Here we go again. The orange wrecking ball is swinging at Venezuela like a drunk toddler with a flamethrower, promising total domination, fire and fury, and whatever other catchphrases his Adderall-addled speechwriters dredge up from the bargain bin of failed tough-guy slogans. This isn't foreign policy; it's a midlife crisis with cruise missiles attached.
Let's not mince words: Donald Trump's Venezuela obsession is one of the most grotesque, brain-dead, and predictably catastrophic episodes in modern American diplomacy--and that's a bar set so low it's practically subterranean. In 2019 he woke up, saw a country with oil and a socialist label, and decided it was his personal piata. He recognized a hand-picked 35-year-old nobody named Juan Guaid as president because--why not?--the guy had a nice smile and hated Maduro. The result? Maduro laughed, Guaid vanished into irrelevance faster than a Trump casino, and seven million Venezuelans fled a country whose economy had already been waterboarded by Trump's maximum pressure sanctions. Hyperinflation hit 1.7 million percent. Children starved on camera. And Trump strutted around like he'd just liberated Normandy.
Now he's back, bellowing that if Maduro doesn't behave he'll unleash hell. Translation: more sanctions that punish dialysis patients, more botched coups that embarrass the CIA, more photo-ops with Venezuelan beauty queens in MAGA hats while actual Venezuelans drown trying to cross the Darin Gap. This is what passes for strategy in the Mar-a-Lago war room: a policy so stupid it makes the Bay of Pigs look like the D-Day invasion.
The man who spent four years bragging about ending forever wars is now itching to start a completely unnecessary one ninety minutes' flying time from Miami. Because nothing says America First like turning the Caribbean into a shooting gallery so Don Jr. can cosplay Che Guevara in reverse.
And the hypocrisy is radioactive. Trump wined and dined Kim Jong-un, sent love letters to Putin, and called Xi Jinping a really good friend, but a two-bit caudillo in Caracas triggers a full psychotic episode. Why? Because Maduro's crime isn't authoritarianism--he's got plenty of competition there--it's that he's brown, speaks Spanish, and won't kiss the ring hard enough. It's racism dressed up as realpolitik, and everyone with an IQ above room temperature can smell it.
Every credible analyst--from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to the Colombian foreign ministry--has begged Washington to ease the sanctions that are literally killing children. Trump's response? Crank them harder and threaten invasion, because nothing solves a refugee crisis like creating ten million more refugees.
This isn't leadership. It's a tantrum with a nuclear arsenal behind it. It's the foreign-policy equivalent of burning down your neighbor's house because his dog barks too loud, then acting shocked when the entire block catches fire.
History is watching, and it's already laughing. Trump's Venezuela record is a monument to American arrogance: a masterclass in how to radicalize a population, enrich the regime's hardliners, gift Russia and China a new client state, and turn the United States into the hemisphere's most despised bully--all while accomplishing exactly nothing except padding the rsums of a few Miami exile grifters.
So spare us the sequel, Don. Keep your tiny hands off Venezuela. The country is already on its knees; it doesn't need your boot on its throat to complete the picture. Some disasters are acts of God. This one would be an act of Trump--and the world has suffered quite enough of those already.
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