No, Trump didn’t say he was invading Venezuela
The internet is freaking out because the President said that he wasn’t ruling out military options in regards to Venezuela. That is to say, that he’s probably not ruling out military options in regards to Belize or Belgium, either. We don’t have problems with Belize or Belgium, but, you can bet that if there were problems, there is probably a plan for a military option in some file cabinet in the Pentagon somewhere.
But, back to Venezuela, the Washington Post wrote;
Late Friday, the White House announced that Maduro had requested a phone call with Trump that day and that Trump had turned him down, saying that he will not speak to the leader until “democracy is restored in that country.”
“Since the start of this Administration, President Trump has asked that Maduro respect Venezuela’s constitution, hold free and fair elections, release political prisoners, cease all human rights violations, and stop oppressing Venezuela’s great people,” the White House said in a statement late Friday night. “The Maduro regime has refused to heed this call, which has been echoed around the region and the world. Instead Maduro has chosen the path of dictatorship.”
CNN records the Venezuelan response;
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino called Trump’s talk of possible military action a “crazy act.”
“As Minister of Defense and as a citizen I say this is a crazy act, an act of supreme extremism,” Padrino said via phone on state-owned television network VTV.
“There is an extremist elite in the US government,” he added, “and I really don’t know what is happening and what will happen in the world. If humanity will end. If planet Earth will end.”The president of Venezuela’s new Constituent Assembly — the controversial body elected to rewrite the Venezuelan Constitution amid the country’s political crisis — fired off a series of tweets late Friday slamming Trump’s remarks as “cowardly, insolent and vile threats.”
Yeah, the Venezuela Bolivarian government has been hoping for a US invasion since the GWB/Chavez years – something that they can blame their troubles on besides their empty socialist ideology.
The Pentagon isn’t admitting that they’ve made preparations to invade Venezuela. I’m sure they have a plan, somewhere that they can dust off and put into the works.
What the Trump administration has done is slap sanctions on Venezuela when Maduro held suspicious elections to replace the opposition legislature with 500 of his supporters. That and he wouldn’t take Maduro’s phone call. Hardly a warning for war.
Category: Foreign Policy
Bingo, Jonn.
I don’t recall hearing that we’d ruled out military operations anywhere in the world should they become necessary.
And last time I checked, a NEO is a military operation.
Where is Sean Penn when you need experts on socialism to rescue these poor schmucks from themselves? No worry, I’m sure our resident expert in all things anti western civilization will pop on in and settle it once and for all. After all all these socialists know exactly how to make it work but somehow never actually get it to work.
I just put on my most fashionable military field jacket with numerous pieces of resist flare to show my brothers and sisters freedom fighters that this facisim will not be tolerated. You can join me at the local Starbucks and we can slam poetry or feelings about nazi cheeto skin dictator. This is a safe space and hug session after.
Please don’t summon ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’.
It’s much too early to be subjected to his shrill Marxist drivel.
I second that, PUH-LEEZE don’t conjure the goblin!
Beetlejuice! 🙂
It’s Betelgeuse, I have no idea where the name came from, but it is about ready to go supernova and currently has a mass about 530 times the mass of the Sun.
It is the upper right corner of the Orion Constellation and can easily be seen with an amateur telescope.
Check it out.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Betelgeuse-star
I swear, if you numbnutses conjure up some obneksesdrell, I will hunt down every one of you and pull the hair out of your noses.
I DID tell them NOT to, Milady!!!
Yeh Sean Penn the A.H. was down there kissing chavez’s ass left and right….guess he really loves communism now!!
Nahhhh.
In that -particular- endeavor, he is -definitely- “middle of the road”.
Since WHEN has Socialism ever succeeded?
Someone once tried to tell me that a successful marriage was socialism in microcosm. I asked if he’d ever been married. Can you guess the answer?
Ben Shapiro is married with kids and uses the analogy that marriage is the only place socialism works. 🙂
I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree. Even in a marriage, socialism still doesn’t work as advertised.
I believe he was speaking tongue in cheek, not inviting literal analysis. 🙂 lighten up
Apologies, thought I was being fairly light with it.
Trump doesn’t NEED to send troops to venezuela…the unwashed crowds are pissed enough now, all they need are some weapons! I am all in favor of arming them!
