Katrina as in Hurricane Katrina. Garry Kasparov wrote in The Atlantic that Trump supporters like to claim that “he’s playing five-dimensional chess, only to discover too late that he has eaten half the pieces.” And it’s happening big time in Venezuela. The military mission to kidnap Maduro was brilliant. Everything else about Trump’s move on Venezuela is stupid on steroids.

On Friday trump met with the oil execs he expected to pour money and resources into revising Venezuela’s oil industry. From all reports most of them said they couldn’t commit under present circumstances. As I wrote yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported the execs “indicated they need security guarantees and an overhaul of Venezuela’s legal and commercial framework to consider diving in.” But Trump chose to leave the Chavismos in control of the government, and it’s their framework. So an overhaul is not likely to happen. And there is much speculation that most of the oil execs won’t go in without a commitment of U.S. military protection. You know, boots on the ground.

To be fair, a couple of execs — Jeff Hildebrand of Hilcorp and Bill Armstrong of Armstrong Oil and Gas (I had never heard of them, either) — gave Trump political cover by promising to invest in Venezuela. But they didn’t commit to how much, or when.

Yesterday Trump declared that Venezuela is now “rich and safe.” And yesterday the U.S. State Department warned U.S. citizens in Venezuela to get out of there, now.

The United States has urged its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately amid reports that armed paramilitaries are trying to track down US citizens, one week after the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

In a security alert sent out on Saturday, the state department said there were reports of armed members of pro-regime militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence that the occupants were US citizens or supporters of the country.

“US citizens in Venezuela should remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road,” the alert added, urging citizens to depart immediately now that some international flights from Venezuela have restarted.

So the Venezuela misadventure is likely to turn into a world-class quagmire. As always, Trump failed to grasp what it would take to bring about his goals, whatever those were. If it was really about the oil, he grossly miscalculated. If deep down he just wanted to pull off some flashy military thing to get attention, okay, he did that. And if he had any sense he’d announce that after consulting with the oil execs the oil thing is going to be postponed a few months in order to [insert excuse here]. And then when those few months have gone by maybe there will be a better excuse. Or everyone will have moved on to something else. Just leave Venezuela the bleep alone, in other words. But I expect him to keep trying to “fix” it, which will likely blow up in his face. because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Update: Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, told Trump last week (politely) that Venezuela was currently “uninvertible” and that his company required substantive reforms before investing there. Trump is now saying he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela. I doubt Mr. Woods is all that heartbroken about this.

I’m also just now hearing that the DoJ has opened a criminal investigation into Fed chair Jerome Powell. Trump is saying he knows nothing about it, which of course is a damn lie. (end of update)

But it’s worse. The Daily Mail reports that “Donald Trump has ordered his special forces commanders to draw up a plan for the invasion of Greenland – but is being resisted by senior military figures, The Mail on Sunday has learned.” The Mail is a British tabloid, and I don’t know how reliable it is. Trump has been talking a lot about the U.S. must possess Greenland, but I’m not seeing reporting about potential plans anywhere else.

But lots of media sources are reporting that Trump wants to bomb Iran. Yesterday the U.S. military did bomb Syria again. And he’s threatening Cuba to negotiate “BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”  It’s like he’s just having way too much fun being commander in chief. He can bomb anyone he wants! Maybe he’ll bomb Minnesota next!

If only we had a Congress.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. The FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from the investigation into Renee Good’s apparent murder by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, noting that Ross is innocent until proven guilty in court. But that’s not going to happen as long as Kash Patel and Trump’s girl Pam have anything to do with it. Expect the “findings” of the “investigation” to exonerate Ross and put all the blame on Good. That’s too obvious.

Two people were shot by Customs and Border agents in Portland yesterday, and as with Minneapolis there is every reason to doubt the “official” explanation. The feds are claiming the driver was an illegal alien and Tren de Aragua member who attempted to run over the agents, who were forced to shoot him (and the passenger?). This was on the campus of an office complex, so there were lots of witnesses.

A man who was at the medical building said he saw federal officers follow a Toyota truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it.

One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind him, before turning and speeding off, said the man who gave only his first name. It’s not clear if the car hit by the truck belonged to the federal officers.

Officers fired about five shots at the truck as it left, the witness said.

The two people who were shot are still hospitalized, and so far their identities have not been made public.

