Here’s How Long Trump Plans to Run Venezuela’s Oil Industry

The U.S. will never stop being involved in Venezuela’s oil production, according to Trump administration officials.

Washington will instead continue to oversee and sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday morning, even after U.S. officials finish selling off the Latin American country’s stockpiled oil reserves.

“Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re gonna let the oil flow … to United States refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the U.S. government,” Wright said while speaking at Goldman Sachs’s Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference.

“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” he noted.

Wright added that the proceeds from the oil sales will go into “accounts controlled by the U.S. government” before supposedly flowing back to benefit the Venezuelan people.

Some of the cash is already on its way to the U.S. Trump announced Tuesday night that Wright would oversee the sale of some 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil, a sale that could be worth as much as $2.5 billion.

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela early Saturday, bombing its capital, Caracas, as nearly 200 American troops infiltrated the city to capture its 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro.

Donald Trump failed to notify Congress before the invasion but didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

The invasion followed months of naval attacks and escalating rhetoric between the White House and Venezuela’s leadership, which saw the Trump administration repeatedly pin U.S. fentanyl deaths on Venezuelan drug cartels despite a resounding lack of evidence.

Venezuela nationalized its oil supply in 1976 but tightened its grip on the valuable resource during the 2000s under President Hugo Chávez, when the country stripped control and seized assets from several major oil companies, including ExxonMobil.

But a Trump-controlled Venezuela is not likely to be as hostile. Instead, Wright revealed Wednesday that he had already been in discussions with U.S. oil companies about their potential return to the Latin American nation. He emphasized, however, that returning Venezuela to pre-Chávez oil production levels would require “tens of millions of dollars and significant time.”

This story has been updated.

A federal judge is demanding to know why Lindsey Halligan still thinks she’s U.S. attorney.

U.S. District Judge David Novak of Richmond—who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019—filed an order late Tuesday, giving Halligan seven days to explain why she is lying about overseeing the legal matters of the Eastern District of Virginia.

“For these reasons, the Court hereby DIRECTS Ms. Halligan to file, within seven (7) days of the issuance of this Order, a pleading explaining the basis for Ms. Halligan’s identification of herself as the United States Attorney, notwithstanding [U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan] Currie’s contrary ruling,” Novak wrote, referring to Currie’s November ruling that found that the Justice Department had violated the Constitution by appointing Halligan.

“She shall also set forth the reasons why this Court should not strike Ms. Halligan’s identification of herself as United States Attorney from the indictment in this matter,” Novak continued. “Ms. Halligan shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.”

Trump handpicked Halligan—a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience—to replace the last attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert. Siebert was forced out when he refused to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after he couldn’t find incriminating evidence against the pair.

Halligan was sworn into the powerful position in September. Ignoring protocol, the Trump loyalist moved full steam ahead on prosecutions under the banner of Trump’s approval for months, despite the fact that she was never confirmed by the Senate.

But Currie’s decision didn’t seem to matter one iota to Justice Department officials, who continued to sign Halligan’s name on criminal indictments even after she ruled that Halligan was unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney.

In his own order, Novak suggested that Halligan could face disciplinary consequences for blatantly ignoring the law.

Donald Trump just can’t seem to wrap his head around why Representative Henry Cuellar isn’t backing off his reelection bid after being pardoned by the president last month.

Writing on Truth Social Tuesday night, Trump unloaded two lengthy screeds targeting the Texas Democrat, whom he’d pardoned from charges of bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering.

The president gushed about Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, his pick to win in November, before turning his attention to Cuellar’s “great act of disloyalty” of running again as a Democrat.

“The Democrats wanted to put him ‘away’ for the rest of his life and, likewise, the life of his wife,” Trump wrote. He claimed that if given the chance, he would save Cuellar from “Political Persecution” again, but said the Democrat was “not smart in what he did, not respected by his Party” and was “a person who truly deserves to be beaten badly in the upcoming Election.”

“Henry should not be allowed to serve in Congress again,” the president wrote.

In a second post, Trump revealed exactly why he’d pardoned Cuellar: The embattled Texas Democrat reminded the president of himself.

