Today is Saturday, January 3, 2026, the day this country became embroiled in a “war” with another country, Venezuela. This morning the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, was captured by this reckless regime without going to Congress to get approval to carry out this extralegal action. Again, it’s my contention – and millions of others – that this campaign is merely a fucking distraction from the Epstein affair which will not go away even in 2026. I have another theory as to why this despot decided to go into Venezuela: remember that article or interview in The Wall Street Journal I wrote about yesterday in which the reporter raised issues concerning the president’s mental and physical health? It’s now my contention that this enraged the psychotic president so much that he decided – or went along with – the decision to invade Venezuela and seize the leader as an illustration of strength. He wanted to appear strong, that’s all.

An online article for MS Now delves into this breaking news story which is written by Clarissa-Jan Lim and it’s entitled “Democrats condemn Trump’s Venezuela strikes as Republicans largely cheer Maduro’s capture.”

Thus after learning about this secret attack, it is Democratic lawmakers who uniformly condemned the assault and criticized the administration’s lack of plans following Maduro’s capture. Ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) lashed out at the Orange Turd, saying, “President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro – however terrible he is – is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere.” He continued, “That history is replete with failures, and doubling down on it makes it difficult to make the claim with a straight face that other countries should respect the United States’ sovereignty when we do not do the same.”

Kaine, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on Congress to “reassert its critical constitutional role” in foreign policy matters and said his resolution to curtail the regime’s hostilities against Venezuela without congressional authority will be up for a vote next week when Congress members return from their underserved holiday recess.

I seriously wonder if Democrats can force a vote on this issue since it was Republicans who had more of a positive response to the military attacks. So here we are again – with two opposing sides ready to face off.

The president announced the strikes early on today and said that Maduro and his wife are in U.S. custody. They’re actually right here in New York. He had a news conference this morning to provide an update to the shocking news. Of course, I refused to watch the idiot. Unfortunately, I heard some of it through the MeidasTouch podcast which played it later this evening. He was supposed to take the mic at 11, but was 40 minutes late. I informed Elliot that his handlers probably had to pump him with enough drugs just to get him upright. He sounded terrible as always.

Several Democrats rightfully called out Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who they said had told Congress that the administration did not intend to impose regime change in Venezuela. Basically, like all of Dump’s Cabinet members, he just lied to mollify Congress.

Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) is the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and he had this to say about this stunning strike executed today against a foreign country, “Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, but I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.” He had this to say about Rubio, who brazenly lied to Congress about this regime’s intentions toward Venezuela, “Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the attack “is entirely inconsistent with what his cabinet repeatedly briefed to Congress” and is counter to what the American public wants.”

Going even further, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the administration’s actions may set a dangerous precedent. He warned, “If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar jurisdiction to abduct Ukraine’s president?” He added, “Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”

Of course, as expected, it was Republicans who largely praised their Supreme Leader for undertaking the attack.

One of those idiot supporters, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, hailed the operation as one “that changed the course of Latin America for a generation.” Sure, it did! What is this administration’s strategy for Venezuela post-Maduro? So far, that has not been elucidated yet.

There were some voices of dissent from the GOP, though. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) questioned the regime’s focus on Venezuela. She pointed to the outsized role of Mexican cartels in bringing in illicit drugs into the country and to Grump’s pardoning of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted in a drug trafficking case. So this action does look quite suspicious here when given this kind of evidence suggesting that Dump looks the other way when other leaders engage in the same drug activities. It is not consistent then with the action taken today.

Greene made sense with her statement about what MAGA voted for and didn’t get with this war-mongering president, saying, “Americans [sic] disgust with our own government’s never ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going. This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy, were we wrong.”

Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has backed legislation to curb Drumpf’s hostilities against Venezuela, also questioned the constitutionality of the attack.

“If this action were constitutionally sound, the Attorney General wouldn’t be tweeting that they’ve arrested the President of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law,” which he wrote on X, referring to the indictment against Maduro and his wife that accuses them of violating the National Firearms Act.

I would say without doubt that most Americans will find this new hostility very fishy. And this just provides more fuel for many organizations to mount opposition efforts to this lawless regime.

Another way to explain this bizarre action taken by the Dump administration is to refer you to a 1997 film that I haven’t totally seen but feel the plot from this movie actually mirrors what is happening in the United States right now, and that film is Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog in which a U.S. president, embroiled in a sex scandal (read: Jeffrey Epstein) just two weeks before an election, is convinced by a spin doctor, here played by Robert De Niro, to take the public’s attention away from the scandal. The spin doctor, Conrad Brean, decides to fabricate a war in Albania, with the help of a Hollywood producer, here played by Dustin Hoffman. In this biting satire, the war is a complete fabrication of the minds of these two people. I would believe this ploy manages to distract the public’s attention away from the sex scandal that is threatening the political survival of the president. Don’t you see the similarities here between this fictitious account of a manufactured war designed to distract the public and to Dump’s military action taken today? It’s too much of a coincidence in my humble opinion.

Anyway, today has not been a good day for America. I can’t begin to say what will come next.

Tomorrow Elliot and I will be visiting our friends “Peter” and “Ted” in Highland, New York, for the day, so I don’t know when we’ll be back. We intend to take Metro North from Grand Central Terminal instead of driving there. So I might be AWOL tomorrow; I just don’t know.

Have a good Sunday anyway, despite the uncertainty this military action has caused.

And so it went!