Donald Trump says Nicolás Maduro and wife will be taken to New York after being captured during US attack on Venezuela
Donald Trump has saidthe US “captured” Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew them out of the South American country during a pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region.
“It was a brilliant operation, actually,” the US president told the New York Times after witnesses in Venezuela reported a series of explosions. “A lot of good planning and [a] lot of great, great troops and great people.”
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said the couple would face criminal charges and trial in the US based on a 2020 New York indictment. In a social media post, she said they would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts”. [ . . . ]
There is growing rot at the top of our system. And its stench can no longer be ignored
By Robert Reich
Friends,
Ten months of this shit. Enough to make one scream, run stark naked in the streets, mount a revolution.
But we have to play the long game. In that long game, America learns from this catastrophe — and turns those lessons into laws, rules, and norms that prevent this from ever happening again.
Much has been revealed lately, both about Trump and the rot at the top of our system.
Trump’s attempted cover-up of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has riveted the nation’s attention to the moral depravity of many rich and powerful men who raped children, with impunity.
Trump’s celebration of the Saudi crown prince who ordered the brutal killing of a Washington Post reporter has shown the moral vacuity of the CEOs who flocked to the White House dinner to honor the prince because they want his investments.
Trump’s blatant threats against corporate media whose journalists ask him hard questions and whose comedians ridicule him — and media executives’ chickenshit, obsequious responses to those threats — are exposing the dangers of giant media corporations controlling our access to the truth.
Trump’s wheeling and dealing with tech company oligarchs are revealing the cozy, incestuous ways wealth and power are concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
Trump’s acceptance of gifts, bribes, payoffs, kickbacks, and perks from those seeking handouts shows how a demagogue cashes in on his power.
His awards of pardons, government contracts, regulatory exemptions, tax subsidies, and lower tariffs to those who bribe him reveal how an authoritarian builds power through favors.
His uses of criminal investigations, tax audits, regulatory enforcement, withholding of government funds, and vicious public smears exhibit how a neofascist punishes opponents.
None of this is entirely new to American politics, but it has never happened on this scale — or with this much shameless abandon.
Most average working Americans abide by laws and norms. Most are kind and decent.
But there is growing rot at the top of our system. And its stench can no longer be ignored.
It’s the essence of Trump and his regime. It’s also, sadly, the moral squalor of too many rich and powerful Americans.
Playing the long game requires that the rest of us learn from this revolting era — learn why the wealthy and powerful must be constrained, and learn how to constrain them.
Learn what integrity requires at the highest reaches of our government, in the c-suites of our corporations, in our universities, law firms, nonprofits, and media.
Learn that the most significant divide in America is not between the left and the right but between the bottom and the top — between the vast majority of Americans without wealth or power, and a tiny minority holding most all of it.
And resolve to prevent such moral rot from ever again taking over our nation.
Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.
Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.
Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.
And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”
Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.
Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about.”
Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.
Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.
It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.
Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.
According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.
But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.
Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump’s demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.