“Nobody knows Henry Cuellar better than Donald J. Trump,” the president wrote, noting: “He was a weak and incompetent version of me.” He explained that they were in agreement about bolstering border security and had both suffered “Political Weaponization” at the hands of the Democrats.

Trump included a letter from Cuellar’s two daughters Catherine and Christina, who speculated that their father’s disagreements with his party “may have contributed to how this case began.”

“I never assumed he would be running for Office again, and certainly not as a Democrat, who essentially destroyed his life even with the Pardon given,” Trump wrote, adding that “despite doing him by far the greatest favor of his life,” the president now had to challenge his bid for his seat.

The Wyoming state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to protect access to abortion—hilariously using a state law originally passed to undermine Obamacare.

The justices ruled 4-1 that two laws banning abortion, including the country’s first ban on abortion pills, violated the state Constitution—specifically an amendment ensuring that “each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”

That amendment was originally introduced in 2010 by Republican state Senator Leslie Nutting in order to resist adopting the Affordable Care Act. The bill was backed by Wyoming’s GOP-led legislature before being signed into law in 2011.

Attorneys for the state attempted to argue that abortion was not health care—and failed.

While the justices conceded that the amendment hadn’t been intended to apply to abortion, they determined that it was not their job to “add words” to the state Constitution.

It’s been five years since Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. To celebrate, the White House erected a new website Tuesday detailing the events of the day—though it has published a wildly inventive interpretation of the insurrection.

At the top of the black-and-white site: an enlarged portrait of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Below her are smaller, glitching images of several prominent Democrats that led the two impeachment proceedings against Trump during his first term, including Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Adam Schiff.

The first paragraph on the page makes mention of the sweeping pardon Trump signed during the initial hours of his second term, exonerating some 1,600 January 6 defendants. Below that, a chronological history that would challenge even the most forgiving recollection of the day.

The first slide of the timeline, labelled “Call to Action,” claims that prior to the day, Trump invited “patriotic Americans to Washington, DC on January 6 for a peaceful and historic protest.” It also states that Trump’s call was met by “hundreds of thousands” of his supporters. First fact check: that was not the case. It’s estimated that approximately 53,000 people attended his speech at the Ellipse that day. (Trump has previously claimed that attendance at his “Stop the Steal” rally rivaled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington, which drew roughly 250,000 attendees.)

The White House’s retelling goes on to purport that, after Trump delivered his speech, the “massive crowd peacefully” marched toward the Capitol building. The site refers to their demeanor as “orderly and spirited,” emphasizing their devotion to the 45th president.

Not mentioned on the website: the repeated lies and violent rhetoric that Trump espoused to hype his supporters up while at the Ellipse, which included Trump encouraging the crowd to “fight like hell” or else they wouldn’t “have a country anymore.” Also not mentioned: when Trump promised to join the march but immediately ditched them instead, hopping into his SUV for a lift to the White House where he chose to watch the bedlam from afar. (Years after the riot, it would become clear that even Trump’s supporters believed the president had incited their violence.)

The website then claims that the violence began after Capitol Police “aggressively fired tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters.” But video evidence and extensive investigations into the proceedings of the day tell the story the other way around: shortly after 1:00 p.m., Trump’s supporters burst through the barriers around the Capitol, running toward the building as Congress voted to certify the election results. They were practically unimpeded by security forces.

Instead, the webpage suggests that Trump’s supporters breezed into the building, practically admitted by Capitol Police who “inexplicably removed barricades, opened Capitol doors, and even waved attendees inside the building,” all while insisting that some portions of the crowd were unfairly targeted by “violent force.”

Trump’s timeline ignores when Capitol Police discovered two bombs on the premises of the Capitol grounds, or when his supporters breached the Capitol by scaling its walls, smashing its windows and busting its doors. It also conveniently forgets that the events placed the Capitol on lockdown, or that the volatile crowd began chanting for the deaths of U.S. lawmakers.

