America Did Not JUST Embarrass Venezuela. It HUMILIATED Our Enemies!

It’s 9:00 a.m. on the east coast and if you’re just joining us this morning, we have major breaking news. Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro has been captured by US forces. It was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did, extremely complex, the whole maneuver, the landings, the number of aircraft which were massive number, the number of helicopters, a different type of helicopters.

The United States has just captured the president of Venezuela. The United States military, without congressional approval, but with 150 aircraft, attacked a foreign country to extract and arrest the foreign president of that country, Venezuela’s Maduro, in just 2 hours and 28 minutes. All without a single dead American. At most, we had a damaged aircraft, a helicopter that was shot at, but it was still deemed flyable.

So, we didn’t even leave the helicopter in Venezuela and we have disappeared. So now the question is, who’s going to run Venezuela? What does this mean? What’s going to happen in markets? What does this mean for oil? What leadership are we going to see that’s actually going to try to fight the armed rebel or guerrilla groups that exist inside of Venezuela?

And where does Donald Trump think this leaves us? Well, a spoiler alert, Donald Trump says we are going to run Venezuela until a transition occurs. And if we need to, we are ready to mount a second stage much larger attack. But at this point, Mr. Trump or President Trump does not believe that this is going to be necessary.

Instead, he took to Truth Social to show us a photo of the arrested president of Venezuela in earmuffs and a mask and handcuffs with a bottle of water. So, it looks like at least somewhat he’s being taken care of with a fresh bottle of American water. Now, this is incredible because first of all, this was not just a show of force by America against Venezuela.

This was a slight directly against the Axis of Resistance or anyone who threatens America. This was a direct middle finger to China, whose delegates just showed up 4 hours before this raid to negotiate likely oil deals with Maduro. Just four hours later, we go raid and extract the very president that Chinese delegations wanted to make deals with.

So, this is a middle finger not just to China, but it’s also, frankly, a big fat middle finger to Russia because guess who supplied defensive weapons to the Maduro regime? Russia. Russia’s S300 and BU M2E, which are long and medium-range defensive air systems, were basically negligible against US technology.

This was possibly in part due to broken Russian supply chains, or the fact that somehow we basically shut down the entire power grid in Venezuela before we attacked. Now, that may have been due to cruise missiles and direct strikes, or it could have been a cyber attack or a combination, but we basically, as Trump puts it, bumrushed the president.

But the way I see it, we basically blitzed Venezuela with 150 aircraft launched from over 20 different bases. We had operators as young as 20 years old, as old as 49 years old. We had lower aircraft protected from above by drones, F-22s, F-18s, B1 bombers, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force, all creating the shield above the airspace of Venezuela above the low-lying clouds.

Helicopters swept in through now cleared out corridors. Since we destroyed their defensive artillery, we now had helicopters swoop in below the cloud layer through now a safe zone protected by our aircraft above to attack Venezuela at 10:01 Eastern time or 2:01 in Venezuela in the middle of the night. Now again, this is such a show of strength by America.

It is an embarrassment to Venezuela, who the Trump administration believes is mostly propped up by Cuba, Russia, and China. And it’s frankly a middle finger to all of the allies of Venezuela. So, it’s no surprise that other Latin American countries are now shaking in their boots going, “Oh, how could you do this? We condemn your attack.”

But this, make no mistake of it, was a signal that America should not be messed with. Now, let’s actually look at this as a factor of Venezuela for a moment. The United States has obviously built up the largest naval deployment in the southern Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis back in the 1960s. And there were really three options here to deal with Maduro.

Because, as Trump says, Maduro wanted to try to negotiate, but he just was unwilling to surrender and relinquish power. So there were really three options remaining. Number one, you could exile him. So you know, pick him up like a Napoleon and put him somewhere else. You could extradite him.