María Corina Machado is supposed to meet with Trump soon, next week I believe. At some point she had said something about sharing her Nobel Peace Prize with Trump. I take it he now expects her to give it to him. “… during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that aired Thursday. Trump added that he heard Machado wants to give him the prize, ‘and that would be a great honor.'” And if he gets his hands on it, she’ll never see it again. Although possessing a physical trophy (I understand it’s a gold medal) won’t make him a Nobel Laureate.

But according to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, rules forbid Machado to give someone else her prize.

A Nobel spokesperson told the Daily Beast, “A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked nor transferred to others. Once the announcement of the laureate(s) has been made, the decision stands for all time. As for the prize money, the laureate(s) are free to dispose of it as they see fit.”

Latchem [a Daily Beast reporter] notes that Nobel’s “organization’s refusal to bend its own rules” will “be a disappointment not just to Trump, but also, to some of his loyalists, who are reported to have lobbied for Machado to hand the president the prize he so covets.”

Trump is supposed to be meeting with the oil execs now, as I keyboard. MS Now reports:

President Donald Trump will meet with oil executives at the White House on Friday to pitch an ambitious goal that highlights a fundamental problem in his hopes for Venezuela’s oil industry: He wants American oil companies to invest heavily, but get lower prices for their product.

Trump’s aim is to vastly increase oil production in the country to help reduce the global price of oil to around $50 a barrel to ease costs for American consumers. But dramatically increasing oil production in Venezuela will take years, and oil companies argue that reducing the price of oil to $50 a barrel will make drilling unprofitable….

…“They’re going to rebuild the whole oil infrastructure,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Thursday night, referring to the oil companies. “They’re going to spend at least $100 billion.”

But executives have expressed deep hesitation about committing capital to a country where they previously lost billions and where profitability remains uncertain, particularly if Trump succeeds in his promise to lower global oil prices.

The piece goes on to say that Trump appears to believe “that the U.S. would be able to quickly generate vast oil revenues in Venezuela,” like within a year or so. And nobody in the industry seems to agree with that. Venezuela has been exporting some oil, mostly to China I believe, but not quantities that anyone would get excited about.

Update: As expected, the two dozen oil execs who met with Trump were not all that fired up to go into Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal reported the execs “indicated they need security guarantees and an overhaul of Venezuela’s legal and commercial framework to consider diving in.”

This is from the New York Times:

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said at the meeting that for the company to return to Venezuela it would need “durable investment protections.”

“We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes,” Mr. Woods said. “Today it’s uninvestable.”

In other Trump business news, it was widely anticipated the SCOTUS would release its opinion on Trump’s tariffs today. But it isn’t. The Court is expected to release more rulings on Wednesday, January 14.

Yesterday the House passed a bill to extend the ACA enhanced subsidies for three years, with 17 Republicans voting with the Democrats. It now goes to the Senate, where nothing is certain. I notice my rep. Mike Lawler is among the 17 Republicans.

And yesterday the Senate voted to put limits on future Trump military actions in Venezuela. If they were smart they’d extend that limit to the rest of the planet. Make it clear he has no authority to so much as send a soldier out to pick up pizza without congressional approval. Because he’s not going to stop. He thinks he has absolute power.

Paul Krugman is on a roll. See The Mad King’s Madness Deepens.

And there’s a song already.

And in case any of you missed it, here is the NY Times analysis of the Minnesota shooting that uncledad linked to in comments yesterday. It’s very helpful.

I wonder if Kristi Gnome and Trump were even aware that this video was all over cable news and social media already when they released their statements about what happened. The Gnome’s description of what happened bore no resemblance whatsoever to the video, and millions of people likely had already seen the video. And of course Trump’s claim that an ICE agent had been “run over” was downright hallucinatory.

Yesterday seemed like an inflection point to me, but we’ll see.

Trump chose yesterday to ask  Congress to add another half trillion dollars to the defense budget, to bring it to $1.5 trillion.

The president provided few details in his post on Truth Social, other than to say the money would pay for his “Dream Military.” Trump did suggest that tariff revenues could cover the increase, but even if he managed to circumvent Congress’ constitutionally mandated power over spending, existing tariff collections would still be several hundred billion short of what the president plans to ask for.

