Talk About Tennis 2.0

This is actually a good reminder how it's a big mistake to talk about all MAGA voters as if they are some uniform, completely like-minded group. Yes, you have the loyal MAGA base that will worship Trump--no matter what. They'll play along. Then you have the MAGA folks, such as the Venezuelans in South Florida or those who are pretty well-informed of Venezuela's history (and other countries victimized by authoritarian regimes), they'll go along with it for sure. (The irony here is they don't see Trump's actions domestically as authoritarian at all, because they like it and agree with it, so it can't be bad.)

The other faction consists of people like Marjorie Taylor Green (sometimes) who oppose all interventionism (well, almost all interventionism) and instead want the problems here at home fixed. They didn't vote for this, and they're fuming about it. They've been fuming about it long before these events unfolded.

What percentage of the overall MAGAsphere is the last faction? That's another really good question. I couldn't venture a guess. But what are their alternatives? Vote for Democrats? What are you really losing if you piss off a bunch of people who have no viable alternative? (Of course, the answer to this question changes substantially if, at some point, a viable conservative alternative emerges.)

Consider also that Trump himself won't be on the ballot. Probably won't change much...

Update here.
Went to the supermarket. Packed, because they were closed yesterday, but no crisis atmosphere. Could not overhear anybody talking about the event. It seems to me that we are going to end up with a female president (and she is also insane) and no real change.
Hey, there is always this possibility: Tiny just snatched Maduro because of a personal vendetta. And now, we are off his mind.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 04, 2026 6:18 pm Update here.
Went to the supermarket. Packed, because they were closed yesterday, but no crisis atmosphere. Could not overhear anybody talking about the event. It seems to me that we are going to end up with a female president (and she is also insane) and no real change.
Hey, there is always this possibility: Tiny just snatched Maduro because of a personal vendetta. And now, we are off his mind.

I was just joking with my family on New Year's that Trump won't attack Maduro if Maduro gave him a cut of the drug money.

Glad things are ok there, ponchi, things look really uncertain from here.

I didn't say they were Ok. I say they were normal.
Which means: Maduro is gone. The regime remains. And this is sad.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 04, 2026 7:15 pm I didn't say they were Ok. I say they were normal.
Which means: Maduro is gone. The regime remains. And this is sad.

My definition of ok is "not on fire"

I think it's too early to tell about the regime, no?

US oil giants silent on Trump claim they will spend billions on Venezuelan oil industry
US president says oil majors primed to invest in rebuilding infrastructure following Maduro ouster

Callum Jones in New York
Sat 3 Jan 2026 17.30 EST

US oil giants have so far remained silent on Donald Trump’s claim that they are primed to spend “billions and billions of dollars” rebuilding the Venezuelan oil industry following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro​.

Chevron, the only US oil company still operating in Venezuela, committed only to following “relevant laws and regulations” after the US president suggested American energy multinationals would be central to his plans for the country.

Venezuela’s vast oil reserves – reputedly the world’s largest – will be modernized and exploited, Trump claimed in interviews and a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate. US oil firms will invest heavily to reconstruct “rotted” infrastructure, ramp up production and sell “large amounts … to other countries”, he told reporters, adding: “We’re in the oil business.”

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country,” the president said. The firms would be “reimbursed”, he added, without providing more detail.

ExxonMobil, the biggest US oil company, did not respond to a request for comment. ConocoPhillips, another major player, said it was monitoring developments and added: “It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.”

A spokesperson for Chevron said: “Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

Venezuela​ moved to nationalize its oil industry about 50 years ago, and​ later ​seized control of operations still run under private arrangements​ in 2007. While Chevron agreed to remain, others including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips​ refused to accept new terms.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips engaged in a years-long legal battle with Venezuela after exiting, and were ultimately awarded billions of dollars by the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. But Venezuela, with an economy battered by sanctions, mismanagement and corruption, has yet to pay all the money.

For now, a US embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect, according to Trump, whose administration has repeatedly accused the country of stealing American wealth and property by seizing control of the reserves. As the US moves to take them back, its next steps will be closely scrutinized amid questions over the legality of Trump’s vision.

Trump’s suggestion that US oil majors would play a key role in Venezuela prompted analysts to conclude their executives had probably been consulted ahead of time.

“My hunch is that, if President Trump said this publicly, probably there was already an agreement with the US companies,” Jorge León, the head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, an industry consultancy, said. Tina Fordham, a geopolitical strategist and consultant, said: “One assumes that they have been part of the conversation.”

The White House did not comment on whether it consulted US oil giants before the strike.

Administration officials have in recent weeks told US oil executives that, if they want compensation for rigs, pipelines and other seized property in Venezuela, they must return and invest heavily, according to Politico, which cited two unnamed sources familiar with the conversations.

Venezuela holds some 17% of global oil reserves, according to the Energy Institute. But its output, as high as 3.5m barrels per day in the 1970s, fell dramatically due to decades of mismanagement, corruption and underinvestment. Production from Venezuela was around 1m barrels per day, around 1% of the world’s output, last year.

Taking production in the country back to anywhere near its previous levels is widely expected to require huge investment. Returning to 2m barrels per day by the early 2030s would require an estimated $110bn, according to Rystad.

“I don’t think companies will rush back into the country,” said León, who suggested it would be “very, very tricky” for Venezuela to attract the private investment required to dramatically increase oil production.

He added: “Companies, before rushing back into the country, will want to see the country is stable enough. The fact this industry was nationalized by [Hugo] Chávez a few years ago, that remains in the back of their minds. They will really want to see things improving.”

The global oil market is “entering into a period of oversupply”, said León. “Prices will come down and will continue to come down … That means that oil companies will be very, very selective of where they invest, in a period of lower prices. Given the choice, they will probably want to go investing in places they already know.”