You could also politically exile somebody by having a different power regime take power essentially. But that could be difficult to do. You could just kill him, just bomb him. Or maybe more humane, you make him stand trial for his charges and his crimes, which we’ll talk about those in just a moment, as well as the integration of the drug trade within the Venezuelan military allegedly.

So therefore, that really leaves the third option, which is extraditing him, which is exactly what just happened. We in under two and a half hours extradited the foreign leader of a foreign country, which is pretty dang impressive. Delta Force and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment penetrated Caracas.

And frankly, now you’ve got the wife of Maduro and himself coming to New York to face charges. The entire mission was done in less than 6 hours. The extraction took less than 2 and 1/2 hours. We struck multiple military bases inside of Caracas as well as areas south of Caracas. We also struck local ports and we’ve already been detaining oil tankers in the region.

So obviously as JD Vance says, this is a big old PSA for the world that if essentially you contribute to narcoterrorism, you don’t get to avoid justice; we will come after you. Now of course a lot of people are going to take issue with the fact that Donald Trump didn’t request authorization from Congress.

Marco Rubio actually directly addressed this and said that this is not the kind of mission that you could ask for congressional approval for because this was a law enforcement operation by the Department of War with the Department of Justice or on behalf of the Department of Justice. And frankly, they believe that if they would have told Congress, somebody would have just leaked it.

Or worse, somebody could have just bet on Polymarket. Oh, wait. I guess somebody bet on Polymarket anyway that Maduro would be out by January 31st. Ended up making $13,000 on a trade here, $172,000 here, $4,000 here, closer to a buck over here on some of these other trades.

So, somebody made off with a nice six-figure gain on trading the inside information, but apparently Congress was not able to insider trade this one. Just folks within the administration instead. But anyway, Donald Trump says Congress has a tendency to leak and not that it would have mattered much because Venezuela knew we were coming.

They saw our ships and they were ready for us. Except they weren’t ready for what they faced, which again is just a really remarkable show of force by America. Especially since the CIA and Trump had talked about this in his October press conference, but the CIA has been on the ground since August collecting information on Maduro along with the NSA.

They knew what he wore regularly, what he ate, where he ate, when he ate, his pets, where he likes to hang out. They knew everything about where he was staying to the point where they built a replica building with the same steel doors that they would be expected to blow down to get to Maduro with blowtorches or whatever they need.

This was to make sure they could extract him appropriately with minimal risk to Americans. Now, obviously, massive rewards and bounties for Maduro likely helped collect intelligence. You know, it’s easy to pay somebody when, frankly, the economy of Venezuela is complete poopy dupy. And this isn’t to be funny. It’s really bad.

The people of Venezuela are suffering. This chart right here, you know, normally we’re like, “Oh, it’s good when a chart goes up and to the right, right?” Well, it’s good for Americans with dollars because this is a chart showing how many Venezuelan bolivars you could buy with one US dollar. Well, one US dollar has gone from buying 35 of their currency to buying over 300 of them.

That’s because you’ve got or had an economy under major strain, falling oil prices, which represents one-third of their GDP. 58% of government income comes from oil money, and US sanctions with potentially an annual inflation rate reaching 700% in 2026. So, the economy is complete trash and the people are suffering in Venezuela.

They just had their currency lose 90% of its value in less than two years. The minimum wage in Venezuela is about 130 bolivars per month, which works out to about $1 per month. You probably need about $500 to feed a family in Venezuela. So, it’s no surprise that 80% of Venezuelans live in poverty.

When the government has destroyed the economy, yet they lie to the public by implying that GDP will be growing at 8% next year and everything is fine. No surprise why over 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country. Now, of course, people are speculating that this intervention could lead to a pro-market transition, a bullish catalyst.

You know, sanctions relief, IMF engagement, economic stability, but a lot of that is going to be predicated on what kind of power vacuum exists and what kind of takeover occurs in Venezuela. So, we’ll have to evaluate this. Now, obviously, there are going to be debates about the War Powers Resolution in the United States, like was this strike legal?

