: Trump’s EPA delists human contribution to climate change) We had to blow up small boats powered by outboard motors, incapable of reaching our shores. We killed these people without any offers of proof. We based their death warrants on our instincts, with Minister of Bellicosity Hegseth assuring us that “We know exactly who they are and exactly what they’re doing.” We didn’t.

Then we had to get Maduro because he was mean to his own people and driving millions out of Venezuela and into Central America, Mexico and the United States. These charges were true. But hardly unique. China is pretty mean to its own people. India gets chippy towards its Muslim population. Somalia and Sudan are terrible places for all. As yes, the West Bank and Gaza suffer from both the actions and inactions of their homegrown leaders and occupiers.

Do we care? Will we bomb, invade and pretend to save them? You know the answer. NO! Why are they not filled with human beings entitled to our active concerns? Yes, of course, they are. So how do we treat them with malign neglect while pretending to care deeply about the poor, exploited people of Venezuela? Easy. They don’t have oil, and Venezuela does.

Trump denied being interested in regime change. Obviously, a false assertion. He pretended to be moved by the suffering of the people, but we might have to bomb them or invade strictly as a defensive measure against the deadly war they were waging against America and the American people.

Many smart people thought that Trump was not serious about going to war with Maduro. They thought it was only a distraction to take the focus off of Epstein, his victims and enablers. Every once in a while, someone mentioned that our ambition and animus just might have something to do with oil. But Trump denied this. Even after hijacking an oil tanker in the Caribbean and saying that we now owned its cargo of crude, people thought that Trump was bluffing and blustering. Seems he wasn’t.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the continent. It did have a thriving oil industry—largely dominated by American interests. But then Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry and quickly drove it into failure. This was due partly to the inability of his socialism to run the industry, but also because, without American expertise and spare parts, the industry had to fall into disrepair and stagnation.

Now, however, all is no longer lost. We have come running, flying and bombing to their rescue. We bombed their small craft, which made them deploy their forces away from their cities and into the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Last night, we sent over 150 aircraft to carry out Operation Absolute Resolve. We started by taking out their anti-aircraft defenses and drew their human assets to their military staging areas, leaving the Capitol and the Presidential Palace virtually defenseless. Credit where it’s due, this was very well planned, thought out and achieved its immediate goals.

The problem is that though this stage was successful, this was the relatively easy part. We invaded Iraq twice and always won the battle, but could not establish any kind of peace. We are very good at breaking things. Building societies, governments, and democracies is difficult, and our record, however well-meaning we might be, is not promising. Now, with Nicolas Maduro and his wife gone, around whom will we choose to build a democracy? And, why would we imagine that it is our choice to make? We did not do well at choosing the Shah over Mossadegh in Iran, Diem over Nhu in Vietnam, and Pinochet over Allende in Chile. Given our actual free election of Trump twice, we may not be competent to choose our own leadership, no less another country’s leader.

As of this moment, we do not know what Trump means by asserting that “we will run Venezuela.” Who is the “we?” Is it the remains of Maduro’s crooked regime and his Vice President Delcy Rodriguez? Or maybe it should be from the opposition and be the Nobel Prize-winning Maria Machado, or possibly the real winner of the last election, Edmundo Gonzales. If we go with Maduro’s VP, it might be payback for some clear cooperation we received from the inside in deposing Maduro.
Trump has been led to believe that this will not be another forever war, and we will not get bogged down. He may actually believe that we can rebuild their oil industry unmolested by various militant dissidents. This is a form of wishful thinking and denial.

Our efforts, whether sincere or cynical, will likely take their place in the Great Pantheon of Broken Dreams alongside his peace deals with Pakistan and India, Thailand and Cambodia, Ethiopia and Egypt, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the entire Middle East.

Trump, who promised no more wars and campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, has come to the world stage in Trump 2.0 with both rhetorical and real guns blazing. He campaigns for peace and pursues war, threatens sovereign countries and makes the Democrats’ version of being the “Policemen to the World” look modest. He promises violence to the West Bank, Gaza, Iran and our own cities.
If his policies are against the interests of our nation, they are also against his own. Democrats will not support his violence nor his disregard for our Congress. Many MAGA folk believed his America First pledges of peace. They will abandon him. He is losing his hold on his formerly loyal by first confusing them and now betraying them.

His loyalty is not to those below him but to his billionaire bosses, whose respect he hopes to earn with his craven capitulation to their economic agenda. They will never respect one who serves them. He has certainly enriched himself and his family, but not sufficiently to be treated as anything but a poseur and loser.

All his gold-plated graffiti and renamed buildings will quickly be erased by the next government—even if it’s Republican. No one will remember him fondly. His loyal subjects of today will deny knowing him and assert that they were really in the underground, only pretending to go along to save our nation. They too will decompose in the dustbin of history.