While finding half-a-trillion dollars in new spending would prove difficult, Trump and some congressional Republicans appeared confident they could do so. The budget reached $1 trillion this year thanks to $150 billion in new money Congress voted to pour into Pentagon coffers via a reconciliation bill, although much of that will be spread out over the next five years on various long-term projects.

This is just ridiculous. But it ties into Paul Krugman’s column today, titled The Looting of U.S. Foreign Policy.  He starts out talking about Trump’s oil grabbing plans in Venezuela, which seem mostly about enriching Trump and his clique, and then writes this:

I use the word “clique” advisedly. That’s the term used by the political scientists Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman in a recent paper titled “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System.”

Goddard and Newman have received well-deserved attention for their analysis, which states that Americans should stop believing that U.S. foreign policy serves U.S. national interests. Instead, they argue, we must recognize that in many ways we’ve been transported back to the 16^th century – a time before nation-states existed, when international affairs were a game played by dynasties serving their interests.

Thus, the Italian Wars of the 16^th century weren’t a fight between France and Spain, they were a contest for dominance between the House of Valois and the Habsburgs. Similarly, Goddard and Newman argue that Trumpist foreign policy has nothing to do with, well, making America great again, and everything to do with raising the wealth and status of the Trump family and its hangers-on — what they call our ruling clique.

As Goddard and Newman point out, U.S. foreign policy over the past year makes no sense if interpreted through the lens of national interest. How can it serve U.S. interests to insult and demean Canada, which has been an utterly reliable ally? Why would a U.S. president talk about seizing Greenland, which belongs to another ally, Denmark, and is a place where America already has a military base and can do whatever it considers necessary to protect our national security?

But the Trump clique doesn’t care whether nations have been staunch allies of the United States. They want subservient clients paying tribute, not to America, but to them personally. And that’s something democracies like Canada and Denmark won’t do.

Of course. Now that Krugman points it out, it seems to obvious. Krugman goes on to say that this is why Trump has no interest in restoring democratic government to Venezuela. A corrupt autocracy can be bullied into paying protection money to him. A democracy won’t do that.

According to a December report in The National Interest (an ironic name given Trump’s policies) moving a carrier group to the Caribbean cost around $600 million. In addition, the ongoing operational costs are $6.5 million per day, which have been accumulating since late October/early November. Add in the cost of munitions expended during the Maduro abduction, and the whole adventure has surely cost more than a billion dollars. Moreover, the meter keeps ticking: since Chavistas are still in power, Trump has to keep forces nearby in order to intimidate them to honor agreements. But Trump doesn’t care: The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

The bottom line is that to understand what Trump is doing around the world you must disabuse yourself of the notion that any of it is about serving America. It’s all about glorifying himself and enriching his clique.

He’s not just looting Venezuela. He’s looting American taxpayers and using taxpayer-funded resources like the U.S. military to carry out looting to benefit himself and his cronies. The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

Likewise, ICE is obviously not about making America safer. It’s about making America intimidated. We’ll be more compliant if we’re all afraid.

And I see that Trump’s talk about taking over Greenland is being taken very seriously now.

Yesterday Trump floated the idea of canceling the midterms and then said he wouldn’t do it. Of course not. If he can stir up enough violence and unrest in the U.S. maybe he can use that as an excuse. Constitutionally he has no authority to cancel elections, nor does Congress. Elections are run by the states. But if he could set up a scenario in which some red states did cancel elections he might go to court and say the election results are invalid because some states didn’t participate. I think we need to get ahead of this. But I’m not sure how.

An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minnesota today. Immediately Kristi Gnome claimed the woman was a domestic terrorist who was trying to ram ICE agents with her car. Already Gov. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor have both seen a video of the incident and say the video doesn’t show the agent being threatened.  We also have an eyewitness account:

Emily Heller lives near 33rd and Portland and said she woke up to a commotion outside her home. She said she saw a car blocking traffic on Portland Avenue that appeared to be part of a protest against federal law enforcement operations.

Heller said she heard ICE agents telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here.”

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller said.

Heller said it appeared the woman then accelerated and traveled about 100 feet before striking a utility pole and some other vehicles. She could be seen slumped over inside her car.

It may be a while before all the details are public. But we already know that from now on all the MAGAts will defend the ICE shooter and say he was acting in self defense, Just like George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse. And the dead woman was terrorist libtard scum. Same old same old.

