Morning all. So we’ve taken Maduro, the illegitimate, Putin-allied Venezuelan leader. News is breaking fast so sending along some initial notes from me and around the Internet.
Why now? As we discussed yesterday, January is shaping up to be a very consequential month in Washington and around the country, and Trump needed to do something dramatic to keep wavering Republicans, increasingly weary of defending the indefensible, on his side. Was it the right move? I am doubtful. It feels far more desperate than strategic right now, a wild Hail Mary for an ailing, failing, and unpopular leader needing to find his STRENGTH, POWER, and MANHOOD again. But we will see.
Invading Venezuela is wildly unpopular.
19% support, 60% oppose.
Only 11% are OK - 11%!!!!! - with Trump going ahead without Congress. 74% want him to get Congressional approval.
More……
Watch my recent interview with prominent Mexican-American journalist Leon Krauze for an in depth look at why pro-democracy forces in Latin America are so supportive of María Corina Machado’s courageous efforts to bring democracy to Venezuela. This is a critical perspective to understand in the days ahead for my friends in South Florida tell me that the seizing of Maduro is being very well received this morning in the emigre communities there.
Here’s what I wrote to you a few days ago in my post, Trump’s Staggering Betrayal Of The Great American Project:
What remains so hard to believe this morning is that Trump and his team have somehow convinced themselves, and are working to convince us, that a world without the American-led, rules-based global order is somehow better for us. That carving up the world - Venezuela/the Americas, Greenland, and Gaza for us; Ukraine/Eastern Europe/All of Europe? for Putin; the Middle East for the Gulf Arab states and Israel; much of the rest of the world, including Taiwan, for China - will somehow be better for the United States rather than just an extraordinary and world altering own goal, one benefiting our adversaries and dramatically weakening us.
For without our allies we are less safe. Without the global trading system we will be less prosperous. Without Pax Americana we will all - every person in the world - be less free. And yet, somehow, in all of his insatiable greed, Olympian corruption, and titanic idiocy, here we are…..
Trump is failing to defend Ukraine from Moscow’s dangerous advances. He is blowing apart the global system as we know it by attempting to seize Greenland and Venezuela’s oil. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported on an astonishing development - “Project Sunrise” - a plan to seize Gaza, and have America fund the building of a modern “Rivera,” and implicitly establish the Trump family as the new Emirs of this new polity (gift link). For the Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff families, all real estate developers, it would be the deal of a lifetime……
……….
It’s pretty clear that the Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff families are approaching the world now the way New York real estate families approach real estate development in The City. We get our stuff, others - in this case the Gulf Arab states, Israel, the Russians, and the Chinese - get theirs, and everyone prospers.
Except, of course, we don’t. We and the world become less prosperous, less safe, and less free. The corruption, the betrayal, the greed, the clear compromise, the War Crimes, and the profound and dangerous idiocy we are witnessing right now demands a far greater response from our leaders, and from all of us. For things are being broken that will be very, very hard - if not impossible - to repair.
More, soon - Simon
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