Trump Casually Reveals He Was Planning a Second Attack in Venezuela

Venezuela has apparently saved itself from another U.S. invasion by readily handing over political prisoners to the Trump administration.

Donald Trump revealed Friday that there was a preplanned arrangement to attack Venezuela a second time, though he noted that the offensive maneuver had since been called off in light of Venezuela’s capitulation with regard to releasing prisoners.

“Venezuela is releasing large numbers of political prisoners as a sign of ‘Seeking Peace.’ This is a very important and smart gesture,” Trump posted on Truth Social early Friday morning.

“The U.S.A. and Venezuela are working well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure,” Trump continued. “Because of this cooperation, I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks, which looks like it will not be needed, however, all ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes.

“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” he added.

The move comes just hours after five Senate Republicans joined Democrats to advance the War Powers Resolution, which would force Trump to seek congressional approval before conducting any further military offensives in Venezuela. The Senate will carry out a final vote on the bill next week, after which the measure would need to pass the House and then get signed by Trump.

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.

The narrative surrounding Trump’s attack on Venezuela has been wildly different from America’s other foreign intervention efforts. Whereas the George W. Bush administration insisted that its invasion of Iraq was to quell terrorism and suppress the nation’s nuclear capabilities—a claim that was dubiously received by the American public, considering the country was one of the world’s largest suppliers of oil at the time—Trump has been practically eager to fess to reporters that the primary rationale for his own military incursion against Venezuela was, truly, for oil.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that the U.S. 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. The following day, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that America would continue to oversee and sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” even after the government finishes chewing through the Latin American country’s stockpiled oil reserves.

In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Trump claimed that the U.S. will likely run Venezuela for years.

“Only time will tell,” Trump said. “We will rebuild it in a very profitable way.”

A Minneapolis pastor who joined protests Wednesday after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman in her car said that federal agents handcuffed him and threw him in the back of an SUV—before letting him free because he was white and “it wouldn’t be any fun.”

Pastor Kenny Callaghan, who initially shared his story on Facebook, told MS NOW Thursday that as he went to church the previous morning, he noticed protests were happening about a block away, so he grabbed his whistles to join them. As he was protesting, he said that they heard news of the fatal shooting nearby.

“Before I knew it, I saw ICE agents circling a young woman who appeared to be Hispanic, and so I approached her, and we were at that point chanting, ‘We are not afraid, we are not afraid.’”

Callaghan then said he told ICE officers to take him instead of harassing her. An agent then “came, got in my face, pointed a gun at me, and said, ‘Are you afraid now?’” Callaghan recalled.

After he said he still wasn’t afraid, the officer handcuffed him before putting him into the back of an SUV. “They came back three times and they asked me if I was afraid yet, to which I replied, ‘Hell no, I’m not afraid of you, and I’m never going to be afraid of you.’”

Callaghan said that he asked if he was under arrest after officers asked for him to hand over his identification and his cellphone.

“And then they said to me, ‘Well, you’re white, you won’t be any fun anyway. You can get out of the car.’”

ICE hasn’t confirmed the details of this confrontation. However, under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security has been sharing increasingly white nationalist content, and ICE has skipped over proper vetting procedures in an aggressive push to ramp up its numbers.

Callaghan said he was stunned by the interaction, but takes hope in the mass crowd of protesters who are showing up.

“I was grateful to be there and grateful to stand in solidarity with anyone who is marginalized within our society, and will continue to advocate for the rights of my immigrant siblings here in Minneapolis and around the world,” he said.

“I don’t know what happened to me. In my world, I say God empowered me to speak up in that moment.”

President Trump thinks that any Republican who dares to push back on his senseless incursion into Venezuela should “never be elected to office again.”

“Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “This Vote greatly hampers American Self Defense and National Security, impeding the President’s Authority as Commander in Chief.”

This comes as the Republicans named—along with Senate Democrats—voted 52–47 to advance the War Powers Resolution, which would force Trump to seek Congress’s approval before conducting any further uniliteral military offensives in Venezuela. A final Senate vote on the legislation is expected next week, and it would then need to pass the House and be signed by Trump himself—making it unlikely it will actually become law.