I just watched a video of the incident taken on a bystander’s phone. I don’t know if this is the same video Walz and Frey saw or not. It seems obvious the woman was trying to turn away from the ICE agents and get away from them. I didn’t see any ICE agent in danger, unless there was one crouching in front of her car so he couldn’t be seen. You can see it here, starting at about 1:50.

The Gnome says that the shooting victim was a domestic terrorist. I say the Gnome has led a sheltered life.

Trump appears to be very pleased with himself over his Venezuela adventure, meaning he hasn’t yet grasped what a mess he gotten himself (and us) into. I found this at Axios this morning:

President Trump said Monday the U.S. may subsidize oil companies’ efforts to rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure in a project he estimated could take less than 18 months. …

…The president argued that having access to Venezuela’s oil would allow supply to flow more freely, bringing prices down in the U.S.

Trump has claimed Venezuelan officials stole U.S. oil assets when the country nationalized the industry, though experts say the situation is complex.

He has said the U.S. would restore Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and compensate American companies that lost out in the seizures.

Trump always underestimates how complicated the world is and how difficult fixing a problem will be. Everything I’m reading says that getting Venezuela’s infrastructure up to speed will take “years,” or “several years,” or possibly “a decade.” And the cost will be massive. (See Rebuilding Venezuelan oilfields won’t be easy or cheap, analysts say, by Ben German at Axios.) Trump’s story about how the oil companies might be reimbursed keeps changing. Oil companies lost billions of dollars when Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and sent the oil companies packing. Trump sometimes makes noises about the U.S. reimbursing them for that loss, which makes no sense to me. Or sometimes he talks about compensating them for rebuilding the infrastructure now. There’s every reason to fear this project could take a big hit on U.S. taxpayers.

But there’s currently something of an oil glut that’s expected to continue for a while. Even if the Venezuelan oil industry could be optimized in a few, or several, years, will there be a market for the oil then? At a price that would make the investment worthwhile? And will Venezuela benefit from any of this? See Trump says he’ll unleash Venezuela’s oil. But who wants it? at Grist.

Paul Waldman writes that Trump’s Venezuela adventure is already a propaganda disaster. Nobody speaking for the Trump Administration seems to be on the same message regarding Venezuela. For that matter, Trump himself seems to change the story by the hour. Beyond his general notion that U.S. oil companies will get Venezuela’s oil production up to speed, there are countless details up in the air about how that’s going to happen. And who is really running Venezuela? One minute Trump says he is; another minute the existing government is still in charge but will be coerced into meeting U.S. expectations, somehow. Waldman writes,

Nevertheless, the incoherence of the Trump administration’s communication suggests that what happens next in Venezuela will be an unfolding series of screwups. If these clowns can’t even get the American public to support a war, do we really think they’ll be able to manage an infinitely more difficult task of nation-building?

Assuming they are planning any nation-building, of course. I’m not sure they are.

See also Greg Sargent, Trump Blurts Out Dark Truth About Venezuela Plan—and About MAGA Voters.

… note that most analysis of Trump’s plans for Venezuela has proceeded on two tracks. One of them, as Seva Gunitsky explains, posits that Trump envisions a “tripartite” division of the world, in which the U.S., Russia, and China all bless one another’s domination of their respective regions in a “hegemonic carve-up.” The other sees Trump’s action through the prism of domestic corruption: He’s turning Venezuela over to American oil companies and executives, some of whom bankrolled his reelection.

We need to put those two pieces together. Trump appears to envision something like a “hegemonic carve-up” that also gives regional MAGA-friendly oligarchies a major stake in our “share” of that tripartite division’s spoils. This is already the Putin model: authoritarian rule that enables smash-and-grab oligarchy by those in the regime’s good favor. Trump is making it unusually explicit that in this sphere of influence, Trump-approved oligarchs will be enriched by our regional spoils.

“Baked into Trump’s views on these so-called spheres-of-influence are opportunities to enrich himself, his inner circle, his donors, and his fellow oligarchs,” Casey Michel, a New Republic contributor and author of the forthcoming book United States of Oligarchy, tells me. “Putin envisions a world in which a small group of imperialists loot their portions of the globe as they see fit. Trump has been envious of this model for a long time. He’s implementing it himself in the Western hemisphere.”

