Trump Just Gave Himself the Perfect Excuse to Invade Venezuela |
It sounds like President Donald Trump’s administration is looking for a repeat of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq—no, seriously.
Trump announced Monday that he planned to sign an order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, practically paving the way for an invasion of Venezuela.
This announcement comes amid mounting tensions with Caracas, following multiple U.S. strikes on boats the Trump administration claims—but won’t prove—are smuggling drugs and the recent seizure of an Venezuelan oil tanker by the U.S. military. Trump himself has repeatedly threatened to take his strikes on alleged drug boats to dry land.
One might hear the echoes of the U.S. government’s lie that Sadam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as justification for its invasion of Iraq. It seems that history is repeating itself, as there is reason to believe that America’s growing interest in Venezuela is not about drugs at all: It’s actually about oil.
It’s worth noting that the Associated Press reported in November that the boats targeted by U.S. strikes appeared to be carrying cocaine—not the synthetic opioids responsible for thousands of deaths each year.
But just last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described so-called narco-terrorists as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere,” responsible for spreading “narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.”
In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that a classified legal brief justified the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of alleged drug smugglers by referring to fentanyl as a potential chemical weapon.
The editor-at-large of Christianity Today magazine on Monday sharply condemned Donald Trump’s deranged post about the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele.
Russell Moore, formerly the magazine’s editor in chief, called out Trump’s post blaming Reiner for the murders “through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Moore called Trump’s comments “vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior.”
“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation,” Moore’s post read in full.
Though Moore has been a longtime open critic of Trump, he wasn’t alone this time. Even some right-wing supporters of the president took issue with his insensitive post, including commentators Raheem Kassam, Robby Starbuck, and Rod Dreher. Trump’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis also criticized Trump’s comments, writing, “This is NOT the appropriate response” on X.
Moore resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, after breaking with other evangelicals on Trump. He has criticized the rise of the Christian right, alarmed at the fact that some evangelicals think of Jesus Christ’s teachings as “liberal” and “weak.” To Moore, Trump’s behavior just shows increasing moral rot, especially from those of his supporters who call themselves Christian.
Jared Kushner, private equity firm manager and son-in-law to President Trump, has ended his efforts to redevelop a Serbian historical monument into a luxury hotel complex after weeks of protest and controversy.
“Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time,” a spokesman for Kushner’s private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, said in a statement on Monday.
The land in question is the site of the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The attack by NATO was part of an effort to end then-President Slobodan Milosevic’s violent ethnic cleansing of Albanians living in Kosovo, which resulted in the death of 13,000 people (mostly ethnic Albanians). NATO bombed bridges, military buildings, and government buildings.
Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 528 civilians were killed in the bombings, and many Serbians view the ruins as a point of cultural and architectural pride today.
In May, Kushner’s company and the Serbian government signed a deal for a 99-year lease of the land under the bombed-out buildings, promising “revitalization”—meaning a high-rise hotel, office space, and stores. It was set to be a $500 million project, with Kushner’s company building a separate memorial for the bombing elsewhere.
“The economic progress in Serbia over the past decade has been impressive,” Kushner said then. “This development........