Was this extraction truly an offensive strike that was made due to an imminent threat to the United States? That’s like legal jargon for saying, well, you know, are you even able to weaponize the War Powers Resolution? Donald Trump debates this and says, look, every boat that we destroy avoids the death of 25 Americans.

We lose 300,000 Americans per year to drugs. So, don’t worry. This was a war powers strike. Again, courts will debate this, but the point is it has occurred. So, what matters more now is what’s going to happen going forward. Well, apparently the vice president who is now being sworn in as the president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez.

She clearly stands on a very fragile position, especially with threats that Donald Trump is willing to invade again. She has allegedly told Marco Rubio that she will do whatever is necessary. Trump does recognize that she was picked by Maduro and that she’s fortunately though so far essentially willing to do quote “whatever is needed to make Venezuela great again.”

And now Trump is going to make sure that not only America but the Venezuelans can make a lot of money. Now of course there are other leaders that are being considered. For example, Vladimir Lopez who runs the national armed forces of Venezuela. You’ve got the special forces leader Cabello that might be an option.

Maduro is believed also to have offered Venezuelan oil to the United States that maybe the administration will take over and work with. Though Donald Trump has vetoed all these, so it seems like Trump doesn’t really care about the people involved. Trump’s going to do what Trump wants at this point and they’re looking for essentially somebody who’s just going to say okay.

Now, a lot of people obviously after Hugo Chavez died of cancer, well technically a heart attack, but he had cancer. He was getting surgeries in Cuba to try to save his life. It didn’t work. You know, he’s been in power since the early 2000s, 2002, I believe, to 2013. Then Maduro came into power.

Maduro basically lost his election in 2024 to Maria Machado. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, which Donald Trump felt slighted by because, you know, Trump says he solved so many wars, he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. But anyway, Machado, she has been cheering for the removal of, well, frankly, Maduro for years.

Since 2014, she’s been a political activist to try to remove Maduro from power. And she’s believed to be popularly desired by the people of Venezuela. She was actually banned from running against Maduro by Maduro’s Supreme Tribunal, which basically, you know, he runs. And so they ended up running a stand-in candidate in the popular election against Maduro.

The stand-in candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won two times the votes that Maduro received. But the government just refused to acknowledge that election and just installed Maduro instead. So she argues the goal is to come to leadership to reclaim democracy. Though Donald Trump isn’t a big fan of her.

I don’t know if he feels slighted because of the Nobel Peace Prize laws, but he says that she doesn’t actually have the support of the people and it would be very tough for her. Now, Venezuela also has weapons problems. Venezuela is frankly per the foreign affairs full of armed groups that may take advantage of this power vacuum.

And so, you really need stability as fast as possible to prevent these gangs or Colombian guerrillas from taking control. The US has already warred these scenarios and there are really three potential outcomes. One would be some kind of negotiated solution.

This would be like a Panama invasion of 1989 kind of negotiated solution where all the other countries are like look, we support this transition. We don’t support the invasion. We condemn the invasion and the extraction of the president but we support the transition. We’re mad but we’ll help. You know that kind of negotiated solution in the region that could institute peace.

And then Donald Trump expects oil producers like the current major oil producer in Venezuela that is US-based, Chevron, potentially rebuilding infrastructure and extracting oil wealth out of the country. Donald Trump suggests that the local economy will also benefit from this, but Trump wants to be repaid for the lives that have been lost in America for the drug war.

Unclear how all of that is going to balance out, but Brazil, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, China have already rejected the attack. They see this as interference in Latin America. Okay, old news. But best case scenario one is still some kind of negotiated solution. Option number two would be like a Libya style solution which would be bad.

Fractured military, fractured leadership. You get little power cells. Not good. It’s kind of like almost like a small version of this would be like the Hamas leadership that is just a splinter cell of 41 different cells in the Gaza Strip that have no unified leadership. Really hard to make a deal with those sort of groups and don’t tend to lead to lasting peace.

Worst case scenario, you get an imperialist takeover like basically some kind of military propped up by Russia, China, and you just get a Maduro 2.0. And that’s why Trump says he’s going to stay until a proper transition can take place, and we’re just going to run the country. Now, Donald Trump doesn’t exactly give clarity on how we’re going to run it.

It seems like we’re going to run it with Rubio from the White House and puppets basically inside of the Venezuelan government who just, you know, basically convert, as Donald Trump puts it, and bow down to what the United States wants. It’s pretty obvious that Donald Trump believes that people are going to convert because he says if they don’t, we’ll just have to launch the second wave.

So I think it’s a pretty clear threat that you’re going to disappear if you don’t convert and support the Donald Trump regime and the administration. So we’ll see. Donald Trump said he watched the operation unfold. He said that Maduro tried to run into a safe room. Sounds like he live streamed it, which sounds pretty freaking epic.

But anyway, he says Maduro ended up getting bumrushed and we had blowtorches. Maduro made it to his safe room, but he couldn’t end up getting the door closed because we bumrushed him so fast. We would have gotten through his door in 47 seconds anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but we didn’t need to get through his door.

And even though they were quote “ready” for the United States, we just absolutely overwhelmed them. So now obviously, you know, what is the impact of all of this? Well, I mean, after Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran and now Operation Complete Resolve to extradite the president of Venezuela, both of these without any American death, I think there’s a pretty big signal that you probably shouldn’t mess with America.

This is a signal not just to Russia, but also to China and certainly Iran. Hey, don’t even think about messing with America. Don’t think about invading Taiwan. Russia, you’ve invested billions of dollars into Venezuela, and guess what? Oops, that’s gone. China, you have $60 billion in loans to Venezuela. Well, we’ll have to think about that.

We’ve seized oil tankers that were destined for China. Iran has provided materials to Venezuela. Oops. I guess that’s going to be over now. So, I guess your business partner is now done. I mean, this is really more than just Venezuela and drugs. This is a big middle finger to again China, Iran, and Russia.

So, now the Trump administration is also threatening Cubans, saying that Cubans were all over Maduro’s guard, and that the Cubans almost run Venezuela and that Cuba is failing, so they better watch out. So, the next threat is already being laid. But bottom line, we’re obviously going to have to watch very closely what happens here.

Obviously, there’s an expectation that in the near term, oil markets could spike, although oil shipments out of Venezuela have really grown to a halt anyway. So, any kind of spike in oil prices should have already occurred anyway because we’ve been seizing oil. Now the belief is that if we rebuild oil infrastructure in Venezuela, which could take as long as 2 years, that oil prices will actually fall and gas prices will fall.

So, yes, could this all be about oil again and getting to Donald Trump’s gas targets? Of course. But the goal is to rebuild the infrastructure and actually generate more oil, which also reduces the value of oil that can be sent from Russia to countries like China. So, this is all linked together and merged together as a really massive global operation.

These things are all linked together. And I have to say, while obviously there are going to be questions about war powers, I’ll tell you this just shows you don’t mess with America. And to some extent, ignoring for a moment the fact that Congress and some courts are going to be pissed, you kind of got to be a little proud of America to go, “Oh man, we could pull that stuff off. It should make people shake in their boots.”

Now again, I also know there are going to be Americans who are like, “How the hell could a president just do this? This is like dictatorial.” I get it, and I’m not here to be soft on that view as well. I think that’ll be litigated in courts. But this is the nature of Donald Trump to act.

And then if he’s told not to do something by the courts, then he’s like, “Oh, okay.” But the message has already been sent. It’s sort of like deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles or Chicago for months only to months later be told by courts, “You can’t do that. You have to give the National Guard back to those states of Illinois and California.” Well, Trump’s already sent the message and they think that was the point here. A big fat middle finger to anyone who hates America.