Trump Reveals Who He Warned of Venezuela Attack—and It’s Not Congress
No, President Donald Trump didn’t tell Congress before launching a large-scale operation to attack Venezuela and kidnap its president—but he did tell someone.
Speaking to the president on Air Force One Sunday, one reporter asked whether Trump had looped in U.S. oil companies to his plans to oust Nicolás Maduro by force.
“Did you speak with them before the operation took place?” the reporter asked.
“Yes,” Trump replied.
“Did you maybe tip them off about what was gonna—?” the reporter continued.
“Before and after. And they want to go in, and they’re gonna do a great job for the people of Venezuela,” the president said. “And they’re gonna represent us well.”
Reporter: Did you speak with the oil companies before the operation? Did you tip them off?
Trump: Before and after. They want to go in and they’re going to do a great job. pic.twitter.com/zxOG648Ww0
Trump seemed to have no reservations about revealing that his government isn’t a democracy at all—it’s an oligarchy, where companies come first and his constituents don’t matter whatsoever. U.S. oil companies are already cashing in on his brazen constitutional violation.
Shortly after the military operation in Venezuela took place, Trump made clear his intention for oil companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” Trump has insisted that “the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” but it seems that rebuilding the country’s oil industry won’t be cheap or easy.
Not only did Trump not receive authorization from Congress before launching the strike, but Democratic lawmakers now allege that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intentionally misled lawmakers about the administration’s intentions to do so.
After bombing Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the middle of the night, President Trump has declared that he will “run the country” in the meantime.
“We’re going to run the country until such time, as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference on Saturday. “So we don’t wanna be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we have for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country.”
Trump on Venezuela: "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition" pic.twitter.com/hNwViQPZk4
Trump also dedicated a significant portion of the presser to discussing the future of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet. “As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long time,” he said. “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 … and start making money.”
Trump: "The oil business in Venezuela has been a bust…We're going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure, and start making money." pic.twitter.com/tQtrNmQetW
Could you imagine if another country sent a team of special agents to kidnap President Trump and his wife Melania from the White House while they slept? And then went on air the next morning saying they’d plug and play someone else as president?
That someone else could very well be María Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner who has already displayed her eagerness to serve Trump and the U.S. agenda. For now, Trump hasn’t yet signed off.
A suspicious new user on the prediction market Polymarket just made bank on the Trump administration’s military strikes on Venezuela.
The account, which was created on December 27, has only bet on two things: the U.S. invading Venezuela, and its president, Nicolás Maduro, being forced out of leadership by January 31. The user bet $35,000 when the market estimated the probability of intervention in Venezuela at only 6 percent.
Thanks to their very lucky bets, they made over $400,000 in less than a day.
The timing of the account’s bets—and its creation—is certainly suspicious. According to © New Republic





















Toi Staff
Sabine Sterk
Gideon Levy
Mark Travers Ph.d
Waka Ikeda
Tarik Cyril Amar
Grant Arthur Gochin