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Trump Says He’s Ramping Up Defense Production After Invading Venezuela

6 0
06.01.2026

America’s defense industry is about to take a shot of adrenaline straight to the veins, if the president has his way.

Speaking at the GOP retreat at the Kennedy Center Tuesday morning, Donald Trump announced that America “is going to start producing [weapons] much faster” than it has been in recent years.

The declaration followed Trump’s complaints that the U.S. and its allies have to wait “too long” to receive their weapons orders, such as “four years for a plane or five years for a helicopter,” according to the president.

“The problem is we don’t produce them fast enough,” Trump said. “We’re not letting that happen anymore.”

“We’re telling our defense contractors, ‘You’re going to start building faster,’ you know a guy makes—I have a big problem with it,” he said.

Trump then went on to claim that he was the “king” of Boeing, recalling a story in which he claimed that the country’s largest aircraft manufacturer and exporter had named him “salesman of the year.”

“I said, what about salesman of the—in the history of Boeing? I’ve sold more Boeing planes than any man in history, probably over 1,000 planes. I said, that’s the good news, but why should they wait three to four years to get a plane? They should get them immediately,” Trump said.

Trump: "I'm the king-- I have sold more Boeings than any human being on earth. They gave me an award -- salesman of the year. I said, what about salesman in the history of Boeing? I've sold more Boeing planes than any man in history by far." pic.twitter.com/qDuH8lfmCz

But Trump’s colorful and bombastic threats about war have not had the same toothless intonation since he ordered U.S. troops to invade Venezuela and kidnap its leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Saturday.

Instead, countries around the world have become alert to America’s newfound hostility with a second-term Trump as its leader. Earlier Tuesday, a coalition of seven NATO allies issued a joint statement, vocalizing their support for Denmark and Greenland against potential U.S. aggression after Trump told reporters the U.S. “needs” the Arctic island for “national defense.”

Donald Trump might get his Nobel Peace Prize after all.

In a seemingly desperate bid to regain favor with the U.S. president, the 2025 recipient of the prestigious honor—Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—offered to give her medal to Trump after he announced he would not back her to run the country she’s fought to reclaim.

“Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I read that somewhere, I wasn’t sure if it was true,” asked Fox News’s Sean Hannity in a one-on-one interview with Machado late Monday.

“It hasn’t happened yet, but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we—the Venezuelan people … we want to give it to him, share it with him,” Machado said.

She was named the 2025 recipient for her staunch opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, becoming one of the most outspoken opponents to the authoritarian leader. She spent 11 months in hiding for daring to speak out against him, reportedly fearing for her life.

Machado dedicated her prize to Trump in September after the U.S. president unsuccessfully pined and schemed all year to win the award.

But Trump’s sudden capture of Maduro early Saturday has completely unrooted Venezuelan politics. The U.S. invasion—involving hundreds of American troops who stormed Caracas overnight—was apparently all about oil, according to Trump. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.

The attack followed months of escalating rhetoric between the White House and Venezuela’s leadership, in which the Trump administration repeatedly pinned U.S. fentanyl deaths on Venezuelan drug cartels, despite a resounding lack of evidence.

Later Saturday, Trump said he would not support Machado in her own bid to lead the country, telling reporters at Mar-a-Lago that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader” as she lacked sufficient “respect” in Venezuela.

He instead signaled that he would recognize Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the face of the country. Rodríguez had also been recognized by Venezuela’s armed forces as its interim leader. She was sworn in on Monday.

In the same Saturday press conference, Trump warned that Rodríguez would pay “a very high price” if she did not “do what’s right” with regard to helping American companies access Venezuela’s oil reserves.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice quietly removed references to a fictional drug cartel led by Nicolás Maduro from its newest indictment of the kidnapped Venezuelan president.

The New York Times reported Monday that the new indictment of Maduro and others on charges related to drug trafficking omitted a crucial element of the original charges: the criminal organization that Maduro supposedly ran, Cartel de los Soles.

The original indictment filed against Maduro in March 2020 in the Southern District of New York described the Cartel de los Soles as a “drug trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking officials” that operated between 1999 and 2020.

“Under the leadership of Maduro Moros and others, the Cartel de Los Soles sought not only to enrich its members and enhance their power, but also to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine,” the indictment said.

But apparently, Cartel de los Soles isn’t a real organization at all. It’s a slang term invented by the Venezuelan media to describe corruption, according to the Times. The supposed cartel’s inclusion in the original indictment would be as if someone tried Trump for leading “Trumpworld” as a........

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