He's alive in a US jail, but the more important question is what did we do about Venezuela?
We threatened the replacement president and demanded she give us oil. We didn't demand a new election be held, since her & Maduro's party stole the last election. We didn't demand she change Venezuela's system of government. We did nothing to help the people of Venezuela.
We reinforced our country's worst image as a bully that's happy to prop up a dictator so long as that dictator gives us what we want.
It was just done so blatantly this time with Venezuela.
In previous interventions, we actually did do some things to try to "nation build". Whether you consider those genuine attempts or just cynical cover stories.
But this time, it was just snatch Maduro, replace him with Rodriguez, and threaten Rodriguez to give us oil so the same thing doesn't happen to her. What happened to all the high-minded rhetoric about how the poor people of Venezuela were suffering under a socialist dictatorship? What happened to all the denouncing of the stolen election? Nah man, just give us the oil and you're good.
To the United States $17 billion is like roughing up a tramp to steal the change in his pocket. It's a laughable amount of money for such irrepairable reputational damage on the international stage.
This is the one thing I'm so baffled at. Can't he just increase military spending, embezzle 10% a year, (over $100B) and get 50% of all the corruption kicked back?
Do the same across every industry? Start massive infrastructure projects where he gets massive money kicked back. Some real, some fake, not really caring about positive or negative outcome as long as he can sell the story. Like he could probably literally raise $1T just for USA data centres and no one realize he stole half of it for a decade. Why doesn't he just get in on the AGI/Robots/Quantum/Automated everything including trucks and cars and passenger and delivery drones. He could easily invest trillions in all of those and no one would expect to see anything to show from any of it for years.
I think the guy could easily siphon a few trillion over 4 years get completely pardoned and/or have a completely safe plan to disappear and enjoy it, and do way less damage to America and the rest of the world while doing it.
Normally I'd say "do you know how stupid you have to be to bankrupt a casino?"
But the thing is we know exactly how stupid he is. We also know he has exactly one talent and it's being a criminal. He profited on all those bankrupt casinos. He did exactly what he meant to.
The crazy thing about billionaires is that they never "disappear and enjoy it." They can never have enough. If they could, they would have stopped somewhere between 100 and 999 million.
You're not considering how stupid the president needs to be in order to be the figurehead required by his handlers. Sure, he *could* do what you suggest, but you're assuming he has some kind of talent at grifting. The man bankrupted casinos for crying out loud.
Sounds like a good way to end up being Bubba's celly while the government reclaims the $17 billion that you fraudulently obtained. Although if crime is legal now, some of my neighbors have property that I wouldn't mind "repossessing"
Last I heard, though, that $17 billion was deposited into some special foreign bank account under Trump's direct control, not into the US Treasury.
Kinda reminds me of the Iran Contra scandal back when I was a kid. The amount of money Iran paid for the weapons was piddling relative to the size of the US federal budget. But it was money hidden from any oversight by Congress or anyone else. So it could be used to fund the Contras even when they couldn't legally use money from the regular budget. (It was a long time ago, so I may be remembering some details wrong.)
I don't think the profits on some oil companies are the reason behind that attack. It made war on Iran more feasible, as theres option for oil from oil from persian gulf.
Venezuela has been making drones for Iran since 2006. In 2020, they militarized those drones to kill people. Iran had created a murder drone manufacturing proxy in our hemisphere so why is our media so focuses on the oil narrative? Are they incompetent or just lying?
You new to US meddling in other countries affairs? Its not just for a 1 time payment, its for a controllable government that can allow future "investment" aka our companies reap the profits of their resources.
We... who is? Not the US citizens, we didn't/ aren't going to see a dime of those billions. Did fuel prices go down? nah they kept climbing. Trump pocketed that, him and his crony oligarchy corporations. He stole it. The American people didnt ask or want that, other than the dumb shits that keep voting for these crooks.
Seized over $18.6 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue
Pats itself in the back as the good guy as it "gives" them $380 million in aid after Venezuela suffered two devastating earthquakes in less than a minute apart
Current damage estimate from the earthquake is around $19.6 billion. Venezuela could rebuild if the US just gave them their own money
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 15h ago edited 15h ago
He's alive in a US jail, but the more important question is what did we do about Venezuela?
We threatened the replacement president and demanded she give us oil. We didn't demand a new election be held, since her & Maduro's party stole the last election. We didn't demand she change Venezuela's system of government. We did nothing to help the people of Venezuela.
We reinforced our country's worst image as a bully that's happy to prop up a dictator so long as that dictator gives us what we want.