Trump's plan for Venezuela: A hope, a prayer, and golf
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Jan 04, 2026
excerpt
Some interesting details are emerging. Planning for the Big Moment of the Maduro Kidnapping took place over months, with the final preparations coming just before Christmas as everyone waited on the weather for the right moment to go. Trump moved himself and his entourage to Mar a Lago on December 19, so a lot of the final preparations must have taken place from the front seat of a golf cart, given the fact that Trump, according to informed estimates, has played golf more than 14 times since he reached Palm Beach.
Check out the photograph released by the White House showing Trump, Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe watching the action on a big flat-screen TV in real time as the assault took place. Look closely. What’s that behind the thin curtain used as a privacy screen to create a portable situation room? Why, it’s one of the Mar a Lago ballrooms! And who is that standing behind Trump and Rubio in a dark vest and white shirt and tie? Could it be one of the Mar a Lago waiters waiting for a Diet Coke order? Trump couldn’t inform Congress, but if you were a Mar a Lago waiter on Friday night, you knew everything that was happening in Venezuela in real time.
Snip
There is one other anathema word that has entered the day-after discussions: footprint. This is mil-speak for how big a military presence will be necessary to keep Venezuela from, in the words of the Post, descending into “catastrophe.”They’re already calling around to D.C. think tanks asking “experts” what size footprint it will take to “run” Venezuela while Trump and his oil-biz buddies “take the oil,” as Trump was fond of putting it, back when he was criticizing the Bush administration for taking Iraq but failing to “take the oil.”
One genius at something called the “Washington Office on Latin America” – there must be a “Washington Office” think tank in D.C. for every region of the world just in case we decide to do some more invading – referred back to what happened after we deposed Noriega from power in Panama and left an “occupying force” of 27,000. That won’t be enough, because Venezuela is “12 times the size” of Panama with “six times the population,” according to this guy, who is probably paid in the mid-six-figures to Think Big Thoughts about stuff like occupying Latin American countries. At present, we have about 15,000 troops deployed in the region, but we’ll need to “multiply by a factor of five,” and that’s only a “conservative estimate,” according to the Latin America expert.
Full article https://open.substack.com/pub/luciantruscott/p/trumps-plan-for-venezuela-a-hope