Welcome back to the deep dive. Just when we all
thought the holiday break might bring a blessed
moment of geopolitical calm. Not a chance. Not
a chance. The world threw us one of the most
high stakes, rapidly developing stories we've
seen in years. The U .S. invasion of Venezuela,
which all culminated in the swift, dramatic capture
of President Nicolas Maduro. The whole thing
was dubbed. Operation Absolute Resolve. It was
a shocking sequence of events. And for you, the
listener, we're here to give you the ultimate
shortcut. We have dissected a massive stack of
sources on this unprecedented military action.
Our mission today is pretty specific. We're going
to pull apart the chaotic timeline. We'll look
at the very questionable legal arguments used
to justify it all. And then weigh the brilliant
tactical success against what looks like a monumental
strategic failure. Exactly. And ultimately, we
have to try and grasp the possible and frankly,
maybe darker motivations behind this entire operation.
This wasn't just a raid. This was a move that
resets major international precedents. OK, let's
unpack this. Starting with the timeline, because
it's pretty clear that. Operation Absolute Resolve
wasn't some snap decision. No, not at all. Social
material shows Venezuela has been an administration
obsession for months, with some really aggressive
groundwork being laid well before that Friday
night invasion. And we can trace that escalation,
right? Absolutely. We can trace it through a
series of... Well, increasingly brazen precursor
actions. Most troubling were the naval actions.
We saw U .S. ships sinking multiple civilian
Venezuelan fishing boats. Under the guise of
kenner narcotics. Of very thin guise, yes. And
the sources detailing these incidents are, I
mean, they're chilling. They point out multiple
instances where US ships just opened fire without
giving the crews any chance to surrender. But
the real gut punch, the detail that signals a
profound ethical shift is that repeated occurrence
of what's called a double tap. Meaning they fired
on civilians who had survived the first attack
and were already in the water. Legally. These
boats weren't even, you know, headed for the
U .S. in many cases, which makes the justification
tenuous to begin with. The double tap makes it
look less like an interdiction and more like
an execution. Exactly. And that aggression was
followed by the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.
A federal judge backed that one, though. He did.
But the sources argue the real legal basis for
that move was essentially might makes right,
backed by some vague references to sanctions
against Iran. This wasn't really about law. It
was about showing intent. So fast forward to
the invasion itself. The plan had been in the
works for a while. For several months, yeah.
They were watching Maduro's patterns. President
Trump gave the final approval sometime around
Christmas Day. And the launch on Friday night
was huge. Massive. A coordinated action. Roughly
150 aircraft from 20 different bases. The tactical
speed was... Incredible. U .S. personnel managed
to capture Maduro and his wife Celia Flores before
they could even get to their safe room. That
is the definition of a successful extraction.
It is. And the world found out when Trump gets
on Truth Social and brags about a large -scale
strike against law enforcement. Of course. And
the ultimate image of the whole thing has to
be the president watching it all unfold on a
TV screen at Mar -a -Lago. And, as is traditional,
the official casualty reports were immediately
downplayed. The reports say one U .S. helicopter
was hit but stayed airborne. Some soldiers were
injured. But the source material warns us to
be. cautious about that. Very cautious. The phrase
stable condition can hide a lot. We just don't
have the full picture. So Maduro is now in the
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. What
about his wife? Her location is a complete mystery.
The administration has been surprisingly quiet
about her, which just raises more questions.
And the prosecutor for this case is Jay Clayton.
Jay Clayton, U .S. attorney for the Southern
District of New York. But he is a finance guy,
right? Former SEC chair. Prosecuting a captured
foreign leader for drug trafficking is miles
outside his wheelhouse. That tells you a lot
about the political nature of this prosecution.
Okay, now we have to move into the legal arguments,
which is where this whole thing goes from geopolitics
to, I mean, just dangerous precedent setting.
This is where it gets really interesting because
these actions are less about winning a court
case and more about creating a new rule book
for presidential power. Let's hit the biggest
international law question first. The invasion
itself. The U .S. is a signatory to the U .N.
Charter. Which generally prohibits war without
U .N. approval unless it's an act of legitimate
self -defense. And the administration's argument
for self -defense is breathtakingly expansive.
They're arguing that the drugs flowing through
Venezuela are killing Americans, and therefore
the invasion is justified as an act of self -defense.
Self -defense against an attack. Right, an attack.
If that argument holds up, what does that mean
for the future? It means the UN Charter's limits
on war are, well, functionally neutered for any
major world power. As one commentator put it,
this interpretation would boggle the minds of
the folks who drew up the UN Charter. It basically
removes any real limitation. A terrifying precedent.
Okay. Second, legal ambiguity. Diplomatic community.
If Maduro is a head of state, capturing him is
an international crime. But the administration
says he's not legitimate because the US doesn't
formally recognize him. Now, international law
usually defaults to who is the effective head
of government. Which Maduro has been for over
a decade. Right. But they're relying on a very
specific U .S. court precedent here, the Manuel
Noriega case from 1990. What did that establish?
In that case, the judge is basically punted.
They said the decision of who was a legitimate
head of state belongs to the executive branch,
not the courts. So the president decides. The
president decides. And if that precedent stands
here... which it likely will. It's massive. It
means any future president could seize any leader,
claim their election was fraudulent, and the
U .S. courts wouldn't challenge it. Wow. OK,
so what about the domestic law piece? Congress
is supposed to declare war. They sidestep that
using Article 2, claiming the president has to
protect America from imminent attack. The idea
that Venezuela was on the cusp of an imminent
attack on the U .S. is, as the sources put it,
laughable. It is. Now, they did technically comply
with the War Powers Resolution by notifying Congress
within 48 hours. But only because the President
was bragging about it on social media. Pretty
much. But the critical failure, the requirement
they didn't meet, was notifying the Gang of Eight
before the action. For our listeners, who is
the Gang of Eight? It's the top leadership in
Congress from both parties, plus the heads of
the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
They're supposed to be informed of these kinds
of covert actions. And the excuse for not telling
them. Secretary Rubio gave a pretty weak explanation.
He called it a trigger -based mission, where
prior notification was impossible. Which just
doesn't sound credible. No. The takeaway here
is that the administration is exploiting or breaking
the law. And these actions are setting profound
new precedents for presidential power. It's about
precedent, not just immediate legality. Let's
shift gears. away from the legality and to the
execution because the source material paints
this, I mean, almost surreal contrast between
the tactical brilliance of the mission. And the
pure strategic incompetence that followed. Operationally,
it was flawless. Flawless. It was a complex operation
target extraction, air superiority, and they
pull it off with minimal reported loss. A huge
contrast to historical failures like the Bay
of Pigs or Operation Eagle Claw. So the planners
of the raid itself deserve credit. All the credit
in the world. But the strategic failure, the
plan for what comes after Maduro, appears to
have been a total mess. And starts with the power
vacuum, right? Maduro didn't rule alone. Not
at all. He relied on two key figures, Diosdado
Cabello, a powerful oligarch, and General Vladimir
Padrino Lopez, who heads the military. And here's
the critical detail. Both of them are still in
Venezuela. Still in office. Still in office.
So capturing the figurehead solved nothing. The
regime's infrastructure is still there. The most
likely outcomes now are either one of them taking
over basically Maduro version 2 .0 or the country
plunging into a civil war. And the succession
plan the White House floated was, well, it was
instantly exposed as garbage. Total garbage.
Under the Venezuelan constitution, power was
supposed to go to the executive VP, Delci Rodriguez.
The administration claimed they were working
with her. And that claim lasted, what, 20 minutes?
About that, yeah. before she appeared on state
-run television denouncing the capture and demanding
Maduro's liberation as the only president of
Venezuela. So it suggests they didn't just have
a shaky strategy. They might not have had a strategy
at all, or at least their cooperation with her
was just wishful thinking. And this strategic
vacuum was immediately overshadowed by pure political
theater. Everyone knows that famous photo from
the Situation Room during the Bin Laden raid.
Right, the Obama team. It's obvious Trump wanted
his own version of that at Mar -a -Lago. But
his photo wasn't quite the Situation Room, was
it? It was amateur hour. The sources point out
hastily erected black curtains in the background.
You can see a disconnected phone on the table
like a prop. And on a computer screen behind
Pete Hegseth, it looked like they were just displaying
tweets, not classified intel. The whole thing
was staged. And the music choices for the social
media videos... Just stunningly tone deaf. Completely
ironic. One video used notorious B .I .G.'s Hypnotize,
a song about violent retribution. Trump's highlight
reel used Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate
Son. A song protesting rich kids avoiding military
service. The irony is lost on no one. And then
you get the chest -puffing quotes from people
like Rubio and Egzef that Maduro effed around
and found out. It's pure optics. So when we look
at the official reasons for this, they feel,
as one source put it, somewhere between not credible
and surely not the full story. That's a good
way to put it. Let's look at justification number
one. Combating drug trafficking. They started
with fentanyl claims. Which were factually incorrect.
So they pivoted to cocaine. But linking Maduro
directly to the drug trade is... complex. The
federal indictment has been described as having
very thin evidence. Plus, intelligence staffers
have previously determined he does not control
the main TDA cartel. And the whole drug justification
is made more complicated by the fact that this
administration just last year pardoned Juan Orlando
Hernandez, the former Honduran president, arrested
and convicted by the U .S. for drug trafficking.
So it's an impossible moral position to hold.
It is. The second official reason, oil and resources.
gets a lot closer to the truth. Trump was very
explicit. He said the oil business was a bust,
and U .S. companies would go in, fix it, and
start making money for the country. Right. And
there's also substantial interest in Venezuela's
gold reserves, which are easier to get out. So
let's pivot from the official story to the alternative
theories, the actual explanations. First, there's
ego and legacy. This is about establishing a
definitive foreign policy doctrine. The Don Roe
doctrine. The Don Roe doctrine. Exactly. Then
there's the Griff theory. This is about the financial
interests of specific firms. We need to talk
about Blue Water Acquisition Corporation, BWAC.
What's their connection? They previously tried
to acquire the Venezuelan -owned Citgo assets.
The key detail now. is that BWAC is led by figures
very closely entwined with the administration
and Trump's media group. It raises the question
of whether this was about forcibly privatizing
Venezuelan assets. And there's tangible evidence
suggesting someone had prior knowledge. Absolutely.
The futures market. Someone created a brand new
account on Polymarket, a prediction platform,
just hours before the invasion. They placed a
massive $30 ,000 bet that Maduro would be driven
from power. And they collected over $436 ,000
in profit a few hours later. That's nearly half
a million dollars. That has all the appearance
of someone with extremely timely inside information.
It does. And finally, we can't ignore the idea
of wagging the dog. A distraction. The timing
was perfect to shift focus from domestic issues
like the Epstein files, inflation, rising insurance
prices. Distraction is always a powerful motivator.
Here's where it gets really interesting. The
impact beyond Venezuela. The new geopolitical
shift. Trump stated the U .S. will run Venezuela
until a new government is installed. This should
give everyone pause. Remember the short -term
commitments in the Philippines. 48 years. Afghanistan.
20 years. This Don Roe Doctrine is a declaration
that the U .S. is resuming large -scale military
intervention in Latin America. And we're already
seeing whispers of handshake deals. The U .S.
gets Venezuela's oil. Russia gets a clearer shot
at Iran's. And threats have already been hinted
at for Mexico or Colombia next. We have to remember
the history here. The original Monroe Doctrine
was defensive. Europe stay out. The later Roosevelt
Corollary was aggressive. It claimed the U .S.
had the right to intervene. Post -World War II,
the U .S. had mostly backed away from that. This
administration is reviving it with extreme force.
And the sobering warning from the sources is
that the U .S. is historically terrible at nation
building, especially in Latin America. If this
administration tries to do this in Venezuela,
Cuba, Colombia, it will geometrically progress
toward failure. In terms of international reaction,
it's been mostly critical. The one wrinkle is
that French and German leaders were surprisingly
positive. But that's likely about stabilizing
oil markets, not approving of the legality. And
domestically, there's zero rally around the flag
effect. This wasn't Pearl Harbor or 9 -11. The
U .S. wasn't attacked. Because of that, the political
consensus is completely fractured. You have Schumer
condemning it, Wasserman Schultz supporting it.
On the Republican side, Kinzinger gives a thumbs
up. Marjorie Taylor Greene gives a thumbs down.
And that lack of unity is why Congress is already
moving forward with a vote to strip the president's
war authority here. The American people hate
quagmires. If this turns into one, it will damage
the administration significantly. Deeply. So
to summarize the key insights from this deep
dive, the most memorable elements have to be
the absurdity of the staged Mar -a -Lago war
room, the terrifying legal implications of the
drugs as an imminent attack argument. And the
instant public failure of their strategic replacement
play. And the final provocative thought for you
to carry forward. isn't about the oil or even
Maduro, but about the legal foundation. The administration
used two specific precedents, deferring the head
-of -state decision to the executive and that
wildly expansive interpretation of self -defense.
Regardless of how Venezuela plays out, this action
will likely stand as a precedent that effectively
neuters critical constraints on presidential
military power. It makes it terrifyingly easier
for any future chief executive, Republican or
Democrat to use the military with impunity, domestic
and international law be damned. That is the
true long -term geopolitical cost of Operation
Absolute Resolve.