Trump declares himself president of Venezuela — and sends 'wake-up call' to world

President Donald Trump declared Sunday night that he was the new “acting president of Venezuela” by sharing a doctored image of his online biography bearing the new title — a declaration that produced shockwaves for onlookers.

“He’s spiraling into a singularity of narcissistic terror over [Jeffrey] Epstein, and decompensating with performative dictatoring,” wrote Jim Stewartson, a journalist and podcast host, in a social media post.

“His alternate reality is sealed and the people around him are riding his collapse to get what they want – total destruction of the world order. What a timeline.”

Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to share the image of himself that's featured in his biography on Wikipedia — edited to list him as Venezuela’s “acting president.” The declaration comes just over a week after his unprecedented U.S. attack on Venezuela, which Trump said shortly thereafter would be run by the United States until a transfer of power could be facilitated.

Trump declaring himself to be Venezuela's interim president was just the latest sign, some critics said, that the president was potentially sparking even more civil unrest across the world.

“Not satire… Zero presidents have ever publicly declared executive authority over a foreign nation,” wrote author and analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera in a social media post on X, where he’s amassed more than 111,000 followers. “The greatest energy realignment since the 1973 embargo is hiding in plain sight as a ‘troll post.’ When the world realizes this isn’t a joke, the repricing won’t be gradual. It will be violent.”

Others, like Brian Berletic, a geopolitical analyst and former U.S. Marine, called Trump’s unprecedented declaration a “wake-up call to the rest of the world.”

“A US president declaring himself president of another nation 1000 miles from his own nation's borders is unhinged criminality,” Berletic wrote in a social media post on X, where he’s amassed nearly 120,000 followers.

“This is done to prime the US public for wider criminality to come. This is a wake-up call to the rest of the world, nations big and small, that this is no longer a matter of diplomacy, international relations, or deal-making.”