Trump is boasting about taking on Cuba or Colombia or Mexico or Greenland next. Congress absolutely must re-assert itself to shut him down. But will they?

Nobody knows Trump’s post-Maduro plan for Venezuela. There doesn’t seem to be one, beyond a vague notion that U.S. oil companies will take over oil production and the government of Venezuela had better cooperate. Paul Krugman:

Two days after the abduction, it’s clear that Trump wasn’t seeking regime change, at least not in any fundamental way. He’s more like a mob boss trying to expand his territory, believing that if he knocks off a rival boss he can bully the guy’s former capos into giving him a cut of their take.

Maduro may be in custody in New York, but his allies are still in power in Caracas. Trump would rather work with them than with the Maduro opposition in Venezuela.

“It’d be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump said when asked about Machado on Saturday, adding that she“doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.” …

…Two people close to the White House said the president’s lack of interest in boosting Machado, despite her recent efforts to flatter Trump, stemmed from her decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award the president has openly coveted.

Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.

Do note skepticism of this story. It’s more likely Trump is not likely to cede control of anything once he gets his little hands on it. Trump sees himself as the new capo di tutti capi of Venezuela and expects the lieutenants of the former capo to answer to him. That really does seem to be the plan. Trump lieutenant Marco Rubio is saying he’s not going to go into Caracas and try to actually run things, but instead will “coerce” the government to take direction from Trump.

The secretary of state suggested the U.S. would continue to maintain a blockade on sanctioned oil shipments from Venezuela and use that as leverage to seek concessions from the government. Rubio said this is “sort of control the president is pointing to” and the oil “quarantine” gives the U.S. a “tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes.”

I’m grateful, at least, there are no U.S. troops in Venezuela putting their lives at risk for this stunt. Let’s hope that continues.

Yesterday I wrote about the oil issue and why U.S. oil companies are possibly not as eager to go into Venezuela as Trump assumes. I see that Reuters and some other news outlets are reporting that U.S. oil execs are saying Trump did not consult with them before nabbing Maduro. All of these outlets are behind a paywall so I can’t see the details.  Yesterday I cited a Politico story saying that the oil execs had been tipped off something in Venezuela was about to happen. In Trump’s mind, maybe that was “consulting.”

On the other hand, Judd Legum at Popular Information writes that ousting Maduro was a big help to one of Trump’s biggest donors, Paul Singer.

In November 2025, Singer acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Singer, through his private investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, bought Citgo for $5.9 billion. The sale to Amber Energy, a subsidiary of Elliott Investment Management, was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments.

Citgo owns three major refineries on the Gulf Coast, 43 oil terminals, and a network of over 4,000 independently owned gas stations. By all accounts, Singer acquired these assets at a major discount. Advisors to the court that oversaw the sale valued Citgo at $13 billion, while Venezuelan officials said the assets were worth as much as $18 billion.

Singer acquired Citgo at a bargain price in large part due to the embargo, with limited exceptions, on Venezuela oil imports to the United States. Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.

Elliott Investment Management is known as a “vulture” fund because it specializes in buying distressed assets at rock bottom prices.

Muduro’s government was also seeking to appeal court approval of Singer’s bid for Citgo. Now that Maduro has been ousted, however, it seems unlikely that the appeal will continue.

Singer no doubt has Trump’s ear; they may even have done some “consulting.” As for the rest of the U.S. oil industry, this is Paul Krugman —

But you know who doesn’t think there’s a lot of money to be made in Venezuela? Oil companies. They see a dilapidated infrastructure that would cost billions to repair. They don’t see a stable political environment above ground. And while Venezuela has large oil reserves, much of its oil is “extra heavy, making it polluting and expensive to process.”

Trump is supposed to meet with oil execs soon at some not-yet-specified time. That may not go well.

In the meantime, I am not going to predict what may happen in Venezuela over the next few months.

A big part of Trump’s Plan for Venezuela involves U.S. oil companies investing a lot of money into getting Venezuela’s oil industry back on its feet. But the oil companies don’t seem to be leaping at the opportunity. This is from Politico:

Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry, two people familiar with the administration’s outreach told POLITICO on Saturday. The outlook for Venezuela’s shattered oil infrastructure is one of the major questions following the U.S. military action that captured leader Nicolás Maduro.

