Trump Embraces Big Oil and Empire After Kidnapping Venezuela’s President

President Trump just delivered an hour-long press conference at Mar-a-Lago touting his attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Nicholas Maduro, adding that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future and extract its oil resources. In response, Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman issued the following statement:

“The president who once bragged untruthfully about his alleged opposition to the deadly and unconstitutional regime change war in Iraq has launched a deadly and unconstitutional regime change war for oil and empire. Even the best-case scenarios will be devastating.

“There is no Congressional declaration of war nor authorization for the use of force in Venezuela, making Trump's actions transparently unconstitutional and illegal.

“Importantly, Trump's actions in Venezuela would be illegal under international law even if there were Congressional authorization. No twisting of words can possibly conjure a story by which Venezuela constitutes a national security threat to the United States, let alone an imminent threat, justifying military action.

“Trump’s shocking claim that the United States will occupy Venezuela, run the country and exploit the nation’s oil resources echoes the imperial arrogance of the United States after the invasion of Iraq and may well foretell a comparable disaster.

“Trump is embracing both a resource imperialism and regime change mentality that the American people overwhelmingly reject, for good reason. Trump seems to think that Venezuelan oil belongs to the United States. In invoking the Monroe Doctrine, or a ‘much bigger’ ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ he explicitly embraces a lawless, immoral and dangerous claim that the United States has a right to dominate the Western Hemisphere by force.

“Trump made fantastical claims that a Venezuelan-led drug trade had led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. In fact, Venezuela has no role in the fentanyl trade. Trump is cutting funding for drug addiction treatment. And Trump’s purported concern with international drug trafficking is mocked by Trump’s pardon of ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for moving tons of cocaine into the United States.

“A federal indictment against Maduro changes nothing. Apart from the bitter irony that Trump benefits from the U.S. Supreme Court-conferred immunity for his illegal actions while in office, U.S. criminal charges against a foreign leader do not provide justification for war and kidnapping.

“There's no way to know what unfolds now in Venezuela, but there is certainly a risk of widespread and persistent chaos, violence, death and instability, which may well involve the risk of American lives along with countless Venezuelans.

“With this action, the Trump regime validates the notion that the world should live under rule by brute force, not rule of law. Never in modern history has an American president so explicitly embraced an imperial claim. This is an out-of-control presidency. The planet is today more cruel and dangerous than it was yesterday.”