What’s a successful marriage?
That is a union in which neither person kills the other unnecessarily.
Who defines “unnecesarily” 😉
There’s a really purty picture in BBC News of Maduro all beribboned up, appearing before his new government suckups. I’ll bet that necklace he’s wearing cost a small fortune and could feed half of Caracas for a year.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40906290
I’m trying to find out if Maduro has defaulted on the interest payment of $251 million due this past week on loans he took out. If he has defaulted, oops!!!
I’m suprised that the internet and media hasn’t gone crazy over the possibility of the U.S. invading Ming The Merciless’s planet Mongo for causing Global Warming. and high Moon tides in Miami, Fl.
SOCIALISM, an idea so terrific it must be forced upon a population at gun point!
“I risked my life crossing ninety miles of shark-infested waters to flee from Capitalism ” SAID NO ONE EVER.
I’m not seeing any information about Maduro defaulting yet, just the speculation from 8/7/2017 that he may do so.
If/when it happens, and I believe it will, that could possibly cause his newly-minted dictatorship to implode.
I believe that Colombia is allowing more refugees to exit into Colombia from Venezuela, but haven’t found confirmation of that just yet beyond what BBC said last week.
Though I’m not big on the whole twitter thing, it would be funny as hell if Trump were to tweet something like “Nobody wants to invade you, you idiot.”
I’m in intermittent contact with some of the locals down there.
Conditions for the previous working class are 10x worse than the worst news report you’ve likely read. This is by design – reporters are targets of the govt.
One brave MFer, trying to look after his extended family, had this to say after I suggested covering the 10km to the coast in an attempt to fish for food (I’d instructed him on how to lay lines and make hooks due to lack of proper tackle); ‘I’d be killed by marauders in the hills on the way to the ocean or back. If they could ID me they would then immediately go to my home to ransack it and likely kill my family and sell the women as slaves’.
I’m the last guy to demand the USA go International Police (again), having had to deal with the consequences more than once when things went wrong.
But for at least the 1st year, any international force (especially any US component) would have overwhelming local support (ask The SARC the exact meaning of ‘local support’).
Those are good, decent people trapped in a nightmare. And just like the early stages of Bosnia, before the hardcore slaughter started, nobody is really doing a damn thing about it.
You’d think the 1st world would be better than this, would have learned by now.
Hell, send in Eeben Barlow and his boys to establish an enclave. They’d get the job done (like they always have), ‘old school’ style, and damn the whiners when pro-govt. thugs started getting found hanging from trees, with broken fingers and jaws.
Thank you, Sharkman. I figured that the people scrounging through trash for morsels of food were the tip of the iceberg.
Personally, I would like to sse Maduro dragged out of his office into the street and pounded, but that’s my anger speaking. If he has barred Ortega Diaz (the real AG) from leaving Venezuela, I’m guessing he’s going to have her publicly executed.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the US is in a position right now to do anything.
Is the “USA will bail you out” (direct intervention / invasion) a bad precedent to keep setting? PFDs versus swimming lessons.
I tend to think helping the locals do the jobs mostly themselves, while -much- messier, will give them something of great value that they have fought for, and thus value and fight to keep. Plus, the lesson to others elsewhere that they too can do the same. (This would be my hoped for payoff.)
We want the governments fearing their own folks, not so much us, right? Otherwise, endless fires for us to fight, often repeating.
If we do “go big”, then we need to learn the recent lessons again, and get out quickly. Win. Make the local good guys look as successful as possible. Get the heck out before we wind up in a generational commitment.
Either way: Hard goal – the Good Guys win. Hard stop – we get out as soon as the locals have the basics in hand and the upper hand. We can support logistically as long as needed.
Does that seem about right? Or am I way off?
The biggest problem with Belize is they don’t export enough Belikin Stout
“And by the way, I am not going to rule out a military option…” And Trump didn’t say he wasn’t invading Venezuela either.
Take the dick out of you racist mouth, Joe Nutsack
I see that’s all you’ve got to say after a night of downing Juicy Bananas, Joe!
And Trump didn’t say he wasn’t invading Spain either, so what’s your point?
Trump didn’t say he was invading my barrio, either, so is there any point to anything that Joey the Social Moron ever says?
I thought Joe the rock climbing hero fell off of his rock years ago and hit his head.