Trump’s poor-tempered response—which may kneecap his own party given that Collins is up for reelection this year—only goes to show why he should not have unfettered ability to engage in war.

“In any event, and despite their ‘stupidity,’ the War Powers Act is Unconstitutional, totally violating Article II of the Constitution, as all Presidents, and their Departments of Justice, have determined before me,” Trump continued, maintaining that Article II gives him the inherent power to go to war. “Nevertheless, a more important Senate Vote will be taking place next week on this very subject.”

Collins, the only senator on the list up for reelection, seemed unfazed.

“The President obviously is unhappy with the vote,” she said, according to Semafor’s Burgess Everett. “I guess this means that he would prefer to have Governor Mills or somebody else.”

Did President Donald Trump actually cut Tulsi Gabbard out of the White House’s preparations to invade Venezuela?

Starting last summer, the White House began excluding Trump’s director of national intelligence from the government’s plans to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Vice President JD Vance denied the reporting later that day.

A few White House aides even joked that Gabbard’s title as “DNI” stood for “Do Not Invite,” three people told Bloomberg. A White House spokesperson denied that the director was actually a punchline.

In the days preceding the large-scale operation, Gabbard posted from Hawaii, hundreds of miles away from Trump’s makeshift situation room at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote in a post on X, as the president prepared to invade.

Gabbard was reportedly kept in the dark because in the past, she had repeatedly expressed her strong disapproval of American intervention—specifically in Venezuela.

In January 2019, she wrote on X that the United States “needs to stay out of Venezuela.” A few weeks later, she wrote that the U.S. “needs to stop using our military for regime change & stop intervening in Venezuela’s military.”

She voiced her criticism again a few months after that. “Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s dictator/government, the outcome has been disastrous,” she wrote. “Civil war/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security.”

Days after the Venezuela operation, Gabbard finally posted a brief statement on X.

“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. “Kudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump’s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve.”

The Trump administration is sticking with ICE.

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday vehemently defended a federal agent’s decision to kill Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, shifting blame to practically every entity beyond the ICE agent that held the gun—including Good herself.

During a hostile White House press conference, Vance claimed that Good had been “brainwashed” by left-wing politics, and argued that the 37-year-old mother was to blame for her own death.

“There’s a part of me that feels very, very sad for this woman. Not just because she lost her life but because I think that she is a victim of left-wing ideology,” Vance said.

“What young mother shows up and decides they are going to throw their car in front of ICE officers that are enforcing legitimate law? You have to be brainwashed to get to that point to where you’re willing—not just to protest, that’s fine—but throw your vehicle in front of law enforcement officers,” he continued, adding that he believed “to get to that point you have to be radicalized in a very, very sad way.”

Yet administration officials—and fans of the president’s violent immigration agenda—seem to be the only ones who interpreted video footage of the attack that way.

Video evidence of the incident suggested Good was letting other vehicles pass her on the road before she pulled out, in an attempt to comply with ICE’s orders, but was momentarily halted when the masked agents approached her window.

As she began to move her vehicle away from the agents, an officer standing in front of the red Honda Pilot sidestepped the car, moving toward her open driver-side window before he pulled the trigger multiple times, video recording illustrates.

The officer then extended his arm and chased after the vehicle, signaling that he was not injured. Her SUV then accelerated down the road, seemingly uncontrolled, before smashing into several parked vehicles.

The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported Thursday that the attacking ICE agent is named Jonathan Ross.

Agents then prevented her petrified neighbors from assisting her, one of whom identified themselves as a physician.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting told MPR News that Good posed “no threat” to the agents.

But Vance insisted on excoriating reporters who verbally described the attack the way it was depicted.

“You still believe that she deliberately tried to ram him despite this video?” prompted one incredulous reporter.

“We’re not going to get the chance to ask this woman what was going on,” Vance replied. “But she accelerated in a way where she rammed into the guy.

“Everybody that is repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis, when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he added.