But other industry observers expect oil majors to jostle for a chance to operate in Venezuela. The country now amounts to “a huge opportunity” for big firms, said Fordham, the founder of Fordham Global Foresight. “There will be immense competition between them for the best opportunities.”

On Saturday morning, Trump hailed “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military, might and competence” in history.

But in corporate boardrooms and beyond, memories of other toppled dictators – including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – where the aftermath proved complicated, loom large.

“The history of post-authoritarian transitions, whether they are organic or externally brought about, is long and non-linear,” said Fordham. “Trump appears to have complete faith that, under him, things will be different.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -venezuela

Live Updates: As Venezuela Projects Defiance, Rubio Says U.S. Will Use ‘Leverage’ to Advance Its Interests

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a military quarantine of Venezuela and its oil industry would remain in place. The death toll from the raid to seize Nicolás Maduro rose to 80.



Anatoly KurmanaevJack NicasEdward Wong and Eric Schmitt
Here’s the latest.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested on Sunday that the United States did not plan to directly govern Venezuela, appearing to contradict statements by President Trump a day earlier, as top Venezuelan officials projected an official line of defiance a day after a U.S. raid captured President Nicolás Maduro.

The White House has said it believes that Venezuela’s government, under the interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, will fall in line, and the nature of the private conversations between Venezuela’s government and U.S. officials is unclear. Mr. Rubio did not rule out putting American forces on the ground, but suggested instead that the administration planned to apply pressure on the country’s oil industry to coerce government leaders there to accede to American demands.

In a speech broadcast on Sunday, Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, rejected any notion that the United States would “run” his country, and maintained that the government that was in place under Mr. Maduro is still in charge. Mr. Padrino López declared that “our sovereignty has been violated and breached,” and said the country’s armed forces would “continue to employ all its available capabilities for military defense, the maintenance of internal order and the preservation of peace.”

The toll of soldiers and civilians killed as part of Saturday’s U.S. raid rose to 80 on Sunday, according to a senior Venezuelan official. Mr. Padrino López said that U.S. forces had killed a “large part” of Mr. Maduro’s security detail in the attack. No American service members were killed, U.S. officials said.

Edmundo González, the exiled former diplomat who is widely viewed as the legitimate winner of last year’s presidential election in Venezuela, released a video statement referring to himself as the president of Venezuela and calling for political prisoners to be released.

Mr. Maduro is in a Brooklyn jail with his wife, who were both indicted on federal drug trafficking and weapons charges. They are scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court on Monday.

While President Trump said on Saturday that the United States intends to “run” Venezuela and reclaim American oil interests for the foreseeable future, Pentagon officials said that there were currently no U.S. military personnel in the country.

When asked how the United States planned to govern Venezuela, Mr. Rubio did not lay out a plan for a U.S. occupation authority, like the one that the George W. Bush administration put in place in Baghdad during the Iraq War, but instead spoke of coercing an interim Venezuelan government to make policy changes.

In a testy exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio complained that people were “fixating” on Mr. Trump’s declaration that the U.S. government would run Venezuela. “It’s not running,” he said. “It’s running policy, the policy with regards to this.”

In an earlier interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Rubio said that the large U.S. naval force amassed in the Caribbean Sea off Venezuela will remain “until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is No. 1, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela.”

Here’s what else to know:

Oil reserves: Mr. Rubio focused on Sunday, as Mr. Trump did a day earlier, on the opportunities for American companies in Venezuela’s oil sector. Mr. Trump made clear his desire to open up Venezuela’s vast state-controlled oil reserves to American oil companies, saying, “We are going to run the country right.” But U.S. intervention could prove complicated and expensive. Read more ›

Federal charges: An indictment unsealed by a federal judge in New York City charged Mr. Maduro; his wife, Cilia Flores; and four others with four counts, including narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machine guns. Despite the U.S. focus on cocaine trafficking, experts say Venezuela’s role in that trade is modest. Mr. Maduro is being held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

Congressional criticism: Congressional Democrats, including leaders typically briefed on classified matters, said they were being kept in the dark by the Trump administration about both the military raid that seized Mr. Maduro and information about next steps. Read more ›

U.S. strike: In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela. The information they gathered was critical to Saturday’s pre-dawn raid, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011. Read more ›

Celebration and protest: For some of the millions of Venezuelans living in exile in Colombia, the American attack that deposed their country’s autocratic leader brought hope that they might one day return home. In New York, antiwar protesters gathered to oppose U.S. involvement in Venezuela.

Frances Robles contributed reporting.

David E. Sanger
Jan. 4, 2026, 7:57 p.m. ET3 minutes ago

David E. SangerWhite House reporter

President Trump threatened Colombia and its president, Gustavo Petro, on Sunday night, saying it is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”

“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,″ Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He’s not going to be doing it.” Asked whether the U.S. would conduct an operation against Colombia, he said “it sounds good to me.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/04 ... ela-maduro

Oh. Going against Colombia will not be the same. Colombia has a professional army; it is 450K strong and it is well trained, because it trains a lot with the US army.
Somebody has to stop this lunatic.

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 05, 2026 1:58 am Oh. Going against Colombia will not be the same. Colombia has a professional army; it is 450K strong and it is well trained, because it trains a lot with the US army.
Somebody has to stop this lunatic.

He also threatened Mexico separately...

He's just confused. Mexico is the country south of the U.S. border. Colombia is in the university in New York City.

This kind of surprise only works once... Also what exactly are US demands?

Exactly. What does he even mean by "The US will run the country?" And if he wants the oilfields, he has to put troops in Venezuela.
And that won't work.