Trump Snubs Top Venezuelan Opposition Leader for the Pettiest Reason

It seems that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump for nothing.

After Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, many looked to Machado as the clear option to fill the vacancy, due to both her work promoting democracy in Venezuela and her close relationship with the Trump administration—most evident in her Peace Prize dedication. But over the weekend, Trump stated that the United States would “run” Venezuela and that he had not been in contact with Machado, even claiming that she didn’t have “the respect within the country” to lead.

“She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect,” he told reporters then.

This snubbing is reportedly a result of Machado not outright refusing the award, which Trump also wanted. Two sources close to the White House told The Washington Post that her decision to accept the Nobel Prize, even despite dedicating it to Trump, set the U.S. president off, leading to this current petty grudge.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio couldn’t provide a single legal rationale for President Donald Trump’s plan to put himself in charge of Venezuela.

Rubio flailed Sunday during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, when host George Stephanopoulos asked him under what legal authority Trump intended to “run” Venezuela.

“Under—well, first of all, what’s gonna happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of Venezuelan people are met. And that’s what we intend to do,” Rubio replied.

He continued to rant that he was “hopeful” this plan would lead to “positive results,” meaning a Venezuela that was not a “narco-trafficking paradise” and had an oil industry “where the wealth goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals.”

Unfortunately for Rubio, the question hadn’t been, “What are your hopes and dreams?”

“Let me ask the question again,” Stephanopoulos pressed. “What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?”

“Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we’re going to use the leverage to make it happen,” Rubio said. “As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine are very simple. We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats. And we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions.”

“So, is the United States running Venezuela right now?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“What we are running is the direction that this is gonna move moving forward, and that is we have leverage,” the secretary replied.

Rubio’s mealymouthed answer seemed to suggest that the Trump administration doesn’t plan to produce any legal authority for its reign in Venezuela but instead use sanctions as soft power. However, this explanation completely ignores the fact that the Trump administration just executed a large-scale military operation—without the permission of Congress—to kidnap Nicolás Maduro and is still threatening more strikes on the country.

Shortly after the strike, Trump said he intended for the United States to manage Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” of power. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump confirmed Sunday that the U.S. was currently “in charge” of the South American country.

No, President Donald Trump didn’t tell Congress before launching a large-scale operation to attack Venezuela and kidnap its president—but he did tell someone.

Speaking to the president on Air Force One Sunday, one reporter asked whether Trump had looped in U.S. oil companies to his plans to oust Nicolás Maduro by force.

“Did you speak with them before the operation took place?” the reporter asked.

“Yes,” Trump replied.

“Did you maybe tip them off about what was gonna—?” the reporter continued.

“Before and after. And they want to go in, and they’re gonna do a great job for the people of Venezuela,” the president said. “And they’re gonna represent us well.”

Trump seemed to have no reservations about revealing that his government isn’t a democracy at all—it’s an oligarchy, where companies come first and his constituents don’t matter whatsoever. U.S. oil companies are already cashing in on his brazen constitutional violation.

Shortly after the military operation in Venezuela took place, Trump made clear his intention for oil companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” Trump has insisted that “the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” but it seems that rebuilding the country’s oil industry won’t be cheap or easy.

Not only did Trump not receive authorization from Congress before launching the strike, but Democratic lawmakers now allege that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intentionally misled lawmakers about the administration’s intentions to do so.

After bombing Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the middle of the night, President Trump has declared that he will “run the country” in the meantime.

“We’re going to run the country until such time, as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference on Saturday. “So we don’t wanna be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we have for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country.”

Trump also dedicated a significant portion of the presser to discussing the future of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet. “As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long time,” he said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure … and start making money.”

Could you imagine if another country sent a team of special agents to kidnap President Trump and his wife Melania from the White House while they slept? And then went on air the next morning saying they’d plug and play someone else as president?

That someone else could very well be María Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner who has already displayed her eagerness to serve Trump and the U.S. agenda. For now, Trump hasn’t yet signed off.

A suspicious new user on the prediction market Polymarket just made bank on the Trump administration’s military strikes on Venezuela.

The account, which was created on December 27, has only bet on two things: the U.S. invading Venezuela, and its president, Nicolás Maduro, being forced out of leadership by January 31. The user bet $35,000 when the market estimated the probability of intervention in Venezuela at only 6 percent.

Thanks to their very lucky bets, they made over $400,000 in less than a day.

The timing of the account’s bets—and its creation—is certainly suspicious. According to reports, U.S. military officials initially discussed bombing Venezuela on Christmas Day, but reversed course after deciding to pursue airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria instead. In the days following Christmas, officials held off on the attacks due to the weather.

Trump announced his strikes on Venezuela, and his abduction of Maduro and his wife, early Saturday morning. While he did a good job at keeping the attack from being leaked to the media, it seems someone on his team had no problem leaking the news to Polymarket—and making themselves quite a bit richer in the process.