When Americans awoke on Saturday to learn the United States had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, they likely expected their nation’s elected officials to offer an explanation about why we had done this.
After months of military buildup and activity in the Caribbean, it wasn’t a surprise that the U.S. had finally decided to embark on a crusade to bring down Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. What was stupefying was that America’s latest regime-change operation was apparently designed to leave the regime intact.
Helpfully, President Donald Trump duly appeared with his top Cabinet officials on Saturday to clarify everything. Among the range of casus belli he offered were the drug war (“those drugs mostly come from a place called Venezuela”); immigration (“they sent everybody bad into the United States”); terrorism (“a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion”); even the altruistic promotion of American ideals (“we want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela”).
Oh… and oil. “As everyone knows the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping,” Trump said, vowing that U.S. businesses would go to Venezuela and “start making money for the country.”
Well, pick your poison as to which of these you believe to be the real reason for the military intervention — or make up another. There are several that seem equally as plausible as anything offered: a need to counter Chinese influence in the Americas; a strategy to undermine Cuba; a balm to Trump’s ego in the face of Nicolás Maduro’s dancing defiance… Maybe just an uncontrollable urge to demonstrate unadulterated badassery, ’Murica-style, after decades of frustration and failure in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s in light of those failures that the most surprising thing to come out of Saturday’s press conference was the outright declaration that America was taking over in Caracas.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said, later adding: “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have them.”
Many onlookers could not have been more stunned if a ’roid-raging Uncle Sam had kicked in the door and poleaxed them between the eyes with the Stars and Stripes. Here was an American president openly ordering regime change and admitting to installing a puppet — and it wasn’t even being couched in diplomatic words or shrouded in high ideals. It was in the open. America is taking over Venezuela. Why? To make money from its oil. How? Well, through Delta Force and then… a shrug and a wave of the hand vaguely in the direction of the State Department.
“[Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio]’s working on that directly,” Trump said, noting that Venezuela’s deputy president — a regime loyalist — appeared to have taken over after Maduro disappeared into the night sky with several new American acquaintances. “He just had a conversation with her, and she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
It was unfortunate that mere hours later, the woman in question — Venezuela’s Interim President Delcy Rodríguez — denied in a televised speech that she would cooperate with the gringos. “There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro.”
Many anti-regime Venezuelans were initially thrilled that Maduro had been ousted, but were far gloomier about the fact that Rodríguez was now in charge — and that Washington’s decapitation strike seems not to have taken the head off the snake, but removed a single head from a hydra. Maduro is gone, his regime is still in power.
“This is the first time that I find myself wondering if I am on the opposite side of U.S. policy,” one Venezuela opposition activist tells Rolling Stone. “The U.S. now backs the regime, instead of opposing it,” the activist says.
They were certain that the situation was in flux, however, saying they believed the Trump administration would deal with “whoever is easiest to manipulate, corrupt, and make deals with.”
“What is the strategy? Who do they want to actually be in charge?” asks a former American special operations soldier with expertise in South America, who formerly worked in the region.
He says that mistrust inside Maduro’s regime will now begin to peak, with top officials convinced that at least one of their compatriots is secretly working with the Americans to take charge of the country. With Maduro gone, a shakeup is inevitable and could lead to internal conflict — possibly even civil war.
“We’re in for a roller-coaster ride of pretenders to the throne. But anyone who gets in with Washington’s blessing will lack legitimacy,” the special operations soldier observes, saying he believes the one thing that could really unite Venezuelans is opposition to U.S. control. “After destabilizing the country, what does Washington want?”
What, indeed.
One couldn’t have scripted a scenario more perfectly tailored to showcase American military might than the raid to abduct Maduro. All of the elite elements of the U.S. military and national security apparatus were brought to bear. It was an eloquent testament to the trillions of dollars America has spent on advanced weaponry, coupled with decades of hands-on experience conducting special operations.
That Washington has tools of military power that outclass any competitor is unquestionable. The problem is that tactical victories do not guarantee strategic success. The idea that a country can simply swoop out of the blue and change another government to its liking through force of arms without complication is an illusion — see America in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Russia in Chechnya or Ukraine.
Many commentators and critics are focused on the wider implications of the raid on Venezuela, its legality, or the idea that it will usher in a new era of realpolitik as described by Thucydides, where the “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
What, such commentators ask, is to stop Russia or China from doing the same, in Ukraine or in Taiwan?
You needn’t be a cynic to think the answer to that question has less to do with the norms of international law than it does with pure military capability. Indeed, Russia tried several times to capture President Volodymyr Zelensky in the early days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February and March 2022. It failed, at great cost to its special forces units.
Trump’s foray into Venezuela was unquestionably a military success. Its wider implications remain to be seen. But it is another step toward an unrestrained imperial presidency, actively working to dismantle a global system America itself created, as it sows chaos at home and abroad.
Paper shields alone have never kept the powerful from preying upon weaker neighbors, and most world leaders cast aside legality and morality when it suits their interests to do so. Trump is not the first. The international order America has long championed is a system of double standards, hypocritically applied or cast aside to suit Washington’s whims.
That it was a system that benefited the United States is rejected by MAGA true believers. They argue that, as most nations follow their self-interest, the era of America First is at least a more honest system of international relations.
You can also call this system the law of the jungle.
