Stealing Lunch Money- Venezuela.

[hay rick]

Only Donald Trump could make a person root for Nicolas Maduro. Maduro stole Venezuela's presidential election in 2024, which he appears to have lost by a wide margin. Maduro won a close and disputed election in 2013 and has ruled as an authoritarian leader since. In addition to electoral fraud, his rule has been marked by corruption, censorship, and human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings. His leadership has also resulted in severe economic hardship. Venezuela's GDP shrunk by an astonishing 80% (approximately $380 billion in 2013 to $120 billion in 2024). More than 7,000,000 people fled Venezuela- almost a quarter of the population. The majority of those who remain live in poverty.

Trump has no plan to address the misery of the Venezuelan people. He has ruled out installing the actual winners of the last election in power. There is no remotely credible plan to repair Venezuela's deteriorating petroleum industry, the greatest source of the country's wealth. Impoverished as the Venezuelan people may be, they are likely to become even poorer as the only clearly articulated administration plan is to extort many millions of barrels of oil by blockading and impounding oil tankers.

Paul Krugman sheds light on one part of Trump's actual "foreign relations" model:

A few months ago Trumpist billionaire Paul Singer bought Citgo, the former U.S.-based arm of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Citgo owns three Gulf Coast refineries custom-built to process Venezuelan crude, refineries that have suffered from the U.S. embargo on imports of that crude. If Trump lifts that embargo, Singer will receive a huge windfall. But this windfall will have nothing to do with reviving Venezuelan production.

Singer has made huge political donations to Trump, raising questions about how much he has influenced policy. His purchase of Citgo was also remarkably well-timed. What did he know?

How many others in Trump's inner circle of billionaires, family, and business associates are serendipitously positioned to share the loot?