Nov 19

Nov 19 Venezuela

Chicago, Demonstrations, Donald J. Trump, Performance, Protest, Public Declarations

It looks like Donald J. Trump is losing his ironclad grip on the Republican Party, particularly with the 2026 midterms now less than a year away. The Senate vote approving H.R. 4405—the Epstein Files Transparency Act—was unanimous, with only one House member voting against the bill. Such unanimity has been unheard of for at least two decades.

Trump did everything in his power to kill the legislation, including having Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel browbeat Representative Lauren Boebert in the Situation Room. Yet, the Republicans in Congress now realize that their interests are no longer aligned with the highly unpopular Trump. He is a lame duck, a status that Republicans hope to avoid.

Given what may turn out to be a cosmic realignment if the Republicans continue to look out for themselves, Trump now believes he must Wag the Dog, which explains why he is bombing fishing boats in the Caribbean and rattling his saber at Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. While some of the fishing boats may be transporting drugs, Trump has offered no proof. In fact, when two boatmen survived one of Trump’s attacks, one survivor was repatriated to Ecuador and the other to Columbia. The Trump Administration was apparently concerned that if these two were publicly questioned, their answers might refute Trump’s claims that they were narco terrorists. Even if they and all the others who have been killed are drug smugglers, the appropriate response is to use the Coast Guard to interdict the smuggling operation, which is why many lawyers believe Trump’s actions are illegal.

As for Trump’s claims: If Venezuelan boats are carrying drugs, the shipments are of cocaine, not fentanyl as Trump has claimed. Moreover, Christopher Hernandez-Roy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies, asserts that the cocaine is headed to Europe, not the U.S. Hernandez-Roy is the author of a 2023 study entitled, Tracking Transatlantic Drug Flows: Cocaine’s Path from South America Across the Caribbean to Europe.

But the U.S. attacks on the boats could prove to be small potatoes if Trump has his way. Trump has indicated that he favors regime change in Venezuela. When Trump was asked by Norah O’Donnell of CBS News whether Maduro’s days are numbered, he responded, “I think so, yeah.” While Republicans have come to loathe foreign interventions, Trump seems hell bent on intervening in Venezuela. The U.S. Navy has moved the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft, carrier and three escort ships within striking distance of Venezuela. That amounts to 8% of the U.S. fleet. Of course, the movement means that dozens of fighter jets are also within striking distance.

The New York Times reports that Trump has also authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations directed at toppling Maduro’s regime. According to the Times,

It is not clear what the covert actions might be or when any of them might be carried out. . . . so the next phase of the administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the Maduro government could be sabotage or some sort of cyber, psychological or information operations.

While Trump thinks he can topple Maduro without consequences, during the first Trump Administration, the U.S. military ran a simulation designed to predict what might happen should Maduro’s regime collapse. Trump apparently thinks he can simply hand Venezuela over to Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader, once Maduro is gone. But Douglas Farah, a national security analyst, who was involved in the earlier war gaming exercise, wrote that the collapse of the Maduro regime would produce “chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it.”

Farah wrote about “no command and control over the military and no police force.” Another group raised the specter of “a potentially protracted, low-intensity conflict.” Any protracted upheaval could spark an outflow of Venezuelans to neighboring countries, which could exacerbate the illegal immigration problem that Trump has so skillfully exploited in his quest for more power.

No wonder that when I was in Washington, D.C. at the Refuse Fascism demonstration earlier this month, I saw signage referring to Venezuela. Those who regularly take to the streets in opposition to the Trump regime see war on the near horizon. They remember Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Vietnam.

Given that backdrop, I was not surprised when the Far Left in Chicago called for a demonstration in Federal Plaza at 6:00 PM tonight. Like the early demonstrations before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it was a small one. Maybe 75 people turned out. No politicians were on hand, but nearly a dozen speakers made the case against war in Venezuela. Not surprisingly, Gaza and other unrelated issues were sprinkled among the rhetoric against a U.S. incursion into the Venezuela.

The speeches were rooted in Marxist and liberation theology, which would alienate many Americans if they were listening. Rest assured, they weren’t, much to their detriment.

What disturbs me is that the demonstrators have very legitimate concerns but their messaging is off key. Trump is acting unilaterally without consultation or approval from Congress. Moreover, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, is said to have overruled a legal opinion by senior military lawyer that the strikes against the boats are illegal.

What I am seeing is a familiar pattern. The greater populace is largely oblivious to an impending military conflict. Only seasoned Far Left demonstrators are speaking out. If Trump proceeds along the path he is staking out, we can expect to see many more people in the streets in two or three years, particularly if members of the military return home in body bags.

Following the speeches, the demonstrators marched through the Loop. Notably, they marched on the sidewalks rather than in the street, which is uncharacteristic. So often, I hear the chant, “Whose streets? Our streets.” Apparently not tonight.

I assume before the march, the organizers had a discussion with CPD. I have no idea whether the discussion was heated, but there was no evidence that the marchers objected to staying on the sidewalks.

I suspect that this will not be the last demonstration in Chicago pertaining to Venezuela.

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]