Last Saturday, the United States conducted military strikes and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; he is currently being held in New York City on charges related to alleged drug trafficking. After years of decrying American military intervention, many right-wing media personalities not only celebrated Maduro’s abduction, but began rattling their sabers for more.
As President Donald Trump, who ran for president on promises of “no new wars,” contemplates further military intervention in other countries such as Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland, MAGA’s seemingly isolationist policy platform has imploded.
- Fox’s Will Cain: “There’s no such thing as international law. There is only such thing as conquest.”
- Fox’s Trey Gowdy said, “If we think that Venezuela is the stopping point, you don’t know Donald Trump or Marco Rubio very well.”
- Podcaster Tim Pool: “We should have Greenland.”
Prior to the Trump administration’s January 3 capture of Maduro, right-wing media figures mused about Trump ousting Maduro and/or taking control of the country’s oil. After the attack, Trump, who previously argued that the U.S. should have seized oil supplies from Iraq, cited supposed theft from U.S. oil companies and promised that they in turn would have a major role in Venezuela’s oil industry. Now that the U.S. has ousted Maduro, right-wing figures are cheering on the Trump administration conducting a war for oil.
- Fox’s Greg Gutfeld justified taking Venezuelan oil by claiming, “It was our oil.”
- Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said Venezuela has “a massive oil reserve” and overthrowing Maduro “has a huge upside.”
It’s startling to see the Trump administration and its media cronies so openly say these things after the Bush administration’s disastrous invasion of Iraq and the allegations that swirled about that being a war for oil.
Oil and further conquest may be the darkest side of this story, but they are not the weirdest. Enter podcaster Benny Johnson, who said the day after the Maduro raid, “Nicolás Maduro might be Trump’s final revenge for the election theft of 2020.” Johnson is not alone in making this deranged claim as other MAGA influencers also suggest that the U.S. overthrew Maduro in retaliation for Venezuela supposedly rigging the 2020 U.S. election via election technology companies — a false conspiracy theory that Trump appeared to endorse following the military strikes. If you would like to read more about this, I invite you to check out Matt Gertz’s analysis of this bizarre side to the Maduro raid.
Great Job Media Matters for America & the Team @ Media Matters for America Source link for sharing this story.