The website claims that, after 2:24 p.m. Trump attempted to engineer a peaceful resolution for the pandemonium. Writing on Twitter, Trump did urge the crowd to “remain peaceful” and “respect the law,” though he did not tell them to exit the Capitol or go home. (Trump wouldn’t do that until 4:17 p.m., well after his supporters broke into Pelosi’s office and ransacked Congress.) But the White House’s retelling leaves out the part where Trump criticized his former number two, Mike Pence, before the vice president—who that morning had told Trump he would not overturn the election results—could exit the building.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Trump posted at the time.

Pence would eventually find his way out of the building, evading armed crowds chanting for his death.

The next slide on the White House-affiliated website announces that Pelosi repeatedly claimed responsibility for the building’s insufficient security detail. It links out to a video of the former speaker, captured the day of the riot, in which she laments that the National Guard had not been preemptively deployed to protect the legislative chambers from an attack by the president’s supporters.

(An egregious miscommunication between the Pentagon and the commander of the D.C. National Guard would result in the troops’ appallingly delayed deployment to assist the besieged Capitol Police.)

The page then features a smattering of allegations that only make sense through the lens of someone vehemently convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, which mounds of evidence and repeat investigations have proven was not, in fact, the case. The White House accuses Pence of “cowardice and sabotage” for refusing to follow Trump’s orders to defy the votes of the American people, claims that the 2020 election was the effect of “massive mail-in ballot fraud” and “hidden suitcases of ballots.” The site argues that the fallout from the day unfairly “silenced” Trump (on social media), resulted in “mass arrests of patriotic protesters,” and inspired “weaponized prosecutions” against the real estate mogul.

“Despite relentless Deep State efforts to imprison, bankrupt, and assassinate him—all designed to sabotage his political comeback through fabricated indictments, invasive raids, and rigged show trials—President Trump emerges triumphant,” the website concludes in its final panel on Trump’s rewritten history. “Fueled by unbreakable resolve, the fierce loyalty of his courageous family, team, and Patriotic Americans, and God’s unmistakable grace, he delivers a landslide 2024 victory and reclaims the White House in the greatest comeback in American History.”

The White House triggered international alarm when it ordered U.S. troops to storm Venezuela and capture the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump’s blatant violation of international law and order transformed his rhetoric, which was until Saturday blithely dismissed as toothless threats and flat jokes about controlling the world, into a real, immediate danger.

Enter: Greenland. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s bombardment of Venezuela for oil, European allies weighed whether the U.S. president’s myriad jabs at annexing Greenland—another major international oil resource—had actually carried venom. They have since released public statements in defense of Greenland, potentially pitting the Danish territory against the world’s greatest military force.

To explain how the U.S. got to this point in its relationship with the Arctic island, this New Republic reporter has broken down the more critical details of Trump’s escalating feud with Greenland, its self-governing residents, and the U.S. ally that maintains it as part of its kingdom: Denmark.

August 18, 2019: Trump confirms rumors that he is interested in acquiring Greenland. He tells reporters at the time that the arrangement could be handled as a “large real estate deal.” His comments are little more than a laughless joke to most of the world—but not to those residing on the Arctic island, who receive news of Trump’s interest with searing indignation.

December 22, 2024: Trump’s interest in Greenland resurfaces before he enters office for his second term. He writes on Truth Social that “for purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” Greenland’s leadership responds that the semiautonomous territory is “not for sale.”

December 24, 2024: The potential acquisition is lumped into a grander scheme to expand U.S. borders, in which Trump would aim to transform Canada and Greenland into American states.

January 7, 2025: Trump suggests that he would use military force to obtain Greenland, and economic force to squash Canada.

That same day, Donald Trump Jr., Charlie Kirk, and Trump staffer Sergio Gor pay a visit to Greenland as part of a not-so-subtle propaganda tour. The MAGA trio claim that Greenlanders are amenable to a potential takeover. Days later, it emerges that the American envoy had lied and staged Trump-friendly photographs, offering food to homeless people in exchange for pictures of them in MAGA merch.

Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish Parliament, says that Greenlanders do not intend to be a “pawn in Trump’s hot dreams of expanding his empire to include our country.”

January 8, 2025: The House GOP writes that denying Trump’s “big dreams” of eastward expansion would be “un-American.”

