PERRY: Veni, vidi, vertigo — Trump’s incompetence hurls us all into Venezuelan morass

If there were any lingering doubt that the Trump administration’s seizure of Venezuela was a reckless, improvisational disaster, the president obliterated it himself at his rambling press conference to announce the abduction of dictator Nicolás Maduro.

What unfolded was not the unveiling of a strategy, nor even what comes next, but the public exposure of a government utterly unqualified to carry a plan out.

That would be our government.

Trump spoke as if the United States were buying a bankrupt casino rather than dismissing the sovereignty of a nation of 28 million people. He repeated, more than half a dozen times, that America would “run” Venezuela, gesturing vaguely at blank-eyed cabinet members standing behind him like props in a reality-TV finale.

Trump offered no plan, no timeline, no explanation of authority, legality nor endgame. Just bravado and bluster, the same ingredients that have fueled every Trump foreign-policy failure: See: “I would end the Ukraine War on Day One.”

Neither Trump nor anyone in his orbit has the experience, discipline nor competence required to manage a post-authoritarian transition in a country as complex and fragile as Venezuela.

Nation-building is difficult even when led by people who understand diplomacy, economics and regional politics.

In this case, it has been entrusted to a man who cannot stay alert through a briefing and a cabinet chosen for loyalty over skill. He is incapable of saying anything the nation or the world can trust to be grounded in fact or even reality.

In one of his rambling departures from talking about serious world events, he returned to lying about how his intrusion into Washington DC with military troops ended crime and homicide in that city.

It did not.

Only Trump makes such ridiculous claims, and always when he’s busy blaming former President Joe Biden for everything, including the weather. 

The result of Trump’s televised incompetence was inevitable. It’s confusion bordering on panic.

This part is true: Maduro was a corrupt dictator. His regime hollowed out Venezuela’s institutions, looted its wealth and terrorized its people. As the world’s self-appointed policeman, the United States might well have been welcomed by Venezuelans and by much of the international community to force Maduro to step aside and promote a lawful transition of power.

Instead, the Trump administration illegally kidnapped Maduro in a midnight operation that legal scholars are already questioning. Then Trump stood stammering and blinking in the daylight with no idea what to do next. Chaos followed immediately, not calm, not stability, not relief.

Worse, Trump managed to execute the only possible move that combined maximum disruption with minimum benefit. Maduro himself has been removed, but his entire governing apparatus remains. The cronies, the enforcers, the corrupt ministers and military commanders who sustained his dictatorship have all been left in place to continue running the country. That includes his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez. These are the very people who protected Maduro, profited from his corruption and crushed all dissent. They are precisely the last people who should be entrusted with power during a national crisis intending to end the corruption.

It was a reckless move by idiots. Kick over the table, walk away, and then offer Venezuelans, Americans and the world nothing but doublespeak, lies, propaganda and confusion.

This was a diversionary tantrum, not a marvel of American leadership. 

The confusion only deepened the next day, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly contradicted the president. Trump insisted, repeatedly, that the United States would “run” Venezuela.

Rubio said, “no,” the next day. He said Maduro’s own officials would continue governing while the U.S. merely enforces an oil quarantine and uses Venezuela’s reserves as “leverage.”

It’s clear evidence of an administration that does not know who is in charge or what it is doing.

And threading through all of this is Trump’s continued reliance on outright mythology.

At the Saturday press conference, Trump once again resurrected lurid lies about Aurora, claiming apartment buildings were overrun by members of the Tren de Aragua gangsters and alleging that gangsters sent by Maduro to cut off victims’ fingers for threatening to call police.

Aurora police say they have no records of any such incident. The White House, asked to substantiate the claims, offered nothing beyond “refer you to (the president’s) comments.” 

In reality, the only Aurora incident involving a TdA member and fingers involved a woman who said a fake fingernail was pulled off during a notorious episode of kidnapping prompted by a social-media dispute.

This is how myths become policy in the Trump era. Invented crime stories are recycled until they harden into justification for violence or incompetence. See: “They’re eating the dogs,” and “I won the 2020 presidential election.”

Trump has not liberated Venezuela. He has destabilized it. He has not restored order. He has manufactured panic. He has not upheld American leadership. He has exposed American recklessness.

Removing a dictator without a plan is not strength. It is negligence. And leaving that dictator’s machinery intact while claiming victory is not strategy, it is malpractice, performed live on real people while the world watches in horror.

The best response here is for someone to call 911 in Washington to report that there are no adults present in the White House, and that a gaggle of juvenile delinquents are playing with fire and guns, supervised only by an incoherent old man nodding off, probably as you read this.

Please send help.

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