But people in the industry said the administration’s message has left them still leery about the difficulty of rebuilding decayed oil fields in a country where it’s not even clear who will lead the country for the foreseeable future.

“They’re saying, ‘you gotta go in if you want to play and get reimbursed,’” said one industry official familiar with the conversations.

The offer has been on the table for the last 10 days, the person said. “But the infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable.”

So the oil execs must have known that Trump planned to invade Venezuela and seize assets for several weeks. But this article is saying none of them seem all that eager to go along with the plan.

A central concern for U.S. industry executives is whether the administration can guarantee the safety of the employees and equipment that companies would need to send to Venezuela, how the companies would be paid, whether oil prices will rise enough to make Venezuelan crude profitable and the status of Venezuela’s membership in the OPEC oil exporters cartel. U.S. benchmark oil prices were at $57 a barrel, the lowest since the end of the pandemic, as of the market’s close on Friday.

Trump has already announced that the oil companies will be rebuilding the infrastructure. He said something about them being “reimbursed,” but gave no details about what that would mean. Probably Trump doesn’t know what it means, either. He’s not a policy details guy.

But this is reminding me of  the Bush Administration’s half-assed planning for “regime change” in Iraq, which is to say they had no plan other than ousting Saddam Hussein. There’s an excellent retrospective of What Went Wrong in Iraq at the Brookings Institute, The Seven Deadly Sins of Failure in Iraq: A Retrospective Analysis of the Reconstruction. It’s very much worth reading, especially since most of the “sins” are already present in Trump’s Venezuela gambit.  And I doubt very much that the oil execs are eager to march into Venezuela anytime soon. If within a few months the country is reasonably peaceful they might send people into the old oil fields to do an assessment. And even then they might say no.

There’s a good backgrounder on Venezuela’s oil industry and its relationship with the U.S. at Wikipedia. That relationship is old and messy. Venezuela is sitting on the world’s largest known oil reserve. But much of it is “heavy crude,” which is more expensive to extract and refine than most other oil. Plus the existing oil infrastructure in Venezuela is old and decayed, and oil production in Venezuela has slowed to a trickle for the past few years. I don’t see the oil execs agreeing to anything until all the details are worked out. And that’s going to take a while.

There are more complications. Trump has rejected Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado as Maduro’s puppet replacement. Instead, he has decided that Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez should take over. Trump has told reporters that Rodriguez already has been sworn in as president, although there’s no indication from Venezuela that has happened. And Rodriguez seems to not want to be a puppet.

The 56-year-old former labour lawyer struck a defiant tone in her televised speech on Saturday night. She condemned the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and demanded their return.

“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law. History and justice will make the extremists who promoted this armed aggression pay,” she said. “There is only one president in Venezuela and his name is Nicolás Maduro.”

So the regime change thing may take some more work.

Josh Marshall also says that no one person in the Trump administration is really in charge.

Let me reiterate a general point I’ve made in other posts. I don’t think there’s any actual reason we’re invading Venezuela or trying to decapitate its government or whatever we’re doing. I think there are two or three different factions in the government each pushing a very hostile policy toward Venezueala for differing reasons. Meanwhile, Trump thinks it’s cool and has a personal beef with Maduro. That combination of factors created a lot of forward momentum within the U.S. government with nothing pushing back in the opposite direction. That gets you to today. My point is that it’s a mistake to think there’s a “real” reason mixed in with other subterfuges and rationales, or that it’s important to find out which one the “real” reason is. It’s not that linear or logical.

And I think it’s safe to say the whole bleeping Trump Administration has gotten itself into something that’s way over its head. Not the first time, of course. But they’re about to learn that the military operation that seized Maduro was the easy part. They’re at great risk of finding themselves in an unpopular quagmire that will drag on for many months and possibly years.

I’m still trying to digest what’s up with Trump and Venezuela. Here’s the latest from the New York Times:

Hours after a U.S. military operation that captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, President Trump said the United States would “run the country until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” Mr. Maduro and his wife are being taken to New York to stand trial on drug and weapons charges, he said.

Mr. Trump offered few details about how the United States would oversee Venezuela, saying only that “a group” would do so. He added that he was not afraid of “boots on the ground.”

Mr. Trump said Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, had spoken to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and told him she was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary.” But hours earlier, Ms. Rodríguez denounced the U.S. operation on state television.