But of course, none of the animals in the jungle have nukes.
commonplace.org
Secret Service agents move across the ballroom during a shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
White House Journalists Swap Integrity for a Good War Story
Every journalist loves to tell war stories. On February 26, 2022, for instance, I woke up on the lobby floor of the Kharkiv Palace hotel in Eastern Ukraine to a security guard nudging the pile of couch cushions I was sleeping on, insisting that I go down to the car park before the next wave of Russian missiles hit. The hotel had rented me a room on the seventh floor, but the bombing was so incessant that I figured it was safer to pull up the cushions from a few of the lobby couches and make a nest at the back of a room on the first floor, which let me get a few hours of fitful sleep a night, broken up by sirens and the thump and bangs of incoming munitions.
This is a pretty mundane tale, as far as war stories go. Most of mine are similar: a few gunpoint holdups at checkpoints, a few sprays of machine gun fire overhead, plenty of artillery and missiles that landed close enough to make me chronically afraid of New York’s extremely loud garbage trucks but not close enough to pose any real risk in the moment. I’ll tell you all this basically at the drop of a hat. Give me half a drink and I’ll start showing off my iPhone gallery of selfies wearing my flak vest. If a journalist ever claims to not be a narcissist, they’re lying to you.
On Saturday night, a whole new crop of journalists got a pretty good war story. When Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old game developer and tutor, stormed into the Washington Hilton Hotel with a shotgun and pistol, D.C.’s fourth estate elite were partway through the salad course at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is affectionately and derisively known as “nerd prom.”
The nerds were horrified – and excited. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and the days since, members of the press have blown up their near-brush with death into tales of personal heroics under fire. In The Free Press, a conservative politics website started by current CBS News head Bari Weiss, Weiss’s sister Suzy wrote:
“Everyone was reeling, but the men were also another thing: They were activated. And I’m not talking here about the obvious heroes of the evening: the law enforcement professionals, and the Secret Service, one of whom was shot by the would-be assassin as he leaped toward the gunshots. Others, with guns at the ready, hustled officials out of the room. They acted nobly. But they weren’t the only ones.
The lobbyist David Urban was nearly glowing, telling us how he went to West Point, served in the 101st, and that he simply wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to us. I believed him. (And so did Bari, who was shielded by him at the front of the room like I was by Elliot in the back.)
In moments of crisis, something deep in our biology kicks in.”
Suzy Weiss’ piece was a more lighthearted take on the shooting, remarking on the generally cavalier behavior of the men in the room. But almost every other first-person account I’ve read of the event also makes it seem as though bullets were whizzing over the banquet tables, when in reality the only rounds fired were lodged in the walls (and one unlucky agent’s body armor) downstairs. Another FP reporter, Olivia Reingold, narrated the event into her front-facing iPhone camera as she huddled beside her table. “Tip for younger reporters: point your camera at the thing that’s happening,” writer Chris Hooks quipped on Twitter.
As the evening continued, so did the self-worship. Journalists praised each other for running to the subsequent press briefing in formal wear, for continuing to do their jobs under great pressures, and for generally being around and looking better than they normally do on a daily basis while a man so disgusted with the current status quo tried ineffectually to kill the sitting president. The president, for his part, also praised the press, before touting his leadership instincts in the heat of the moment during a gauzy 60 Minutes interview the following day. Everyone, in other words, came away feeling pretty good about themselves.
The Correspondents’ Dinner has been criticized for exactly this kind of chummy fraternization for years. The most common critique is simple: It looks bad that an organization set up ostensibly as a check on the nation’s most powerful executive hosts an annual dinner honoring said executive, with jokes and drinks and the kind of generally mediocre food that any event serving more than 25 people will inevitably have. CBS, for instance, brought both Trump puppeteer Stephen Miller and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who frequently berate the press, to the event as official guests of the network. Donald Trump attended the event for the first time as president, which is about as clear of an indication of the greater WHCA’s disposition towards him that you can get. At nerd prom, the president gets to be king.
Which brings us, in a roundabout way, back to war stories. The problem with the WHCD and the problem with war stories is, essentially, the same thing. As a foreign correspondent, you have access to something fascinating and horrific and powerful: violence. You will see, as a part of the job, moments of loss and pain and fear and tremendous human courage, all alongside things so nihilist and cruel that you will wonder how this species ever made it out of the days when we beat each other to death with rocks. It is intoxicating. It makes you feel important and interesting. Your colleagues take pictures of you in flak vests and khaki clothing.
You get a certain version of the same thing as a politics reporter. Like war, politics reporting often gives you a certain proximity to the fascinating inner workings of power. You get lanyards and hall passes rather than kevlar, sure, but the everyday circumstances of your work make the case that you are someone important and valuable. If you weren’t, they wouldn’t let you in the room, right?
But like war, the fallacy here is the same. Proximity to something is not purpose. You are not in the room to take a picture with the president, you are not at war in order to make yourself look cool. You are there to do a job, and if you’re not doing that job, then hanging around in a war zone or the White House makes you a tourist. The point of being in close proximity to power is so you can examine it and evaluate the people wielding it. You’re supposed to find the people that it harms — the little guys, the ones that the soldiers and presidents squish under their boots or black wingtips.
If someone takes a shot at the president, your job isn’t to praise his heroics and resolve in being swiftly escorted out of a room by a phalanx of armed men, or to praise your own resolve as you duck for cover under a table. It’s to figure out why a college-educated white-collar worker got so fed up that he decided to tear up every last shred of the social contract we live under. It’s to examine why he picked that event, why he chose that specific target. Along the way, it might be worth taking a hard look at what your own participation in a gilded celebration of a violent regime says about the job you’re claiming to do. If the answers to those questions scare you, then maybe it’s time to find a new line of work.