Did we make an arrest or perform a coup on Venezuela?

[RoeVWade]

If Trump says we have some rights to determine what Venezuela government does for us, like provide us oil, sounds more like a coup than a police action.

[Lovie777]

1. Coup...............

[unblock]

2. Would this have been done if he wasn't head of state?

[Rowdyag]

3. Coup.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Both

[RoeVWade]

5. Anyone see a problem or a difference between

"We demand you stop drug trafficking or else!"

Vs

"We demand access to your oil or else!"

And even if it's a coup, don't you start addressing things through international law or some law instead of rogue demands as we're not at war, or are we? Even war has laws for that matter. Or what the fuck is going on? Same thing I say everyday with Trump.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Trump is doing what Trump does - going of script and blathering about his wet dreams,

Not the carefully decided plans his handlers have crafted to provide cover for otherwise blatantly illegal crap.

Formally, the action was to test the legal theory being pushed by Miller, et al, that it is OK to use the military - without the usual prerequisites - to protect non-military parts of the government. Same justification for the national guard on US soil. Here - they are just protecting a seizure of a wanted criminal.

Just like making flag burning a crime with a specific punishment (Trump's wet dream) by an executive order which said absolutely zero about a new crime, let alone a specific punishment.

[RoeVWade]

7. And also, I might, obviously the policy is, "the Hell with climate change".

I've said elsewhere "science ended with Trump" unless it agrees with his goals. Or whims.

[BlueTsunami2018]

8. The capitalists are fighting each other now.

It’s the West (G7) vs. BRICS. Given the absence of a socialist superpower like we had with the Soviet Union, this was inevitable. Venezuela’s oil absolutely must be traded in U.S. petrodollars or our economy could collapse as the BRICS nations want to go to a different currency.

That’s all this is about. It has nothing to do with dictators, drugs or “liberation.” It’s also the real reason we went to Iraq in 2003.

If they were honest about it they’d probably have more support.

[malaise]

9. Coup

That is all

[Swede]

10. An arrest with 80 people killed in the process?

[RoeVWade]

11. I believe I remember when Trump asked "Can we shoot them in the knees" of just protestors. So, no problem for him.

nt*

[the_liberal_grandpa]

12. Neither

Watch this video and you will learn how this opertion came to be and why it is not what the media says it is.

https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/exclusive-coffee-and-tea-ss-live

This was a made for tv moment. Scripted to get the orange anus to describe it as "Like watching a TV show"

So much of what they do, Ice Raids, visiting foreign prisons, blowing up boats. It's all cosplay to make the felon look tough and dangerous to the rest of the world. After all he wants to be like his master vlad.

No shots fired at the invaders arriving in Venezuela?
Chinese delegation still in Venezuela when the show was filmed.
No media blackout?
No other leaders arrested, detained or killed?
No plan who will run the country after?

The was not a coup. It was a show and a shakedown.

Maduro will be freed or pardoned whenthey figure out how much he has to give the felon. t

After all, this is the reaction they wanted. Talk about something besides Epstein, health care premiums, jobs, affordability

I think he will keep doing this elsewhere until he is stopped, removed, dies or we all stop asking for the Epstein files.

[malaise]

13. Tell that to the families of the nearly 100 dead

and the folks with their homes damaged or destroyed

[LetMyPeopleVote]

14. Professor Valdeck's analysis on "arrest"-200. Five Questions About the Maduro Arrest Operation

Here is Professor Vladeck's analysis of this "arrest". Under this legal theory, this was NOT a military operation but an arrest by two FBI agents who had to be protected by the military. That is the legal theory for not notifying congress. I agree with Professor Vladeck that this legal theory if pure BS and should not hold up.

"If we hadn’t already, we’ve unquestionably joined the league of ordinary nations—a league in which we’re acting as little more than a bully, and in circumstances in which no obvious principle of self-defense, human rights, or even humantarianism writ large justifies our bellicosity."

Me on Maduro:

— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) 2026-01-03T21:32:42.911Z

https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/200-five-questions-about-the-maduro

Although different administration officials (and supporters) have said different things publicly and on social media throughout the day on Saturday, the basic legal argument appears to be that the military operation was in support of the extraterritorial criminal arrests of the Maduros.

The basis for that argument is the merger of two strands of legal arguments that have long been made by the Department of Justice—but never blessed by the Supreme Court. The first strand traces to a deeply controversial 1989 DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memorandum by then-Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr (yes, the same one), which concluded that the President has inherent constitutional authority to use the FBI for extraterritorial arrests, even in circumstances in which the arrests violate international law (e.g., by infringing upon a foreign nation’s sovereignty). The memo also concluded, quite … usefully, that such arrests don’t violate the Fourth Amendment. The second strand is DOJ’s longstanding view that the President has inherent constitutional authority to use military force to protect federal institutions and officers in the exercise of their federal duties. Thus, in a textbook example of the tail wagging the dog, the military force was merely the means by which President Trump “protected” the handful of FBI personnel who apparently were involved in the actual arrests.

Question #2: Okay, So Why Are Those Arguments Unpersuasive?
Without attempting to be exhaustive, it seems to me that there are at least three things to say about these arguments:

First, note how any reliance upon the Barr Memo is giving up the ghost on the (obvious) violations of Venezuela’s sovereignty—and, thus, the U.N. Charter (to say nothing of myriad other international agreements and precepts of customary international law). There’s no attempt to even try to argue that this operation was consistent with international law—for the obvious reason that … it isn’t. (There had been some suggestion earlier in the day that the Trump administration might try to identify Venezuelan officials who had “invited” the United States to breach Venezuela’s sovereignty, but that … hasn’t gone anywhere.) Thus, unlike the boat strikes, which have all occurred in the legally grayer area of international waters, Friday night’s operation involves a textbook violation of foreign sovereignty for which the Trump administration’s principal response appears to be “whatever.”

Second, it is the epitome of bootstrapping to use the idea of “unit self-defense” as the basis for sending troops into a foreign country so that a handful of civilian law enforcement officers can exercise authority they wouldn’t be able to exercise but for the military support. My friend and former State Department lawyer (and Cardozo law professor) Bec Ingber has written in detail about why the “unit self-defense” argument is effectively a slippery slope toward all-out war, and she’s right. It seems just as important to point out that the U.S. constitutional law argument seems just as limitless. If Article II authorizes the use of military force whenever a foreign national living outside the United States has been indicted in a U.S. court, that could become a pretext for the United States to use military force almost anywhere—in circumstances that could easily (and quickly) escalate to full-fledged hostilities. Something tells me the Founders, who were deeply wary of military power, would not exactly see this as consistent with what they wrote—at least until and unless Congress had done something to authorize, or even acquiesce in, these kinds of distinctly offensive military operations.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the closest relevant historical precedent for this episode—the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 (Operation “Just Cause”), which resulted in the deposing and arrest of Manuel Noriega—is distinguishable in one critical respect: In the Panama example, the Panamaian general assembly had formally declared a state of war against the United States, and a U.S. Marine had been shot and killed, before President George H.W. Bush authorized the underlying operation. And even then, there’s still nothing approaching consensus that Operation Just Cause was actually consistent with U.S. law; Congress passed no statute authorizing hostilities, and it was hard to see how the situation in Panama posed any kind of imminent threat to U.S. territory sufficient to trigger the President’s Article II powers—just like the Trump administration’s narco-trafficking claims seem difficult to reconcile with where fentanyl actually comes from (Mexico) or the Trump administration’s own behavior (like pardoning former Honduran president-turned-cocaine-trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández). In other words, the only real precedent for what happened Friday night doesn’t provide any legal support for the United States’ actions.