February 11, 2025: In an apparent attempt to suck up to the president, Georgia Representative Buddy Carter files a bill pitching that “Greenland shall be known as ‘Red, White, and Blueland,’” authorizing the president to enter into negotiations with the government of Denmark to purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland.

March 12, 2025: Greenland’s parliamentary elections result in a massive win for the pro-independence movement. The center-right Demokraatit Party, which supports a local business-driven approach to gaining independence, wins nearly 30 percent of the vote. The most aggressively pro-independence party, Naleraq, wins 25 percent.

“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders. And we want our own independence in the future. And we want to build our own country by ourselves, not with his hope,” Demokraatit Party leader Jens-Friederik Nielsen tells SkyNews on the eve of the election.

March 27, 2025: Trump’s aggression inspires a massive reshuffling of Greenland’s Parliament, with the island’s four political parties forming a coalition government with the primary purpose of opposing American efforts to take control. The reorganization is fronted by Greenland’s center-right Demokraatit Party, making its leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the country’s new prime minister.

That same day, second lady Usha Vance’s trip to much of the Danish territory is spontaneously canceled. The decision follows reports from local media that U.S. representatives were walking door-to-door in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, inquiring if residents would be interested in a visit from the vice president’s wife.

“They’ve gotten no, no, no, no, no, every single time,” said TV 2 correspondent Jesper Steinmetz.

The story bothered Usha Vance so much that a senior White House official reached out to this TNR reporter to insist that the details of her article were “categorically false,” though the official did not specify which part of the report Vance objected to.

Instead of touring the island as planned, Vance visits a U.S. space base on Greenland alongside her husband, Vice President JD Vance, then–national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

April 10, 2025: The New York Times reveals that the White House National Security Council has met “several times” to make Trump’s desires for the Arctic island a reality. One possible plan: a massive P.R. campaign consisting of spending federal dollars on advertising and social media with hopes of persuading Greenland’s 57,000 residents to annex themselves for America.

May 4, 2025: Trump refuses to “rule out” the possibility of using military force against Greenland.

May 7, 2025: Reports emerge that several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard directed the U.S. intelligence community to spy on Greenland’s independence movement over the prior week. The officials also tasked agencies to identify individuals living in Greenland and Denmark who support the Trump administration’s goals for the island, and examine local attitudes regarding potential “American resource extraction.”

August 27, 2025: Denmark’s foreign minister summons a U.S. diplomat to discuss recent incursions in Greenland, including an influence campaign spearheaded by several people with ties to the White House.

One of the Americans reportedly compiled a list of denizens friendly to the U.S., collected the names of people who oppose Trump, and conducted reconnaissance on narratives that could potentially frame Denmark in a bad light for sympathetic American media. The other two Americans were caught cozying up to Greenland politicians, businesspeople, and locals.

December 21, 2025: Trump appoints Jeff Landry, the former Republican governor of Louisiana, as special envoy to Greenland. In an interview with the BBC, Trump affirms his commitment to obtaining the ice island. “We have to have it” for “national protection,” Trump said.

January 3, 2026: Trump’s sudden invasion of Venezuela—and the kidnapping of its leader, Nicolás Maduro—renews concerns regarding Trump’s rhetoric on Greenland. European leaders begin to take the threats seriously.

January 3, 2026: Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, posts a red, white, and blue image of Greenland, captioned: “SOON.”

January 4, 2026: Trump reaffirms his commitment to obtaining Greenland. In an interview with The Atlantic published Sunday, Trump says: “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.”

That evening, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rebukes Trump’s rhetoric, saying in a statement that it makes “absolutely no sense to talk about the need for the United States to take over Greenland.

“The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three nations in the Danish kingdom,” Frederiksen says. “I would therefore strongly urge the United States to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people, who have very clearly said that they are not for sale.”

January 6, 2026: Seven powerful NATO allies—including France, Germany, and the U.K.—publish a joint statement affirming their support for Greenland’s sovereignty. “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” they wrote.

The Department of Justice revealed Monday that it has only released less than 1 percent of the documents related to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged child trafficking.

In a letter sent Monday to Manhattan-based District Judge Paul Engelmayer, Attorney General Pam Bondi and deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche laid bare just how little had been done to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act since it was passed in November.

“To date, the Department has now posted to the DOJ Epstein Library webpage approximately 12,285 documents (comprising approximately 125,575 pages) in response to the Act, and there are more than 2 million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review,” the letter stated.

That means that everything that has been released so far—including such tidbits as a government lawyer saying that Trump had traveled on Epstein’s plane “many more times than previously has been reported”—is just the tip of the iceberg.

The letter also stated that initial reviews of a recent batch of more than one million documents received by the DOJ in December revealed that a “meaningful portion” of those documents were “copies of (or largely duplicative of) documents that had already been collected” by the agency.

More than 400 lawyers, including 125 from the Southern District of New York, would continue to review the more than two million documents that remained, the letter stated, for the purpose of de-duplicating them and making efforts to protect victim privacy.

Multiple survivors have criticized the Trump administration’s most recent document dump for failing to redact “numerous victim identities” while also making “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”

The letter included a lengthy list of ways that the DOJ intended to amend its process for ensuring victim privacy. It claimed that the department would modify the process for responding to survivor’s requests, improve the process of handling duplicative materials, run additional electronic quality control, and “refine” internal guidance for reviewers.

“First day, big problems here.”

That was anchor Tony Dokoupil during his difficult-to-watch debut as the fresh face of CBS Evening News.

During his first foray into evening news Monday, Dokoupil face-planted while transitioning out of a story on Venezuela while Bari Weiss, the right-wing shill tapped to become editor in chief of CBS News, reportedly looked on from the control room.

“To Governor Walz—no. We’re gonna do Mark Kelly,” Dokoupil joked, as graphics of the Arizona senator floated on the screen. “First day—first day, big problems here.”

“Are we going to Kelly here? Or are we gonna go to Jonah Kaplan?” Dokoupil asked producers. There was a long on-air silence, before he finally continued. “We’re doing Mark Kelly, possibly demoted from his retired rank of captain in the Navy.”

While transitioning out of Kelly, Dokoupil made yet another gaffe as he referred to Minnesota as the “Great Lake State,” which it is not. Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” while the “Great Lakes State,” referring to multiple lakes, is Michigan.

Dokoupil, who previously co-hosted CBS’s morning news show, was tapped by Weiss last month to refresh the network’s evening news program previously helmed by news giants such as Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.

Dokoupil actually promised to be “more accountable” than Cronkite, whatever the hell that means. And yet, his awkward flubs were removed from subsequent streaming and the show’s West Coast broadcast, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The 44-year-old journalist reportedly caught Weiss’s eye after his wildly unprofessional attempt to interview author Ta-Nehisi Coates last year, which Dokoupil turned into a diatribe defending Israel and accusing the author of antisemitism. CBS staffers were reportedly not impressed by Weiss’s uninspired pick of a “mediocre white man.”

Ahead of his debut, Dokoupil previewed his show with a MAGA-coded video posted to social media railing against the “elites” and “legacy media,” complaining about coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the president’s fitness for office (not naming names) as examples of journalistic missteps—that were all copy-pasted right-wing talking points.

Dokoupil’s appointment seemingly aligns with Weiss’s journalistic North Star: staying on the Trump administration’s good side, and pulling the national discourse to an invented center that is both unrigorous and uninteresting.

Forget a conservative majority—Donald Trump personally needs Republicans to win big in the coming midterms.

The president tossed aside the significance of his allies’ local elections while speaking at the GOP retreat Tuesday, telling lawmakers that he needs the party to maintain control of the federal government in order to avoid a Democrat-led impeachment effort.

“You gotta win the midterms,” Trump said. “Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

Republicans have had a trifecta in Washington since Trump returned to office, white-knuckling every branch of the federal government. If history is any indicator, that won’t bode well for the party come this fall: In a typical midterm cycle, the presidential party loses grounds via midterms, a phenomenon known as the “presidential penalty.” Those are the basic odds, even before Trump’s devastating tariffs and wildly controversial immigration agenda are taken into account.

But early indicators—such as a healthy dose of special elections in the last year—suggest that the national backlash to Trump’s second-term agenda could be worse for the party than usual. Democrats have already seen surprising gains in unexpected areas of the country, including in Tennessee, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be on the verge of panic. Anxious about midterms, the White House has spent months trying to influence red states to gerrymander their congressional lines to turn more seats in Congress. So far, that pressure campaign has had mixed results.

The MAGA leader then went on to suggest that Republicans are too nice to impeach Democrats in turn, claiming that they could have impeached “Joe Biden for a hundred different things.” Fact check: Conservative lawmakers tried to impeach Biden several times, though each effort crashed and burned as claims of mounting evidence turned out to be bunk. In one instance, the caucus’s star witness in the Biden-Burisma bribery scandal fessed up to fabricating the story with the Russians.

Trump, meanwhile, has plenty to worry about should he lose sway over the American legislature. Over the last several months, Trump has committed acts of war against Venezuela without congressional approval, forced the National Guard into cities around the country without forward consent of local governors and mayors, signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship, was revealed to be a close confidant and longtime friend of child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and routinely attacked the foundational pillars of American democracy by challenging the bounds of the Constitution (to name a small handful of indiscretions).

That should give Democrats plenty of fodder to push Trump out of power—if they can muster the votes.

If they do, plenty of pending charges await the convicted felon—including the dormant consequences of ex–special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.

New Year, same Stephen Miller.

The often-belligerent White House deputy chief of staff delivered a screaming tirade Monday night about “tin-pot dictators” in response to a simple question about the future of Venezuela’s government, following the Trump administration’s capture of President Nicolás Maduro.

For context, Miller has been on a generational run of appearing completely unhinged while giving screaming interviews on television.

CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Miller on President Donald Trump’s sudden dismissal of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as a viable candidate to lead the country. Following Trump’s evaluation that Machado didn’t have the “respect” of her countrymen, there was some concern that he was simply acting out of pettiness because she won the Nobel Peace Prize over him.

“Why does the president think that Machado should not be the next leader; why does he think she’s weak?” Tapper asked.

Miller sputtered out a meaningless answer referencing “all Venezuela experts” who thought that installing Machado would be “absurd and preposterous.”

“So, should there be an election?” Tapper pressed.

It was a simple enough question, but growing gradually louder, Miller ranted about how the “superpower” United States could not allow Venezuela to operate drug trafficking in its own backyard.

“For years, we sent our soldiers to die in deserts in the Middle East to try to build them parliaments, to try to build them democracies, to try to give them more oil, to try to give them more resources. The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology,” Miller raved, now fully shouting. “This whole period that happened after World War II where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging and engaging in these vast reparation schemes—”

Miller’s framing ignores the plain fact that American intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere was done entirely in the U.S. interest for oil, power, and security, not for charity.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about now,” Tapper said.

Miller recoiled, accusing Tapper of “doing that smarmy thing,” claiming that his interviewer knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I asked you about if there should be an election!” Tapper pressed again.

Miller continued to rant about ensuring “security and stability” in Venezuela, even though he had just made clear that Venezuelan interests were the furthest thing from his priorities.

“But the woman running Venezuela right now is part of the Maduro regime,” Tapper pushed back. Rather than back Machado, Trump had signaled that he would recognize Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the face of the country.

“The reason why I was giving you that speech, which I know you didn’t want to hear, is because you’re approaching this from the wrong frame,” Miller raved. “This neoliberal frame that the United States’ job is to go around the world and demanding immediate election be held everywhere, all the time, right away—”

“No, that’s not what I think. But you invaded the country—went into the country and we seized the leader of Venezuela—” Tapper interjected.

“Damn straight we did!” Miller cried. “Because we’re not gonna let—and the point Jake, is we’re not gonna let tin-pot Communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country, and we’re not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversaries!”

As a feral Miller continued to rant about Venezuela’s “bright” and “incredible” future, and “one of the greatest foreign policy and military victories” in American history, Tapper gently cut him off and segued into the next segment.