I read the first part of the Susie Wiles interview at Vanity Fair. The second part is behind a paywall. I’m going to hazard a guess that Wiles will keep her job. My impression, from part one, is that Wiles is the White House Mommy. In a staff of people in various stages of arrested development, somebody’s got to be Mommy to make it work. And there she is. She’s clearly loyal to big baby Trump and probably very good at managing the adolescent personalities around him. But she’s intellectually dim enough to buy into whatever they’re selling. It would be difficult to replace her, in other words. And without Mommy the White House would be in Lord of the Flies territory in no time.

She did pretty much clarify that the boat bombings are mostly about regime change in Venezuela. But there’s another angle to Venezuela I hadn’t thought of. See Josh Kovensky at TPM, Is Trump About to Unleash the Kraken on Venezuela? Kovensky reminds us that Venezuela ties in to the 2020 “Stop the Steal” campaign.

Attorney Sidney Powell unleashed the Kraken in the form of a Nov. 19, 2020, press conference and lawsuit, filed days after. Unfortunately for the outgoing president, they were more comic relief than anything else. But they contained a claim that’s survived in the MAGA mind over the intervening five years and which, growing evidence suggests, may be playing a bizarrely significant role as the Trump administration wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela. 

Powell and Rudy Giuliani, during that mid-November presser, accused Venezuela of interfering with the 2020 election, using software from a voting machine company to swing the election to Biden. It was, they said, part of an international communist conspiracy with none other than Hugo Chavez as its long-dead mastermind. 

We all had a good laugh at the time, but Trump and MAGA haven’t let this go.

Now, the Kraken has returned. María Corina Machado, a key opposition figure who has asked the Trump administration to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, told Bloomberg in October that Maduro and others “are the masterminds of a system that has rigged elections in many countries, including the U.S.” 

Trump himself acknowledged the connection late last month. In a Truth Social post that boosted an interview between CBS reporter-turned-right-wing influencer Lara Logan and two men who have spread claims that Venezuela interfered in the 2020 election and that the Tren de Aragua gang is controlled by military officials in Caracas, the President wrote: “We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!”

Machado, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner, for months has been feeding Trump the story that the Tren de Argua gang is controlled by Maduro, Kovensky says. Is she trying to goad Trump into bringing down Maduro?

Trump is speaking to the nation tonight. Keeping in mind that the Epstein files deadline is Friday, who wants to bet Trump is about to declare war (which he can’t do, constitutionally) on Venezuela? Anybody?

In other news — it’s a bit too late for a lot of people, but this morning four Republicans in the House have jumped ship and signed a discharge petition to force a floor vote on continuing ACA subsidies. And that gave the petition enough votes to go into effect. The vote won’t happen until next year, though. And, of course, the chances this would pass in the Senate and get signed by Trump are, um, tiny. The four are Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York. Lawler is my rep and will be significantly challenged to win re-election next year, I believe.

On the plus side, today the Senate passed a defense bill that includes a provision to force Pete Hegseth to give them unedited videos of all of the boat bombings, including the infamous “double tap” incident.

Jack Smith testified to a closed-door hearing of the  House Judiciary Committee today that he had Trump dead to rights. PBS:

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview on Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump had criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

He also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” that Trump broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and by obstructing government efforts to recover the records.

In Stuff to Read — do see Jamelle Bouie, The White House Is a Lost Cause. Sample sentence: “Trump is a ubiquitous cultural presence, but there is no outward sign that he is an active participant in running the national government.” See also Justin Glawe, Public Notice, 2025 was a political disaster for MAGA.