Trump can’t run this country properly, much less another one. I take it Marco Rubio and Pentagon Pete will be in charge of Venezuela. Maybe Pete will line up all the men and order them to shave.

Putting Maduro on trial in New York is an interesting move. Can the DoJ even prove it has jurisdiction? Trump would probably have to prove that Maduro is directly in charge of gangs operating within the U.S., and he may not be able to do that.

In his press conference today, Trump tried to make Maduro sound like a threat to the United States:

Trump addressed reporters shortly after returning to Florida, framing the developments in Venezuela as an urgent national security matter and casting the Maduro government as a direct threat to the United States. The president said the now-deposed Venezuelan leader had deepened ties with foreign adversaries while pursuing advanced weaponry capable of harming Americans.

“Furthermore, under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing, offensive weapons that could threaten U.S. interests and lives,” Trump said. “And they use those weapons. Last night. They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border.”

Bring on the aluminum tubes and the yellowcake. I don’t doubt Venezuelans used some weapons last night, as they were being attacked. Duh. Then Trump mentioned the Monroe Doctrine without giving a hint that he knows what that is. It’s being superseded by the “Donroe Doctrine.” I’m serious; he said that.

Congress wasn’t even notified of this move, of course. It was not only illegal under the Constitution it also violated the UN charter (see Just Security). 

Needless to say, this will not turn out well. And maybe it was about the oil after all. CNBC:

President Donald Trump on Saturday said U.S. oil companies will invest billions of dollars in Venezuela’s energy sector after the overthrow of President Nicolas Maduro. 

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” Trump said in a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Let’s start making money for the country,” Trump said.

Trump can’t order our very large oil companies to do squat in Venezuela. I’m sure they’d do it if there’s a guaranteed profit for them, but that’s not making money “for the country.” That’s making money “for the oil companies.”

I’m sure there will be more details over the next few hours. I just want to note this one reaction from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

the ultimate democratic party response: i LOVE the crazy illegal thing you just did, but could you perhaps come to my office to sign form 317b for it?

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— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson.bsky.social) January 3, 2026 at 9:38 AM

Yeah, Dems need to work on the resistance thing. Some of them aren’t very good at it.

The Mamdani era of New York City politics begins. Over the past couple of days social media have been jammed by “New York City RIP” messages from righties. They can’t wait for Mamdani to fail.

Of course, there was general hysteria when it was learned he took the New York mayoral oath of office on a Quran. Two Qurans, actually. The oath must be invalid! I spent part of yesterday writing a backgrounder on why the Constitution does not require swearing on the Bible to take oaths of office. There were also rumors that Mamdani had refused to take any oath to uphold the Constitution. This was all nonsense, of course. Much suspicion was cast on the midnight ceremony in which he first took the oath. It was a “private” ceremony in that attendance was by invitation only. Obviously, he was trying to hide something. But it was televised. There are videos all over the web.

The term of the previous mayor ends at midnight, so new mayors are sworn in immediately after midnight. Then at the public inauguration yesterday afternoon, I understand he took the oath again. This is normal. But everything he says or does or didn’t say or didn’t do is being picked apart and held up as an example of the danger he poses to America.

Mayor Mamdani’s inaugural speech is quite good, IMO, and worth reading. Much of what he wants to do is going to be a heavy lift, but I think he is capable of success. Let’s hope.

Here’s another video for you — Jack Smith’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. I have only seen bits of it, but this is supposed to be the whole thing. It may take a while to watch.

The Trump Administration continues to shoot itself in the foot. As I understand it, some rightie influencer made a video accusing daycare centers run by Somalis in Minnesota of fraud. We’ve been having dump on Somalis in Minnesota month, I take it. Whether this guy found actual fraud, or whether his claims are the fraud, is still up in the air. But HHS has frozen all federal subsidies to day care in all 50 states. It will be up to day care centers to prove to HHS that they are legitimate, or something. This will take a while.

So along with losing their health insurance a lot of people are going to start the new year by losing their day care. Yeah, that’s a great way to endear oneself to the voters.

Happy new year.

I’m not in the mood to celebrate, but if you are, enjoy and stay safe.

The coming year is likely to be an epic mess. But let’s hope that by this time next year we’ll be in a better place. In the meantime, I hope you all keep commenting here. It helps me and I hope it helps you.

Update: