All posts tagged "national security"

China bombards LinkedIn in 'astounding' effort to recruit US spies: experts

China is not recruiting its spies through meetings in dark alleys, nor by courtship over covert drinks. Rather, the intelligence agency and military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are using LinkedIn, the professional networking site, to send as many as 30,000 messages per hour to recruit spies, according to a new book, “The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets.”

David R. Shedd, a former director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), called the book he co-wrote with Andrew Badger, a former DIA case officer, “a real, urgent call” to Americans, from corporations to government, to better respond to China’s success in stealing tech and defense innovations.

“I still don't think America has woken up on how serious the problem is,” Shedd told Raw Story.

“We’ve got to take this much more seriously, but also much more urgently, in terms of responding to the threats, because I don't see any let-up by China.”

David R. Shedd (provided photo)

From nanotechnology to chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence, Shedd said, China succeeded in accomplishing ahead of time eight of 10 objectives under “Made in China 2025,” a 10-year national strategic plan by President Xi Jinping to turn his country into a global technology and manufacturing powerhouse.

China is now the leader in 37 out of 44 emerging critical technologies, according to Shedd and Badger.

“They are on a trajectory to overtake us and have overtaken us already in a number of areas, and that's only going to get worse,” Shedd said.

‘An enormous behemoth’

Shedd and Badger interviewed William Evanina, former director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center. He offered insight into the use of LinkedIn by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to contact intelligence targets.

Andrew Badger (photo provided by David Shedd)

“This astounding number — never before reported— showcases Beijing's commitment to mass recruitment that can be best described as a ‘flood the zone’ strategy,” the authors write.

“The MSS doesn't need all its targets to respond. Just a handful can be enough; a single successful recruit can make the entire endeavor worthwhile.”

Examples of LinkedIn outreach might include contacting an academic about writing a research paper or meeting a worker at a coffee shop to discuss their expertise, exchanges possibly unknowingly resulting in intelligence reported back to the MSS, the authors write.

“The MSS is the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, Cyber Command and all other cyber components,” Shedd said.

“It is an enormous behemoth of internal or domestic and international security, and over the … last 13 years, it has become one, if not a premier, service in terms of its capabilities.”

In response to Raw Story’s questions about the use of LinkedIn by the MSS and PLA, Autumn Cobb, a LinkedIn spokesperson, shared links about verification and spotting scams.

‘Threatens lives’

When it comes to China stealing intellectual property from Americans, the stakes are high.

“American military technologies once considered strategic advantages — stealth aircraft, silent propulsion systems, hypersonic missile platforms – are now widely found in the inventories of China’s armed forces,” Shedd and Badger write.

“These thefts are not abstract; they represent the very real threats to the American warfighters who one day may have to face down such advanced technology. The theft of these assets doesn't just threaten markets; it threatens lives.”

Corporations are also threatened.

When Tesla became the first foreign-owned automaker in China, with CEO Elon Musk building a factory in Shanghai from 2019, concerns rose about theft of intellectual property.

The Great Heist (provided image)

Shedd and Badger quote a former senior Tesla staffer: “Elon always worried about the so-called billion-dollar thumb drive. A single USB stick with the Autopilot source code. That was the nightmare.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

‘National security at stake’

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Shedd said, an apparent “diminishment” of U.S national security policies on China has been observable, compared to the first Trump administration, which took China more seriously.

Shedd speculated that the shift has to do with China’s control of the majority of rare earth minerals, which are used in magnets manufacturing and technology.

President Xi is definitely watching how Trump has made taking over Greenland a priority, as well as Trump’s decision to “run” Venezuela after capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Shedd said.

“My fear is the administration has turned it into everything's transactional,” Shedd said.

“Our national security is at stake, and I … fully expect Xi Jinping to move on Taiwan next year.”

Taiwan is a major U.S. trading partner. In December, the Trump administration announced the largest-ever U.S. arms package for Taiwan, valued at $11 billion.

‘Great Heist’

Prior to Trump’s arrival in the White House, Chinese threats to American intelligence and national security were not a priority for the FBI or DIA, Shedd said.

During his tenure at DIA from 2010 to 2015, Shedd said, much of the agency’s focus was on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, concerns which became “all consuming.”

“There was this almost fear of taking on China operationally, and to really focus in on it was viewed in the FBI counterintelligence as second-rate to Russia,” Shedd said.

“China, I won't say it was a total afterthought, but it certainly wasn't the main focus.”

Shedd and Badger’s book explains how China pulled off its theft of so many American ideas, tracing the effort back to when President Bill Clinton advocated for China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

When China joined the WTO in 2001, both Democrats and Republicans had a “naivety” that China would “play by the rules of international trade,” Shedd said.

That set the stage for a flood of Chinese-made, cheaper versions of other country’s products.

“It was framed as diplomacy, as engagement with a potential trading partner, possibly even a future ally,” Shedd and Badger write.

“In hindsight, it was the moment the proverbial virus entered the global trade system and the launching pad for the CCP’s Great Heist against America.”

In 2017, China’s National Intelligence Law legalized espionage, meaning citizens could be required to spy for the CCP.

‘Counter Heist’

To take on China, Shedd said, the U.S. must invest in research and development as well as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, in which China is "leaping way ahead of us.”

Shedd and Badger also outline a seven-pillar “Counter Heist” strategy to put America on an “active counteroffensive” against China and disrupt the “Chinese espionage apparatus and to reassert America’s place as the world’s innovation superpower.”

If Washington doesn’t get ahead of Beijing’s spying, Shedd said, he fears China will beat the U.S. to a quantum computing breakthrough that will decode all cryptology.

“It will have enormous, dramatic implications for the United States and for the west more generally, and we won't ever have seen it coming,” Shedd said.

The Great Heist is out now

There's one way Trump has united the world

Under President Donald Trump, the United States’ reputation among nations of the world has dropped precipitously. Today’s America is no longer admired, respected, or looked up to by practically anyone.

Fear of the US has replaced positive feelings, as America’s vast military and economic power is used by an unprincipled, adventurist president as a cudgel against sovereign nations, often in violation of international law.

Under Trump, America has few friends left. Former allies are resetting relationships with the US, realigning economies for self-preservation, strengthening national defenses, and growing more united in response to a reckless, untrustworthy US. Adversaries such as Russia and China see Trump’s embracement of authoritarianism and disengagement from traditional allies as beneficial to their own strategic interests.

Countries in dire need are deprived of the financial aid America has provided for more than a century. Countries rich in natural resources or strategically located are potential targets for imperialism and exploitation. America’s underlying ethos in its interaction with any country is, “What’s in it for us?”

Trump’s America is selfish, greedy, shallow, bullying, cruel, and arrogant. Its own democracy in shambles, it ridicules the great democracies of Europe for being weak and insufficiently xenophobic, supporting European right-wing extremist factions that threaten those democracies. It turns a blind eye to human rights’ abuses in any country where it can make a buck.

Like Trump, today’s America lacks a moral compass, bereft of any principles to inform and guide its behavior. It is no longer a defender of democracy at home or abroad, a champion of women’s rights, an advocate for the poor, a safe haven for the oppressed, a vigorous foe of racial discrimination, or needless to say, a proponent of truth in government.

Instead, America follows the loathsome, morally bankrupt doctrine of “America First.” In practice, it has meant that America goes it alone, taking whatever it can get its rapacious hands on and the rest of the world be damned.

Not only is “America First” a selfish, cynical worldview, it is stupid. It fails to recognize that America’s great historical success has relied to a great extent on its use of soft power in support of other countries.

An America that functions not only for its own good but for the good of all nations accrues universal goodwill, has made America the leader of the free world, created steadfast universal partners, and prospered. The Trump “America First” doctrine is creating a widely despised, weakened America at odds with even its closest allies, its international influence reduced to saber-rattling adventurism.

Rather than a nation to emulate, Trump’s America is seen by citizens of strong democratic countries as a troubled nation. They are puzzled that the American people would make the mistake of electing Trump a second time and have no confidence in Trump doing the right thing regarding world affairs.

Unlike their own countries, they see an America so beset by gun violence that foreign tourists avoid it for their safety. They see a country with a broken, outrageously expensive health-care system, leaving over 27 million Americans uninsured. They see a country that does nothing to address catastrophic climate change like their countries are doing and exacerbates the problem by relying more heavily on fossil fuels.

Unlike their own countries, they see America’s once esteemed democracy crumbling under the weight of an anti-democratic, autocratic president, a feckless Congress that bows to his will, and a Supreme Court that has ruled the president above the law. They justifiably see their own countries as superior in many ways and are increasingly dismissive of America aside from their trepidation over the existential threat that it increasingly poses.

Under Trump’s presidency, America is on a road to self-destruction, the moral rot at the core of Trumpism infecting the country. Of course, Trump doesn’t care if he drags the country down with him. There are always others to lay the blame on and a deluge of monstrous lies to bury the truth.

In the midterm elections, US citizens have the opportunity to send a powerful message to the world that Trump’s America isn’t our America and that we abhor what he and his spineless allies are doing to the country. We can use the power of the ballot to halt Trump’s assault on democracy and then begin the task of rebuilding America’s democracy and restoring our shattered relationships with our global partners.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.

Of course Trump has no Venezuela plan — look what made him attack it

Why did Donald Trump invade Venezuela? His id made him.

Look at me, love me — every reason for doing anything is downstream from there.

I was telling you the other day that it’s not really clear why the president ordered the illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its head of state. Regime officials provided reasons but were often contravened by Trump.

“Aren't We Tired of Trying to Interpret Trump's Foreign Policy Gibberish?” asked Marty Longman in the headline of a piece published after news of the attack. Indeed, we are, and I hasten to add that endless attempts to figure it all out are a form of oppression.

It isn’t normal.

Even if you disagreed with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, you understood the argument for it. George W Bush said Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie, but at least the thinking above and below it was coherent.

In contrast, senior officials in the Trump regime are all over the place about why the US had to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty, giving the impression that no one above the level of military operations actually knows what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.

Meanwhile, critics can’t form a precise counterargument since the original “argument” is, well, no one really knows what it is. So, for the most part, liberals have decided to brush aside the confusion and incoherence to pinpoint two reasons that makes sense to them: Vladimir Putin and oil.

Don’t get me wrong. If you believe Trump is a tool of a Russian dictator, I’m with you. If you think Trump is a criminal president who is willing to use the awesome power of the United States military to commit international crimes, I’m with you.

But I also think these arguments tend to share a flaw.

They make more sense than Trump has ever made.

I’m reminded of that time Susie Wiles seemed to trash other people in the Trump regime. The White House chief of staff called Russ Vought “a rightwing absolute zealot,” for instance.

To savvy observers, she seemed to be looking for a scapegoat for her boss’s troubles. But in this White House, what you see is often what you get — if it looks like chaos, it probably is.

As I said at the time:

“There are no anchoring principles, no moral guideposts, no concept of national interest, no sense of the common good. It’s just mindless impulse and rationalizations after the fact.”

Set aside Putin and oil to consider something Trump values above everything else: “ratings.” He believes the more people watch him, the more they love him. What better way to get everyone’s attention than to be seen as a war president on TV?

Not just any war, though.

In a recent interview with me, the Secretary of Defense Rock (a pen name) said Trump “dislikes large, open-ended occupations that produce visible casualties and political backlash.”

(That’s almost certainly a result of watching coverage of the Iraq War in which images of death and destruction were common.)

Instead, he likes “coercive actions below the threshold of war — air strikes, sanctions, seizures, energy pressure, and threats that generate profit and leverage without requiring public buy-in.”

In other words, he likes one-and-done military ops. Venezuela was one of those. So was the bunker bombing of Iran last June. Though they look good on TV, they looked even better with Donald “War President” Trump at the center of it all.

That’s Trump’s id: look at me, love me.

Every reason for doing anything is downstream from there.

What does it all mean? That’s what everyone is asking, but the question itself is more dignified than the thing it’s questioning.

Trump got his made-for-TV war. He got everyone buzzing about what he’s going to do next about Greenland, Mexico, Canada, wherever.

Meanwhile, back in Venezuela, it looks like life is going to go on pretty much as it had been, the difference being that the new leader is even more tyrannical than the last one.

“The idea that she can't rig another election or the opposition will magically take over seems pretty far-fetched, especially because we don't have troops on the ground,” the Secretary of Defense Rock said.

The Secretary of Defense Rock doesn’t use his real name, because Trump is president. He’s the publisher of History Does Us, a newsletter about the intersection of military and civilian life. The last time we spoke, we discussed how the commander-in-chief undermines military discipline.

“The idea that we will launch more air strikes or raids or blockades if she doesn't play ball seems kind of dumb, given where the polling is,” he told me. “At this point, I kinda assume the status quo will hold, and that this entire episode will ultimately amount to little more than content-production and performative-posting.”

Here’s our conversation.

JS: The US now opposes democracies in Europe. We have invaded Venezuela. We are war-drumming about Greenland. Is Vladimir Putin's investment in Donald Trump finally bearing fruit?

SDR: I’d be careful with the phrase “investment bearing fruit,” because it implies command-and-control that we don’t have evidence for. What is clear is something more structural and, frankly, more troubling: Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to control Donald Trump to benefit from him. He benefits from Trump’s own instincts.

Putin’s core objective isn’t territorial conquest in the Cold War sense. It’s the erosion of Western cohesion, legitimacy and confidence. On that score, Trump has been extraordinarily useful without being directed. Attacking allies, casting doubt on democratic norms, treating sovereignty as transactional, and framing international politics as raw deal-making all weaken the post-1945 order that constrains Russia.

On Venezuela specifically, what you’re seeing isn’t a coherent imperial project so much as improvisational, performative power politics — noise that signals disregard for norms rather than a plan to replace them. That norm-breaking itself is the point. It tells allies that rules are optional and tells adversaries that the West no longer believes in its own system.

So no, this isn’t about Putin cashing in some secret investment. It’s about a global environment where authoritarian leaders benefit when the United States abandons restraint, consistency, and democratic solidarity—and Trump does that instinctively. The fruit isn’t conquest. It’s corrosion.

Most of the Democrats in the Congress seem to be pushing back against Trump's imperial overtures. Is that your perspective? If not, what do you think they should do?

There is meaningful pushback from a lot of Democrats (no matter what Democrats are complaining about on background on Axios), more quickly and more openly than during Trump’s first term.

You’re seeing sharper rhetoric and a greater willingness to use oversight, but they don't control any branch of government, so there isn't much they can do.

But with such tight margins, particularly in the House, I don't think it's crazy to shut down the government again (I believe funding expires at the end of the month?), or hold up an NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). You have senior administration officials openly stating they want Greenland and would use military force, which is so insane that you might as well take extreme measures.

Sad to say, Stephen Miller might be right. 'Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland,' he said. If so, NATO could be a paper tiger. Is that what could happen?

I still can't believe this is a thing. Miller is probably right on the narrow, grim point that Denmark isn’t going to “fight the US military” in a conventional war over Greenland. But the leap from that to “NATO becomes a paper tiger” is not automatic — because NATO’s credibility isn’t just “can Denmark win a shooting war with the US.”

It’s whether the alliance remains a political commitment to mutual sovereignty. A US move to seize Greenland would be less a “test of NATO’s tanks” than a self-inflicted alliance-killer that destroys Atlanticism probably forever.

But it is a move that is so outrageous that I think there would be more alarm among congressional GOP's and the military.

Fighting foreign wars is as popular as Jeffrey Epstein's child-sex trafficking ring. Yet Trump continually takes the side of elite interests, in this case, oil companies. What is going on?

I think this is basically Marco Rubio.

I thought he would have very little influence because he came from the internationalist wing of the GOP, but being both secretary of state and national security advisor (and archivist if you care about that) clearly gives Rubio a lot of influence, and Venezuela has been a pet project of his for a while. Add support from Stephen Miller and this was probably an inevitability.

I'm not even sure a lot of the oil companies want anything to do with Venezuela, because of the security concerns, age of infrastructure, and the capital investment that would be required to get any meaningful profit. I also thought the US was supposed to be energy independent?

In addition, Trump’s “anti-war” image is real only in a very narrow sense. He dislikes large, open-ended occupations that produce visible casualties and political backlash. What he’s perfectly comfortable with are coercive actions below the threshold of war — air strikes, sanctions, seizures, energy pressure, and threats that generate profit and leverage without requiring public buy-in.

If a helo goes down, we're having a very different conversation.

There is no followup plan for Venezuela, is there? Trump is just winging it. He has no idea what he's doing. Every choice is made with how it looks on TV in his mind. Am I wrong?

Ya, this is why I never understood all the editorializing about how things have really changed and this is a really great success.

The structures and principals of the Venezuelan government that were set up by Maduro are still intact. From everything I have read, Delcy Rodriguez is a more ruthless political operator than Maduro was, so the idea that she can't rig another election or the opposition will magically take over seems pretty far-fetched, especially because we don't have troops on the ground.

The idea that we will launch more air strikes or raids or blockades if she doesn't play ball seems kind of dumb, given where the polling is. At this point, I kinda assume the status quo will hold, and that this entire episode will ultimately amount to little more than content-production and performative-posting.

Trump says he invaded Venezuela for them. They may not want what he's offering

On Friday, Donald Trump summoned his largest donors — U.S. oil execs — to the White House, and exhorted them to invest $100 billion in Venezuela’s oil industry. The unspoken through line was that Trump would look ridiculous if they didn’t.

The CEOs weren’t exactly enthusiastic. Venezuela is known as one of the most dangerous places to operate a business, and oil firms in particular have expressed concern about the safety of their operations and their workers.

When Trump asked ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods how long it would take his company to restart operations there, Woods called Venezuela “uninvestable,” suggesting it wasn’t a matter of Trump just snapping his fingers.

First, “significant changes have to be made.” Woods told Trump bluntly, “There are a number of legal and commercial frameworks that would have to be established to even understand what kind of returns we would get on the investment.”

To a failed businessman selling himself as a savvy one, that assessment must have come as a shock.

Why Trump invaded

By now it is obvious to everyone that Trump didn’t topple Maduro to:

Restore democracy after Maduro lost the 2024 election but refused to leave.
Support Maria Machado after Maduro “banned” her candidacy but her coalition won by 37 points anyway.
Protect Venezuelans living under a regime that disappears people.
Better the lives of suffering Venezuelans in any way.

Instead, as Trump and his henchmen have made patently clear, he deployed the U.S. military against a foreign nation to “take back” oil and oil extraction equipment he claims was “stolen” from private investors in 1975. That was the year Venezuela passed the Oil Industry Nationalization Law and first appropriated its oil industry. It was also the year Maduro turned 12.

Trump’s claim Venezuela “stole” land from the U.S. is absurd. The U.S. never owned land there. No companies were kicked out of the country. When the oil industry was nationalized, companies like Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron were compensated, just not at the levels they wanted. They chose, 50 years ago, to let it go.

A failed businessman

After violating international law, mocking in particular the UN Charter that has kept WWIII at bay for 80 years, Trump gave U.S. oil executives their marching orders: they must rebuild Venezuela's fossil fuel industry.

But after bankrupting six businesses, closing one failed business after another, and now killing small companies with illogical tariffs, Trump’s hyped business acumen is thin. As Friday’s meeting made embarrassingly clear, Trump has no clue what it will take to rebuild Venezuela’s rusted-out oil infrastructure. He has not thought through what legal, structural, and market impediments exist, how much those impediments would cost to remove, or how it could be done. He also has no idea how much all of this would cost, or how many years it would take to see a return.

The kicker, to any successful CEO, is that Trump didn’t do this homework before he deposed Venezuela’s president and announced he’d be “running” the country.

Not all oil is the same

Oil in Venezuela is “sour.” This means it is extra-heavy, thick, and higher in sulfur than “sweet oil.” Sulfur must be removed from crude oil during the refining process. The more sulfur, the more refining is needed.

In result, Venezuelan oil is more expensive to extract, process and transport. More intensive industrial techniques are required, mainly specialized equipment for desulfurization (like hydrotreating/hydrocracking). Stricter safety protocols are needed to remove harmful hydrogen sulfide, adding significant costs and complexity.

Pioneer Energy reports that sour crude “presents a threat to both infrastructure and human health, requiring specialized equipment for sour service, safety procedures, frequent maintenance, and PPE and specialized training for workers.”

Although Trump would likely waive away corporate liability for killing workers and poisoning surrounding communities, CEOs know there is no guarantee courts will go along with him.

All major investments depend on the rule of law

The Dallas Federal Reserve confirms that oil investors are worried about a lack of clarity about America’s own economic outlook under Trump. Legal and market instability, along with low oil prices, makes investing in and operating Venezuelan oil fields an even higher-risk endeavor.

A central concern for industry executives is whether Trump “can guarantee the safety of the employees and equipment that companies would need to send to Venezuela, how the companies would be paid, whether oil prices will rise enough to make Venezuelan crude profitable, and the status of Venezuela’s membership in the OPEC oil exporters cartel.”

The political risk is of paramount concern. As Carrie Filipetti, former deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela told Politico, “It’s not just about getting rid of Maduro. It’s also about making sure that the legitimate opposition comes into power.”

History also matters. Chris Perez asks in his poignant substack, ‘How will Trump guarantee Big Oil that their investments will not be renationalized?’ How indeed. The only way to guarantee that is through prolonged U.S. operational and military presence, for which American taxpayers have little appetite.

Even without regime change, there’s climate change and pending legal liability. Big Oil has known since the 1950s that their product is killing the environment, but has lied about it for decades. Looking at pending legal dockets, that bill may soon become due. Then there’s legal uncertainty affecting safety, contractual relations, market regulations, import/export controls, OPEC, and economic controls, all of which would make or Venezuelan investments.

Given that the rule of law under Trump is already on life support, businesses are taking a wait and see approach, even here. Trump commanding his donors to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry under these facts while he “runs” the country sounds like delusional gibberish.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

This contradictory Trump attack revealed his true, appalling colours

Under international law, all nations own the natural resources found within their borders. Not just rich nations, not just powerful ones; all nations possess the inherent right to consume, extract, preserve or even waste their own natural resources according to their own self-determined needs.

This basic premise, a foundational pillar of global stability, is reinforced throughout the United Nations Charter supporting state sovereignty and self-determination in Articles 1 and 55, and is spelled out in the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States granting every State “full permanent sovereignty ... over all its wealth, natural resources and economic activities.”

Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, a nation cannot use force on the sovereign territory of another country without its consent, or without the authorization of the UN Security Council, unless the use of force is in self-defense.

Following the horrors of the trenches, Hitler, and 90 million deaths in two world wars, the UN Charter was designed to stop nations from doing exactly what Trump just did in Venezuela.

On Jan. 3, under Trump’s direction and without congressional authority, U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a nighttime raid, all while U.S. forces continued seizing Venezuela’s oil and struck military bases, killing at least 80 people who posed no prior threat to the U.S.

Overnight, the international order of sovereignty and the rule of law marched backward into Trump’s Neanderthal world of brute force, while Big Oil-aligned Fox News cheered.

Dispensing with democracy to serve the oil industry

Maduro ruled through repression, corruption, media control, and singular brutality. Human Rights Watch reported that Maduro’s regime had systematically “killed, tortured, detained, and forcefully disappeared people” for the crime of seeking democratic change. Although, like Trump, Maduro still had the support of 30 percent of his citizens, he will not be missed.

Yet despite toppling him, Trump left Maduro’s brutality machine in place, grievously disappointing Venezuelans who danced in the streets. Trump told reporters Maduro’s own Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, would remain in power, but only so long as she “does what we want,” to which Ms. Rodríguez responded, “What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity” — before later softening her tone.

Trump apparently chose Rodríguez for her management expertise in the Venezuelan oil industry as well as Venezuela’s murderous intelligence apparatus. She also enjoys strong ties with U.S. Republicans in the oil industry. After tapping Rodríguez, Trump threatened her, saying, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

A petty man gets his petty revenge

Following the attack, Trump announced that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela with oil-wealth aspirations more conceptual than concrete.

Like his oft-alluded to “concept of a plan” for health care that has still not materialized, Trump said he would provide the “vision for how Venezuela should be run,” and commanded his hand-picked leader to carry out his vision under threat of force.

In Rodríguez, Trump named a leader of the same government he just labeled illegitimate, while dismissing political heir apparent María Corina Machado. Machado, a national political hero, won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for leading Venezuela’s struggle for democracy in the face of Maduro’s cruel and ever-expanding authoritarianism. After Maduro “banned” her candidacy, her political movement still defeated him in the 2024 presidential election by a 37-point margin.

Despite her electoral victory, chops, and 65 percent support among Venezuelans, Trump claims Machado “lacks the respect” needed to run Venezuela.

Inside sources say Machado offended Trump’s ego when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize he covets. Put a pin in the absurdity of a peace prize for a man who deploys the military against his own country, murders people in fishing boats, and now threatens violent expansion against peaceful neighbors.

All for the love of oil

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, to which an unscrupulous and dangerous U.S. president has now laid claim, on behalf of private oil investors. It is also being led by a close ally of Maduro hand-picked by Trump, who apparently intends to be puppet master and intervenor to an already corrupt and brutal regime.

Trump told reporters administration officials would designate “various people” to “run” Venezuela, “and we’re gonna let you know who those people are,” but the lack of detail has led many to question why there was no detailed plan in place before Maduro was toppled. It’s like Trump wrecking healthcare for 20 million Americans without first putting an alternative in place, and will similarly lead to loss of life.

Even though Maduro will not be missed, the end cannot justify the means where the end includes regional instability, economic collapse, and losses still unknowable. As Trump flirts with boots on the ground in Venezuela, licking his Cro-Magnon lips at the taste of raw brute power, he has begun threatening Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland in earnest.

“Just war’” theory, on which the post-World War II democratic world order is built, depends on and expects restraint from the powerful. Trump has again acted without restraint, without congressional authority, and without the concept of a plan for what comes next.

By eschewing any notion of restoring democracy to the Venezuelan people, Trump has revealed his imperialist Big Oil mission as unadorned thuggery.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

There is a remedy for the madness of King Donald — are we too cowardly to use it?

When Louise and I lived in Germany in the 1980s, we visited Neuschwanstein Castle, the fantasy palace perched on a Bavarian cliff that looks like it escaped from a fairy tale. Tour guides will tell you about its beauty and its role as an inspiration for Disney, but they’ll also share a more unsettling story that today echoes Donald Trump.

Neuschwanstein was built by King Ludwig II, a ruler who withdrew from reality, governed through spectacle instead of policy, ignored his ministers, and bankrupted Bavaria by indulging his own grandiosity and a never-ending stream of construction and renovation projects. (Neuschwanstein was only one of three castles he built.) Bavaria eventually dealt with Mad King Ludwig: his own government declared him mentally unfit to rule and removed him from the throne.

That memory of Ludwig and his architectural obsessions has been haunting me lately, and it’s frankly astonishing that more people in the media aren’t asking the same question I’m bringing up here (and people are constantly calling into my radio/TV show about): “Is Trump losing his sanity?”

I’m not talking about his well-documented lifelong narcissism, his sociopathic inability to feel or even understand the pain of other people, his bullying, or even his compulsive lying, greed, and lechery. This is about whether he’s fit for the job he’s holding or is losing his touch with reality in a way that endangers both our nation and world peace.

When Trump held his press conference announcing the invasion of Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, a reporter asked the most basic question imaginable: Who is running Venezuela now and going forward?

Trump first claimed that he was in charge, but then when other reporters asked for details he waved his hand toward the men standing behind him and said, “They are.”

Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Gen. Dan Caine, and Pete Hegseth.

The expressions on their faces told the real story: Surprise, confusion, and even alarm. This was clearly, visibly news to them. Shocking news, even.

Did he just decide to BS his way through the press conference like he’s done so much of his life? Didn’t he realize this was a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution? Did he think for a moment that he’s the king of the Americas? Or the world?

The next day we discovered the truth their expressions revealed; there was no plan for governing Venezuela, or even trying to via an occupation Iraq-style. There was no congressional authorization; in fact, he told the oil companies before the raid but didn’t bother to inform Congress. (Although the oil companies now say he’s lying.)

There was no public debate and no involvement of any visible constitutional process involved in this invasion and body-snatch. Under our federal system, the president doesn’t get to just improvise an occupation or administration of a foreign nation from a podium.

Even Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush didn’t try to pull that off; all sought congressional authorizations for their wars and each gave explanations that at least gave a hat-tip to the traditional American values of democracy, peace, and the rule of law.

Congress, after all, declares war under our Constitution, as well as controlling the purse that makes that war possible. Even the idea of “running” another country would require massive legal, diplomatic, and military frameworks, and now we discover that none of that stuff existed. Instead, apparently, Trump had an impulsive thought or idea and just blurted it out.

That moment should have set off loud alarms throughout Washington and should have shot across our media like a meteorite. Instead, it drifted by as simply another strange episode in a presidency that’s taught us to pretend the abnormal is now normal.

Democrats (and a few Republicans) condemned Trump’s claim that he was running Venezuela; Republican politicians are now twisting themselves into pretzels to try to justify it. Reporters were simply confused. It’s nuts.

And in just the few days since then, Trump has openly threatened to seize Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, even Mexico. These aren’t policy proposals. They also aren’t rooted in American or international law, military or political strategy, or diplomacy.

They are, instead, Mad King Ludwig-like expressions of personal fantasy, of imperial imagination, of a man who appears increasingly convinced — who actually believes — that all power in America and perhaps around the world flows from his will alone.

And then there’s Trump’s bizarre online behavior, like posting over 100 times a night, and promoting a tweet saying that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz hired a hit on State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, close personal friends of Walz’s.

Or his refusal to consider the last Venezuelan election winner, María Corina Machado, to run the country because she “stole” the Nobel prize from him.

Rachel Maddow on her television program suggested the real reason Trump invaded Venezuela was simply because he could. Like a child, or a mad king, he wanted to play with his soldiers, watch them kill people and blow things up, and he doesn’t want anybody to tell him that he can’t.

And, I would add, eventually he plans to turn them on people like you and me. Once he’s made sure they’ll do anything he demands, no matter how bizarre, no matter how wrong, no matter how illegal. That’s why he’s now going after Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and other members of Congress for telling soldiers they don’t have to follow illegal orders.

Lev Parnas, who once worked closely with Trump and still hears from people inside his orbit, writes that Trump is receiving regular intravenous infusions of a new Alzheimer’s medication, administered through veins in his hands, whose known side effects include “sleepiness” during the day, “poor judgment,” and “impaired impulse control.” It could explain the bruises, the CT scans and MRIs, and the regular cognitive tests that the medication requires.

Not to mention the increasingly bizarre and grandiose behavior.

I’m not diagnosing Trump, but I am watching — a shocked world is watching — a pattern of behavior that is becoming more erratic, more impulsive, and more detached from constitutional reality week by painful week.

This also isn’t a partisan observation; I’m describing precisely the scenario the Framers and a later Congress worried about when they designed safeguards for presidential incapacity. The 25th Amendment wasn’t written for removing villains but rather for those moments when a president can’t or won’t reliably discharge the duties of his office but doesn’t have the good grace, insight, or ability to step down himself.

But constitutional tools are only as strong as the people willing to use them.

Bavaria in the 19th century had fewer options than we do. It had no elections to depose Mad King Ludwig, and no amendment laying out a clear procedure for replacing him.

For years, Ludwig had ministers serving him who watched how crazy he’d become but nonetheless delayed, rationalized, and hoped the problem would solve itself. It wasn’t until the damage became so great, as the state trembled on the verge of bankruptcy, that it was impossible to ignore any longer.

Modern America, on the other hand, has elections, courts, and a theoretically independent Congress. And we have the 25th Amendment. What we lack right now, however, is courage in the GOP and Trump’s cabinet.

Republican members of Congress know that a president can’t unilaterally invade or administer foreign nations on his own whim or impulse. They know that threatening annexation destabilizes the entire world, and Trump’s handed both Putin, Netanyahu, and Xi the rationalizations they all crave to expand their own empires.

Even Republicans know that governing by impulse isn’t strength but, instead, represents a very real danger to our republic. And yet they remain silent, calculating that confronting Trump is riskier to their careers than indulging him is to the country.

That GOP calculation is the real threat.

Trump’s love of military spectacle also fits perfectly — and dangerously — into this pattern. Like Ludwig staging operas and medieval fantasies in his version of the Kennedy Center, Trump treats America’s armed forces as props in his own pathetic personal drama. Rallies, salutes, parades, flyovers, and dramatic announcements substitute for deliberation, applause substitutes for legitimacy, and the human costs, the constitutional limits, and the long-term consequences are all fading into the background.

Neuschwanstein still stands today, beautiful and empty, a monument to what happens when fantasy replaces governance. Bavaria survived despite Ludwig, not because of him. Twenty-first century America, however, doesn’t have the luxury of turning its current ruler into a picturesque lesson (complete with a Ludwig-style ballroom) after the damage is done. A nuclear-armed superpower can’t afford indulgence that’s pretending to be patience.

The Constitution isn’t self-enforcing and doesn’t rise up on its own when norms are trampled. It instead relies on people in positions of authority to choose responsibility over fear; that’s why federal officials and our soldiers pledge their allegiance to our Constitution rather than to our government or any particular administration or person.

We hold the rulebook sacred, not the rulers.

If Republicans continue to refuse to even acknowledge the danger in front of them, history suggests the reckoning will come anyway, just at a far higher cost.

Bavaria eventually acted, not because it was easy but because delay had become more dangerous than dealing with a psychologically incapacitated and emotionally stunted ruler. The question facing the United States today is whether we’ll learn from that history or insist on repeating it.

Mad kings rarely stop themselves: they’re stopped when the people around them decide the country matters more than the crown.

Let your elected officials, particularly the Republicans, know your thoughts on the issue. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121. And pass it along…

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and radio host. His Substack can be found here.

'Cocksure boor' Trump's disastrous gamble predicted in long-forgotten memoir

Foreign leaders seeking to cope with Donald Trump should not shower the U.S. president with flattery and gold gifts, a former British defense secretary said: they should read a near-forgotten 1991 book that describes Trump as a “cocksure boor who pays precious little attention to detail” and a “a lad who literally grew too big for his britches.”

“You only have to meet people, do the job, read the room to realize that sucking up to Donald Trump, giving him gold watches from Switzerland, doesn't work,” said Sir Ben Wallace, British defense secretary from 2019 to 2023, referring to a common tactic among world leaders regarding the U.S. president.

“There's an amazing book called Trumped! written in 1991 by one of his casino bosses from Atlantic City. It's one of the best reads you can read, because it's not written [as] a sort of kiss-and-tell, ‘I knew the president.’

“… And in there, right in the middle of it, is Trump's obsession with wearing a suit, for example. It goes way back, right? If we'd had good quality advice to people like Zelensky, we would have known that those are the sort of things that touch [Trump] off.”

Speaking on the One Decision podcast, which he co-hosts, Wallace was referring to an incident in February last year when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was harangued in the Oval Office by Trump and Vice President JD Vance, in part for not wearing a suit as he sought continued U.S. aid against Russian invaders.

A year on, the U.K. is among countries attempting to cope with Trump in the aftermath of a U.S. raid on Caracas that resulted in the seizure and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and amid Trump’s renewed threats to forcibly take Greenland, which is governed by Denmark, another NATO member.

Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, by John R. O’Donnell, was published in 1991, when Trump was a New York property magnate subject to high-profile business reverses.

Few then predicted a Trump presidency, let alone a concerted attempt to wreck the post-war international order.

O’Donnell’s portrait is not flattering, revealing now familiar character traits including germaphobia, crudity, racism and cheapness.

One contemporary review described an “evenhanded, knowledgeable account” of “a decidedly dull boy whose life story could as easily have been subtitled ‘The Banality of Narcissism.’”

Kirkus continued: “Trump emerges as a cocksure boor who pays precious little attention to detail and pins the blame for his own misjudgments on subordinates. While he seems surprisingly dumb when it comes to weighing a deal's downside risks against its potential rewards, he apparently suffers from near-terminal overconfidence.”

Wallace’s podcast conversation touched on similar themes.

Speaking to Wallace and co-host Kate McCann, a reporter, Philip Gordon, once national security adviser to former vice president Kamala Harris, said he had “sympathy for the dilemmas of the European situation.

“They are dependent on the United States. They're worried about Trump retribution. They're pleading with him to try to stand with them on Ukraine because they fear that without the United States, they're really vulnerable to Russia and not strong enough.

“They're divided. You have some countries willing and ready to really criticize the United States for violating international law and others not. So I understand it and I get it. But the bottom line is, yes, Europe looks irrelevant in this situation. Collectively, I think this has been a trend in the first year of Trump foreign policy.

“Europeans trying to preserve support from the United States through flattery and nice words for Trump and hoping that if they're nice to him and they don't offend him, he'll support them. And each time he just responds to that, again, with contempt.”

Gordon also discussed working for President Barack Obama, who he said “was often accused of thinking things through too much.

“We [thought] about Syria and he would be, second-order effect, third-order, fourth. And … in high levels of government, you can be paralyzed if you worry about everything that could happen because lots of things can happen and you have to be sometimes decisive and take risks.

“But if Obama was guilty of thinking a little bit too much about second-, third- and fourth-order effects, Trump is guilty of not seeming to think about them at all.

“And I think that's what this is in Venezuela. Even when he first started saying, ‘Maduro has to go, we're putting an armada in place,’ I don't think he … was inclined to intervene. And then Maduro pissed him off by dancing and rejecting him and making fun of him and he decided to do it. I think that's where we are now too. But that's the big risk: they don't have a good answer to what next if Plan A doesn't work.”

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Democratic senators told Raw Story they feared such an outcome in Venezuela, for now still led by the Maduro regime, if without its figurehead.

According to Gordon, Trump’s Plan A “is to hope that, Okay, they got Maduro, maybe his cronies will be so afraid of the next wave of intervention that they'll do a deal and they'll pay back U.S. oil majors for money they owe them, they'll give them opportunities to invest in Venezuela, and they'll, as Trump says, do what he says.

“So that's the best-case scenario, but the worst case and arguably even more likely case is that they don't … you have the security services, the corrupt ministers of defense and interior, the gangs, the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, and they will have every interest in not doing that.

“And I don't think Trump has an answer to that question … Because, we're not there. When Trump says we're running Venezuela, we're not because we're not there. It's all just based on the hope that the fear of Donald Trump will lead them to do our bidding. That's just really risky.

“… If Plan A doesn't work, I don't think he knows what Plan B is. And if Plan B is to have to use force and actually go into Venezuela and do this ourselves, then we run into the same sorts of post-regime challenges that we've seen in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya, and it usually doesn't go well for the United States.”

‘What the hell are you hiding from?’ Trump and Rubio under fire over secret briefings

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are “hid[ing] in a box somewhere” to avoid public accountability over their armed intervention in Venezuela and extraction of President Nicolás Maduro, a prominent Democratic senator charged, after a closed-door briefing Wednesday.

“The Trump administration chooses to post as many videos as they want publicly to make their point, but they don't want to face the American people with an unclassified briefing,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told Raw Story at the Capitol.

“Why the hell is the Trump administration scared to face the American people in an open setting, before the Senate, before the House? I don't understand that.

“They keep wanting to hide in a box somewhere. I don't get it. We can't talk about any of this because it's all in a classified setting, but the Department of Justice is doing it all under a sealed, classified setting.

“Show the American people. What the hell are you hiding from?”

On Wednesday, Rubio, a former Florida U.S. senator, led briefings on Capitol Hill, accompanied by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I don't think that Secretary Rubio has been honest with the American people about a lot of things. Sadly, I think highly of Secretary Rubio, and it's disappointing to see how he chooses to engage with the American people,” Luján said.

“There needs to be an unclassified hearing so that all these questions can be asked and answered.”

‘Very proud of our military’

After months of pressure on Venezuela, including lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats, U.S. forces swooped into Caracas Saturday, seizing President Maduro and his wife before transporting them to New York to face narcotics and weapons charges.

President Trump has hailed the operation as an unqualified success and repeatedly trumpeted favorable U.S. deals concerning Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.

Most Democrats and a handful of Republicans had already criticized the administration for bombing boats without congressional approval. Those critical voices have only gotten louder in recent days, because, once again, Congress was not notified before the Caracas operation.

The briefing from Rubio and Hegseth confirmed “everything that's been out in the general sense,” said Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), also noting previous Democratic opposition to Maduro staying in power.

Asked about confusion over whether the U.S. is “running” Venezuela, as President Trump has said, or if the decapitated but standing Maduro regime is in charge, as seems the case, Fetterman said: “Plans are out, and now it's an evolving situation.

“Of course, there are concerns. Obviously.”

Veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) voiced similar concerns.

“I think some of their justifications remain the same as the previous briefing,” she told Raw Story, referring to a session late last year about the strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.

“They're claiming that it was not about regime change.

“We have more questions. And then we requested that they tell us when we can have public briefings, and they wouldn't answer that question.”

“Should that have been covered?” Raw Story asked.

“Yeah,” Duckworth said.

‘Totally America First’

A daring raid on a foreign capital to extract a president and his wife might seem contrary to the principles of “America First” — Trump’s tried and tested campaign slogan regarding avoiding foreign entanglements.

But Republicans emerging from Wednesday’s briefing backed the administration.

“It’s totally ‘America First,’” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) told Raw Story. “Stopping drugs flowing into our country and holding [Venezuela] accountable for it is totally America First.”

Democrats and other critics point out that Venezuela has no role in the international flow of fentanyl, the chief cause of drug deaths in the U.S., and a negligible part in the flow to American shores of cocaine and other drugs.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said Democrats were “always going to have their opinion about stuff because of their hatred towards President Trump.”

Asked if he was personally “behind this effort” and thought it would be “easily wrapped up down there, no boots on the ground,” Mullin said simply: “There's no boots on the ground.”

Nor has there yet been a change of regime in Caracas. Nonetheless, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) seemed to welcome that prospect.

“There'll be a new government one day, and there'll be a lot of business activity between the United States and Venezuela that didn't exist before this,” Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk, told Raw Story.

Asked if he was open to similar U.S. intervention in Colombia, about whose leftist government Trump has made ominous remarks, Graham did not answer, instead seeking the sanctuary of a senators-only elevator.

Trump's attack on Venezuela is linked to the Epstein files — but not the way you think

If you’re like me, it seems unclear why the president ordered the illegal and unconstitutional bombing of Venezuela, the kidnapping of its head of state, and the theft of its oil. As soon as we were given one reason, the White House came up with another, usually contradicting the first.

Ditto for what the US is going to do now. Donald Trump said we’re now going to run Venezuela, as if colonizing a foreign nation was something any of us voted for. Apparently, however, what he really meant is that Venezuela’s new leader, the former vice president, had better do what he tells her to do or face another illegal and unconstitutional attack.

In a sense, this extortionist attitude toward Venezuela is the same extortionist attitude that Trump has toward blue states: Do as I say, not for any particular or compelling reason, but because I said so — or else. The president believes his word is law. Foreign leaders can be held accountable for their crimes, but he can’t be for his. He also believes might makes right. “We have to do it again [in other countries],” he said. “We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."

On hearing news of the Venezuela attack, some liberals said it was to distract from the Epstein files. Some cited Trump’s own words. He once said Barack Obama was getting so unpopular that we should expect him to bomb the Middle East to boost his poll numbers.

But “distraction” assumes that one thing is worse than another, and the fact is, everything Trump does is corrupt, meaning everything is a potential liability. Withholding Epstein files is illegal. Invading a sovereign nation is illegal. (Impounding congressional funding to Democratically controlled states is illegal). It’s all illegal. And defenders of liberty don’t have to decide which is more corrupt.

I interviewed Noah Berlatsky about a recent piece of his arguing that Trump’s corrupt handling of the Epstein files could backfire on him. We discussed an array of things, including the seeming impossibility of holding Trump accountable. Our conversation took place before last weekend’s attack, but Noah connected the two subjects. He said MAGA infighting over Epstein eroded Trump’s polling. MAGA infighting over Venezuela — a betrayal of “America First” — could do the same.

That, among other things, offers hope for justice.

“War with Venezuela is about as unpopular as Trump's handling of the Epstein files!” said the publisher of Everything Is Horrible, a newsletter about politics and the arts. “I think the idea of ‘distraction’ in general isn't very helpful. Trump does lots and lots of horrible things; they're all horrible in themselves, and we should pay attention to and oppose them all. I don't think one horrible thing distracts from another.”

JS: In your piece for Public Notice, you say that Trump's corrupt handling of the Epstein files could backfire on him. He has escaped scandal before. What makes this different in your mind?

NB: I don't think he really does escape scandal. His rhetoric and actions do harm him in many ways. He's always been an extraordinarily unpopular president, and he's always suffered a lot of losses because of that, and because he's bad at his job. Partisanship is just a very powerful force, as is white supremacy and bigotry, so his many losses and failures, and his unpopularity, don't necessarily destroy him the way people often think they should, which leads to this myth of invulnerability — even though there's a lot of evidence that he's not invulnerable.

Having said that, I think the Epstein files are particularly dangerous for him because Epstein's real crimes became conflated with Qanon anti-Democratic conspiracy theories. A lot of people in Trump's base — like Dan Bongino, for example, or Marjorie Taylor Greene — have invested a lot of energy in the idea that exposing Epstein would bring down the Democratic Party, and so when Trump says that Epstein is a hoax, that seems to be targeted at them and they don't like it.

Basically, Trump's usual strategies to contain the damage, which is claiming it's an entirely partisan attack, are not very effective when the right is also very invested in this scandal. It's a case where Trump's interests are very much out of sync not just with the Republican mainstream, but with the far-right base. So that creates unusual dangers for him.

If there is accountability in the future for Trump, it will be because the Democrats insisted on it. But the Democrats have a lot of incentive to just move on once they regain power. That would set up future tyrants for success. How do we change that?

Yeah, it's a tough question.

I think that the Democrats have incentives to move on, because antifascist actions — expanding the Supreme Court, for example — are difficult and may not be super-popular with the electorate as a whole, which is often more focused on things like lowering inflation. This was Joe Biden's approach. He figured that a good economy would allow him to win the next election and that was the best way to fight fascism — just win elections. Electoral parties are hyper-focused on winning elections, so this is an appealing approach for Democrats.

However, Democrats, of course, lost in 2024, because you can't win every election or control the economy entirely. And you'd hope that would be a warning to Democrats and create some incentives the other way. And of course fascists actually want to arrest and murder the opposition, which you'd hope would encourage Democrats to be aggressive in containing and crushing fascism when they're in office.

I think there are some signs that some Democrats at least are thinking about this — and there's also evidence that you can move the party through advocacy. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — poster child for appeasement — moved from immediate capitulation in the first budget showdown to leading a very extended and in many ways successful budget shutdown at the end of the year. Impeachment votes have garnered more and more support in the House, and GOP leadership has moved from outright opposition to refusing to vote.

This is not enough, obviously, but it suggests that as Trump's approval craters and as people demand better, representatives do react.

I think continued pressure will help. I also think it would probably help if there were some high-profile mainstream losses to fighters in the midterms. Brad Lander beating Dan Goldman would be a big deal. Kat Abughazaleh winning in IL-9 would be a big deal. A couple more wins along those lines would help a lot.

Accountability will require sustained attention from the press corps, but the press corps allows its agenda to be set by the rightwing media complex, as I call it. Are the divisions we are seeing among MAGA media personalities the only hope we have?

Again, it's a tough question. I think that the current fissures on the right do help in terms of eroding Trump's approval and making it more difficult for the right to create sustained propaganda talking points. There hasn't been any consistent rightwing pushback on Epstein for example. The right has been notably unable to make a convincing sustained case for war in Venezuela; I think that's polling at 11 percent or something ridiculously low.

I think people can also underestimate the extent to which resistance can create effective propaganda. [Editor-in-chief of CBS News] Bari Weiss attempted to kill the story about El Salvador's horrific prison conditions for US deportees, but it got bootlegged and distributed by independent media and just interested people, and the result is it was seen I believe millions more times than it would have been if it just aired. Democratic politicians like Chris Murphy also talked about it. So I thought that was all pretty hopeful.

So I guess the answer is … yes. MAGA infighting helps, but I think we're able to take advantage of it in part because there's just a ton of resistance to the regime, and that creates opportunities for counter-messaging through both formal and informal channels.

Liberal hope is often rooted in belief in the American character, which is that we the people believe in liberty and justice for all. Trump has exposed that as problematic. He's also convinced people that such beliefs are fraudulent. What do liberals do?

Well, there's no one American character. The US has always been really racist and authoritarian. It's also fostered pioneering antiracist and liberatory movements. The "truth" of the country isn't one or the other. It's just what we choose to do.

I think that the belief in American exceptionalism and in some sort of inborn virtuous American character has always really been a tool for fascism and repression, so liberals are better off without it! I think that liberals and leftists and people of good will in general are best off acknowledging that the country has always had grotesque fascist traditions, but highlighting that there have also been people who have fought against those — Frederick Douglass, Ida B Wells-Barnett, MLK, Alice Wong, and on and on. The fight's the same as it ever was, which is grim, but hopefully a source of sustenance as well.

I have never seen a Democratic base as divided and disillusioned as I see it today. Not even the post-9/11 years were this bad. I suspect it's because of dashed hopes. There seemed to be so much promise in the wake of George Floyd's murder. America seemed to reject conservative orthodoxy. Then came the radical centrist backlash and Trump's reelection. Thoughts?

I think there's a lot of reason to be depressed for sure. And I think despair and a real uncertainty about tactics will lead to a certain amount of infighting. But, I mean, I don't exactly see the base as divided and disillusioned. There's a lot of coordinated and effective resistance. People are turning out to vote in massive numbers, and winning major victories everywhere from New Jersey to Miami to Oklahoma. Protests against ICE in the streets are ubiquitous and have been quite effective. The consumer boycott against Disney to restore Jimmy Kimmel was massive and victorious. I mentioned the circulation of the 60 Minutes segment in defiance of CBS.

I don't mean to say it's all good. Obviously, we're in a dire and ugly situation. But I think despite differences and understandable despair, a lot of people are pushing back in a lot of ways. I think that Trump's position, and the radical centrist position, is much, much more precarious than it was at the beginning of the year because of this pushback. Victory is very much not guaranteed, but I think there's reason to hope that continued resistance can continue to gain ground.

Of all Trump's toadies, this one is the wettest — and littlest

Marco Rubio has a drinking problem.

It first showed up years ago, under klieg lights and national scrutiny, when a shaky hand reached for a sip from a bottle of water, all caught on camera as he gave the GOP response to President Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address. It became a national joke but it was also a metaphor: a man parched for power, exposed as he tried to drink on his own.

A decade later, the thirst remains. Only now, Rubio isn’t sipping nervously. He’s chugging obediently from the firehose-in-chief.

Last Saturday, standing at a podium to explain the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and extrajudicial kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, Rubio looked like what he has spent his entire career trying not to be — small.

Small in stature, small in independence, infinitely small in courage. Puffing himself up with half-assed talking points while a slouched and sleepy Donald Trump loomed behind him, Rubio strained to sound like a statesman but came off like a little tike, gulping excitedly from the well of sycophancy.

Poor little Marco. Still trying to drink his way into relevance.

As Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Rubio has presided over a hollowing out of American diplomacy, all while insisting the pipes are flowing. Career diplomats have been sidelined or purged. Experts have been replaced with loyalists. Longstanding diplomatic programs like USAID and PEPFAR have been washed out. And that’s only the beginning.

No longer the parched junior senator clutching a Poland Spring, Rubio has become a different joke.

He once argued that strong diplomacy was America’s first line of defense. Now he acts as if diplomacy is a weakness, to be flushed away in favor of blunt threats and cable-news bravado.

He used to come off polished, in his days heading the Senate Intelligence Committee. Some Democrats even appreciated his moderation and modulation. Not anymore. On Sunday, speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rubio tied himself in knots trying to explain why the U.S. invaded Venezuela, and whatever the hell comes next. He was drowning in doublespeak.

The Venezuela debacle — that’s what it will eventually be called — is the clearest example yet of Rubio’s transformation from policymaker to tongue-tied mouthpiece. For years, he has framed Latin America as a simple morality play, strongmen versus freedom. But he used to resist calls to take up arms. On CNN in 2019, he said, “I don’t know of anyone who is calling for a military intervention.”

At the podium at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Little Marco changed his tune. He turned, looked up at his dictator, and foamed at the mouth: “The 47th president of the United States is not a game player. When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it … Don’t play games when this president’s in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”

What’s not going to turn out well, Little Marco, is the illusion that you can play war games abroad, invade a country, then manage it without paying a steep price.

The invasion appears to have violated international law, bypassed congressional authorization, and detonated whatever credibility the U.S. had in the region. Allies were blindsided, adversaries emboldened. The Maduro regime remains in power. God knows what comes next.

Little Marco says he knows. He is boasting that oil companies are going to save the day, as everyone swims in riches. But oil companies are saying, “What?” They are balking, unwilling to put businesses and employees at risk.

Rubio’s most consistent role is no longer architect or strategist. Instead, it’s trying to be Trump’s favorite. When Trump slurs out a threat, Rubio stammers out a water-down. When Trump contradicts himself, Rubio contradicts the contradictions. When Trump bungles foreign policy, Rubio says he’s “Going to address a problem.”

He absorbs it all like a sponge.

What makes Rubio especially diminished is how openly competitive his loyalty has become. He isn’t just supporting Trump — he’s pining to be the golden child among all the acolytes. If Pete Hegseth is the warrior and Kristi Noem is the beauty queen, that makes Rubio the court jester, because most of what he says is laughable.

And the kicker is that Rubio most likely thinks that kow-towing to Trump, and wrestling with Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and Kash Patel, will help him usurp the equally inept JD Vance as the GOP frontrunner in 2028. Little Marco has big dreams.

There were high hopes for him once, but rather than acting as a moderating force or principled voice he surrendered his autonomy and dignity, enthusiastically advocating for policies that are abjectly inhumane and harmful.

His shift from Trump critic to cheerleader is nothing short of mindnumbing. It is gutless capitulation at its worst, loyalty to Trump outweighing any commitment to independent judgment or diplomatic norms.

Trump’s penchant for third-grade nicknames shows the very essence of an infantilist. But occasionally his nicknames land, because they expose something true. “Little Marco” stuck because it captured a person who wants power so badly he keeps making himself smaller to get it. In the wake of Venezuela, Rubio has become Tom Thumb.

The only thing large about Rubio are his ears, now full of Trump’s grating, slurred, and sinister corrosiveness, tidal-waving over Rubio like a full-service car wash.

Rubio thinks he is preparing to man the faucets of our country. But Little Marco has diminished himself by drowning in Trump’s poisonous Kool-Aid. A pint-size bottle of Poland Spring couldn’t wash that away.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”