Dear Everybody:
The big news today was of course reaction to Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, but now the focus has shifted to his announcing that we will "run" the country:
--George Sephanopoulos: "Trump said the US is going to ‘run Venezuela.’ Under what legal authority?" Marco Rubo: "We want a better future for the people of Venezuela." Stephanopoulos: "I’ll ask again--what is the legal authority?" Rubio: "We have court orders."
--Secrets and Laws; "The President is relying on the same legal theory for attacking Venezuela as he is for deploying US troops in American cities. Let that sink in."
--Trump doesn’t really plan to overthrow the corrupt government of Venezuela. Maduro’s vice-president has now taken over and is almost as bad as he is. And it doesn’t look like she’s going to be willing to cooperate with Trump. In her first televised speech after the attack, she said, "If there’s something that the Venezuelan people and the country know very clearly, we will never return to being slaves." (Trump has now said the vice-president of Venezuela will not be running things because she isn’t "sufficiently popular.")
--Trump is using as a legal basis for his actions a memo that declared the drug cartels operating from Venezuela to be unlawful combatants and has said the United States is now in an "armed conflict" with them."
--Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a briefing Saturday that because of the nature of the surprise operation, it was not something that could be shared beforehand with lawmakers.
--George Stephanopoulos: "In your view, who is running Venezuela right now?" Chuck Schumer: "Nobody knows."
--George Stephanopoulos to Marco Rubio: "Are you running Venezuela right now" Rubio: "George, I’ll explain again that the leverage we have here is the leverage of the quarantine. That is a Department of War operation."
--Rick Wilson: "’We’re going to run the country.’ I’ve seen this movie before."
--MikefromOrland: "Does anyone with common sense think he and his administration have a well-thought-out and deeply discussed plan for this?"
--George Stephanopoulos: "But how does the United States intend to secure the oil fields? Won’t that take US troops?" Rubio: "Well, ultimately, this is not about securing the oil fields."
--AP: "The memo appears to represent an extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers, with Trump effectively declaring that trafficking of drugs into the US amounts to armed conflict requiring the use of military force. That is a new rationale for past and future actions."
--The New York Times and the Washington Post were informed of the attack beforehand but decided not to publish anything "to protect the troops."
--House Speaker Mike Johnson said the administration is "working to schedule briefings" for lawmakers next week, long after the fact. The Senate is expected to vote this week on a bipartisan war powers resolution that would block using US forces against Venezuela unless authorized by Congress.
--Trump: "Cuba, as you know, is not doing very well right now. That system has not been a very good one for Cuba. The people there have suffered for many, many years, and I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation right now, very badly failing, and we want to help the people." (Translation: We’re invading them next.)
--JD Vance came up with an entirely new rationale for the invasion, saying it was to get back "expropriated American oil property" which Venezuela was using to get rich and fund their narcoterrorist activities. "I understand the anxiety over the use of military force, but are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing? Great powers don’t act like that. The United States, thanks to President Trump’s leadership, is a great power again. Everyone should take note." (That’s a threat, in case you didn’t notice.)
--Trump: "We have to do it again. We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."
--Stephen Miller’s wife posted a map of Greenland painted like a US flag in red, white, and blue, with the caption, "SOON!"
People have now also had time to analyze what’s happened and to respond:
--Keith Olbermann: "Without any Congressional consent, Trump did this--anyway from inside his madness, from within his monomaniacal delusional fog--without any right to do so. Without any legal right THERE and without any legal right HERE. On his own. Without congressional approval. Without the nation’s approval. Without the nation;s approval. Without even the flimsiest of the fig leaves of democracy. Without any international consensus. Without any concern for the consequences. Without any consideration of the precedent he provides China in Taiwan and Russia in Poland and any other tyrannical bandit nation anywhere in this world. And we, thanks to Trump, we--the United States of America--are now that tyrannical bandit nation."
--Rachel Maddow: "There are very few Americans right now who have any idea why the United States did this. If this was about drug trafficking, then why did President Trump just pardon the former President of Honduras who was convicted of sending hundreds of tons of drugs into the US?"
--Stuart Stevens: "So, in 2026, the United States can hold a foreign president responsible for breaking US law but not an American president. Interesting."
--Palmer Report: "Trump’s babysitters picked right now to invade Venezuela for obvious reasons. The media and the public are finally figuring out that Trump is a goner health-wise. Trump’s big interview about his health only made the story worse for him. The deadline for releasing the Trump-Epstein files is upon us. Even though Trump has been back in office for less than a year, he’s running out of time. It was now or never."
--Welsey Beaver: "Check out history. Notice how many wars of conquest are started by dying, old men."
--teemike: How do we ‘run’ Venezuela with not a single boot on the ground?...Big Oil will demand protection from the cops, military, and the gangs before they swoop in and ‘take back’ the oil that rightly belongs to the Venezuelan people, so what will Trump do, threaten them? It’s gonna take tens of thousands of boots on the ground, and the American people are NOT on board with that!"
--Heather Cox Richardson said Politico is reporting that oil companies are leery of Trump’s plan of them investing billions of dollars to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry. "They say they have no idea how badly the infrastructure has decayed and little interest in investing when it is not clear who will be running the country in the future. The administration has failed to reach out to oil executives with a long-term plan,’ experts told the journalists. One source said it ‘feels very much a shoot-ready-aim exercise."
--Dem Texas State Rep James Talarico: "Last year Trump promised American oil executives ‘a great deal’ if they donated $1 billion dollars to his campaign. Today he ‘gave’ them Venezuela, home to the largest oil reserves in the world. This new war is not only illegal and reckless, it’s deeply corrupt."
--Uncomfortable: "The whole sham relies on Trump’s lawless regime staying in power long enough for the oil companies to pump a profit out of the ground. Seeing as it will take a full decade of investment to rebuild the infrastructure, I doubt any smart money is interested."
--hlrnn_story: "Pro tip. Multinational corporations like stability. This is anything but."
--Chris Whitbread: "This is essentially another Iraq. The difference is, in Iraq, Bush Jr. had a decent amount (initially) of credibility and popularity (deserved or not) following 9/11. As well, he actually had competent advisors and realized he wasn’t the smartest person in the room. Trump is already unpopular. His MAGA fans don’t like foreign wars. His advisors are all incompetent sycophants. And Trump thinks he’s always the smartest person in the room."
--Kertu: "The military went along with obviously illegal and unethical orders. That scares the spit out of me."
--Ray Shelton: "This is all for the top 1%’s benefit, with the risk of terrorist attacks on home soil in retaliation (a repeat of quickly forgotten recent history.)"
--Uncomfortable: "The consequences of this idiotic clusterfuck are only just beginning. Trump just opened a big old can of worms, and my money says he doesn’t have the attention span to control where this is all going. This is going to be a real problem for the GOP as we head into midterm campaign season."
And invading Venezuela has not caused the issue of Trump’s condition to go away at all:
--At his press conference, he slurred and had problems pronouncing "jurisdiction"--we’re going to be judishush...judish...we’re all about judiciousnesh..."-- and "Venezuela," and he went off on strange meanders about the room he was in while the attack was taking place and the "Donroe Document...Doctrine."
--ChrisWhitbread: "I heard some of Trump’s speech to reporters on the news...OMG, he was repeating himself and sounded almost like he was slurring his words."
--Sir Les Patterson: "Whatever stimulants they had pumped him full of had definitely worn off by the time of that press conference."
--Niblet58: "Sundowning. He was swaying with his eyes closed during the press conference and was barely awake when he was talking."
One of the stories Trump’s invasion knocked off the front page was Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress:
--On Wednesday, House Republicans finally released the long-awaited transcript of Jack Smith’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee. It was released on New Year’s Eve, a time when politicians release documents to bury them, and many experts considered the timing suspicious.
--Here’s some of what Jack Smith said in his testimony: He said, "We would have secured convictions at trial." He described the evidence against Trump and his allies as powerful. "Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of he 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power."
--Smith: "The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of our evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat."
--When Jamie Raskin asked Smith whether he thought the Supreme Court’s decision granting Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution while in office exonerated Trump’s actions on January 6, Smith answered with one word: "No." He said he didn’t think it was an exoneration "because I still believed that there was substantial evidence that would allow us to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt."
--Smith: "The attack that happened at the Capitol...does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit."
--Smith: "Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents."
--Smith: "I am eyes wide open that this President will seek retribution against me if he can. I know that."
--Smith said his investigation included members of Congress who helped Trump in his scheme to overthrow the election. "Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I did not choose those Members, President Trump did."
--Smith: "We had also interviewed Boris Epshteyn...He corroborated that they were, in fact, trying to call senators. He dissembled and tried to imply that the president hadn’t directed him to doit, even though there was a text message saying specifically that they had."
--Smith: "I think people who know me and have known my reputation would know that that would not end well if someone tried to pressure me to move a case in one direction or the other that wasn’t supported by the law. I wouldn’t stand for it, and I would also say the people who worked in my office wouldn’t stand for that either."
--MuellerSheWrote: "Half way through the Jack Smith transcript, and it’s become abundantly clear why Jim Jordan didn’t want public testimony. Jordan spends a lot of time whining about the toll subpoenas, and Jack Smith shuts him down every time."
--Jack Smith was asked why he had obtained subpoenas for the phone records of members of Congress, including Jordan’s toll records, and then was sorry he’d asked. Smith said he felt Jordan’s phone records were crucial because Jordan called the White House on January 6 while scared out of his mind. "And what I recall was Mark Meadows stating that ‘I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,’ and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was."
--George Conway: "The President of the United States is a criminal. Thank you for your service, Jack Smith."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers; "In case you were wondering, Jack Smith’s testimony was the OPPOSITE of "total exoneration."
--rugbymom: "I hope every SCOTUS judge has to read and watch the whole thing and wonder what the heck they did with their immunity decision and with their other rulings that delayed and diverted the Special Counsel’s work, preventing a trial that should have taken well before the 2024 elections. And their ruling saying Colorado had to put him on the 2024 ballot despite his obvious participation in an insurrection. I also hope every GOP Senator who voted ‘no’ on the second impeachment also has to read and watch the whole thing, and think about how well ‘let the criminal courts take care of it’ didn’t age. Lots of repentance (and shaming) needed."
--Vicki M: "What stands out from the testimony is that whenever a member of Congress or staff questioned him about the facts or the law regarding prosecuting Trump for his criminal actions...his simple ‘yes’ is telling."
--MuellerSheWrote: "My main takeaway from the Jack Smith testimony: we should push our presidential candidate to make him Attorney General in 2029."
--(Note: The second volume of Jack Smith’s investigation is still under seal, thanks to Judge Aileen Cannon, so he was not able to testify to any of the material in there.)
In other news:
--The DOJ sued Illinois Governor JB Pritzker over the new state laws aimed at protecting immigrants at courthouses, hospitals, and daycares.
--Trump’s latest fundraising email asks supporters to check a box to "SUPPORT MAGA in this DO-OR-DIE battle." The fine print: checking the box automatically adds an extra $3,300 donation on 12/31. Did you get that? AN EXTRA $3,300 DONATION YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE SIGNING UP FOR.
--Stephen Miller was named The New Republic’s 2025 Scoundrel of the Year.
In good news:
--A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot lapse in its funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
--A federal judge in California voided the Trump administration’s move to terminate the temporary protected status of roughly 60,000 immigrants from Honduras, Nepal, and Honduras. The judge said the reason he ruled to protect them was the statements made by Trump and DHS head Kristi Noem portraying immigrants as criminals and a drain on US society: "These statements reflect a stereotyping of the immigrants protected under the TPS program as criminal invaders and perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population."
--The extremely right-wing Cardinal Dolan (he called Charlie Kirk "a modern-day St. Paul") has turned 75, the mandatory age for cardinals, so he’s having to retire, and the Pope has replaced him with a more progressive, Spanish speaking bishop in New York named Ronald Hicks.
Best summing up of the situation, from Keith Olbermann: "Maduro has no moral right to continue as president of Venezuela, and Trumphas no moral right to act upon that by himself."
Best comment of the day, from Charlie Sykes: "The most dangerous Trump is a wartime Trump."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis