MAGA Will ‘Dissolve’ if Neo-Con Trump Invades Venezuela, Says Rand Paul
If the Trump administration decides to invade Venezuela, the backlash from the MAGA base will be so intense that the movement will implode. That’s what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently predicted during an interview with a Libertarian publication.
Paul told Reason’s Nick Gillespie last week that “If [President Donald Trump] invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve.” The sentiment is a reminder that the president’s coalition, which has repeatedly been angered this year, is barely holding together as it is.
Paul’s comments last week seem to have had no effect on the administration, though. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Nicolás Maduro and his allies a foreign terrorist organization. The move expands justification for military intervention.
Caribbean Buildup
And fresh off the press is the news that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine will soon visit the massive military infrastructure that has been built up in the Caribbean. The official reason for this visit is to thank the troops in the spirit of Thanksgiving, but the suspicion is that it’s more than that. As The New York Times observed, “General Caine has been a major architect of what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear, the largest buildup of American naval forces in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of Cuba in 1962.” The paper added that Caine “is expected to consult with commanders on the armada’s preparations.”
On November 11, the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Caribbean. This added to the thousands of servicemen, amphibious-ready groups, and gunships moved into the region over previous weeks.
Hardly anyone believes this is all about countering Maduro’s narco enterprise. The senator from Kentucky is among the skeptics. “We don’t know their names, we’re presented with no evidence — nobody’s even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us [if] there were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody’s bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we’re not even prosecuting them,” he said.
Blowing Up Boats
Paul has been expressing skepticism since September that those small boats with outboard engines can even make the 1,000-mile-plus trek to the U.S. from Venezuela. He’s also pointed out the fact that most of the drugs coming into the U.S. don’t even come from Venezuela. It’s a well-known fact that most drugs, including more than 90 percent of fentanyl, is coming through the Mexican border. Moreover, how can the administration be so sure the boats have drugs if they don’t inspect them? As Paul pointed out:
The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate’s about 25 percent. It’s hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people, incinerating them — blowing them to smithereens — if the error rate would be about one in four.
Some legal experts believe this is going to boomerang back to Trump. Judge Andrew Napolitano recently wrote:
The killings at sea will soon reach a federal court as the families of innocent murdered fishermen, and some survivors of botched killings, have signaled to the media their intention to bring actions against the government. Trump says the killings at sea are a war against foreign powers.
Meanwhile, the same office in the Department of Justice that told George W. Bush that he could torture people and Barack Obama that he could kill nonviolent Americans overseas has apparently told Trump just what he wants to hear — that he can wage an undeclared war on select foreign persons and keep secret the legal rationale for doing so. Where is that in Madison’s Constitution, which says only Congress can declare war?
Paul, who has supported the president on several agenda fronts, believes that what Trump is doing is not even true to his political values. “I actually think Trump is the one who is least likely to want to do these things,” he told Gillespie. Unfortunately, most Republicans are still interventionists, and the president is “surrounded by people who believe in regime change and are goading him on.” Paul brought up the poster boy of military adventurism, saying the neocon from South Carolina has the president’s ear. “Lindsey Graham has not changed his positions, but he’s clever, and he’s become very close to the president. [He] influences the president,” he said. Then he dropped the name of another long-standing neocon who is even closer to Trump. “Same with Marco Rubio. So, the pending regime change war in Venezuela is hatched by those people.”
MAGA Jumping Ship
MAGA is already on the skids. The president has reversed or ignored his positions on several critical campaign promises, and the cracks within the coalition are opening up, bigly.
On Friday, a congresswoman who used to be among Trump’s most loyal supporters and defenders, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), resigned after a weeks-long fallout with him. The president’s outsized focus on foreign matters is one of Greene’s major concerns. Trump repeatedly promised “no new wars” and that he would put America first when he campaigned. But many don’t see how continuing to send foreign aid and intervening in overseas conflicts falls under the America First category. Trump infuriated his base when he decided to bomb Iran on what many perceive was behalf of a foreign nation. He has also refused to end U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. He sells weapons to the Europeans to send to Ukraine, and then sanctions Russia, voiding any semblance of neutrality.
Trump has also backtracked on his Jeffrey Epstein vows. The MAGA base is still furious with his attempt to make the Epstein saga go away without further transparency. Greene was among three key legislators — along with Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — to push the discharge petition that essentially strong-armed the president into signing a resolution that is supposed to force his Justice Department to release all documentation on the pedophile. Whether that happens with full transparency is doubtful, but the move has made it harder for the Establishment’s protectors to keep that mess under the rug.
Why So Tough on Venezuela?
If Trump decides to invade Venezuela, Sen. Paul’s prediction may likely come true — if it hasn’t already.
The looming question is: Why is the administration being so aggressive with Venezuela?
The obvious answer is that it’s trying to effect regime change, something this country accomplished many times in Latin America in the 20th century. But still, Why? What’s fueling this regime change? It’s likely not the stated reason. Venezuela is not even close to being the largest drug trafficker into America. As noted above, more than 90 percent of the fentanyl that poisons Americans comes out of Mexico.
Also, Venezuela is certainly not the only country led by criminals and election-cheating communist tyrants. It’s not even the only country in Latin America that recently had a rigged election. Brazil is in the same boat, and Trump gets along with that communist country just fine.
One of the more popular theories is that this is about opening the U.S. market to Venezuela’s rich oil deposits. That’s plausible. But this administration has also made major moves to make drilling in America easier. And it’s fortifying business ties with several oil-rich Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Another theory is that this is part of America’s attempt to dislodge China’s and Russia’s claws from “our hemisphere.” That too makes sense. However, does that mean we should expect similar campaigns in Cuba, which is way closer to the U.S., as well as Nicaragua, Bolivia, and — again — Brazil?
Election Tampering?
Another speculation is that this is related to a personal beef Trump has over Maduro’s suspected role in U.S. electioneering, and particularity the 2020 election. “Retired” CIA agent Gary Berntsen is among those who claim that evidence shows Venezuela has been rigging elections with USAID taxpayer money, including the stolen 2020 election. This, in part, is the main idea behind Ralph Pezzullo’s book Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide. Pezzullo claims that the “citizens of the United States haven’t had a national election that hasn’t been tampered with since 2008,” and that Venezuela, China, Iran, and Russia have been integral to the tampering.
That the election of 2020 was rigged is almost beyond dispute. But how, and who exactly was behind it, are far from clear. The fact that our own cybersecurity experts have yet to admit this indicates that there’s more to electioneering than just Venezuela.
What is clear is that, for whatever reasons, the Trump administration is flexing hard on Venezuela. And no matter how justified it feels, a large segment of Trump’s voters will not agree with it. It’s not what they voted for. Moreover, it would be another unconstitutional war without congressional approval.
Can the Trump administration pivot? Will it pivot and save a MAGA coalition that is on life support? Or will the popular social-media maxim — “No matter who you vote for, you always get Dick Cheney” — prove true again?