Trump Escalates Colonialist Threats in Venezuela – The Monday AM Quickie 12/1/25
Might I offer you news of early-stage raccoon domestication in these trying times? - Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
Trump Escalates Colonial Project in Venezuela; Hegseth Ordered Military to ‘Kill Everybody’ in Boat Strike
The United States has zero authority over the airspace of Venezuela, a sovereign nation of nearly 30 million people. Nonetheless, DC- and/or Florida-based politician Donald Trump yelled on social media Saturday that “all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers” should consider the airspace above and around Venezuela “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” Several airlines subsequently suspended their flights to the country, the Washington Post reported; Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government called Trump’s statement a “colonialist threat” and “yet another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression,” according to Al Jazeera. The US has been harrying Venezuela for three decades, ever since voters elected socialist Hugo Chávez to the presidency and he took office in 1999, as AJ’s timeline chronicles.
Trump’s airspace statement suggests that he’s planning to move his maritime bombing campaign against Venezuela to Venezuela itself. Already the regime has killed more than 80 people in at least 21 attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, claiming without proof that they were carrying drugs to the US. The Washington Post reported this weekend that in the first boat strike, the alcoholic former Fox News employee Peter Brian Hegseth, who is now the defense secretary, ordered the military “to kill everybody” on board. The first bomb killed all but two people who “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.” Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, the commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, then told people on the conference call he was running “that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.” Per the Washington Post:
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the US, these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the US counterterrorism campaign.
Even if the US were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
It’s unclear when ground strikes might begin, the NYT reported. US military officials have offered a number of “target options,” including “Venezuelan military units that support Mr. Maduro or are believed to profit from the drug trade. Other options have included oil-related facilities.”
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
Trump Pardons Former Honduran President and Drug Kingpin
As the regime revs up its war machine in the Caribbean allegedly to stop drugs from entering the US, Trump decided that certain specific drug kingpins are a-ok. He announced on Friday “a Full and Complete Pardon” to former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who a jury in Manhattan convicted last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and who was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Hernández once said he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and took a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to keep coke flowing through Honduras; he “orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors said raked in millions for cartels while keeping Honduras one of Central America’s poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries,” the NYT reported. In the parlance of the Times, Trump’s decision to pardon him while also gunning for Venezuela over alleged narcoterrorism “displays contradictions.”
Rubio Fails to Draft Proposal to End Russia’s War on Ukraine
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Ukrainian officials on Sunday to draft a proposal to end Russia’s war, the AP and the NYT reported. With him were Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and special envoy Steve Witkoff; they met at Witkoff’s son’s golf club in Florida. The two teams talked for four hours. Then Rubio came out and told reporters indirectly that he had failed. “It’s not just about the terms that ends fighting,” Rubio said. “It’s about also the terms that set up Ukraine for long-term prosperity. ... I think we built on that today, but there’s more work to be done.” He didn’t discuss any details and neither did the new leader of Ukraine’s delegation, Rustem Umerov. Umerov replaced the previous negotiation team leader, Andriy Yermak, who was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff and who resigned on Friday amid a $100 million embezzlement scandal. Ahead of the discussion, Umerov heaped praise on the US, “a message geared towards Trump, who has at times claimed that Ukraine has not been sufficiently grateful for US assistance during the war,” as the AP put it. “US is hearing us. US is supporting us. US is working beside us,” Umerov said. Witkoff is scheduled to travel to Moscow today and meet with aspiring tsar Vladimir Putin.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- 900 Dead in Floods, Landslides Across Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand “In the latest example of the impact of the climate crisis on storm patterns and extreme weather, heavy monsoon rains, exacerbated by a tropical storm, have overwhelmed parts of Southeast Asia in recent days, leaving thousands of people stranded without shelter or critical supplies.” It is the worst national disaster to hit Sri Lanka since 2004, when a tsunami killed 31,000 people and left a million more homeless. via the BBC and The Guardian.
- War Criminal Netanyahu Asks for Pardon in Corruption Trial The Israeli prime minister asked President Isaac Herzog to pardon him for charges alleged in three separate lawsuits of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes, crimes for which he could face more than a decade in prison. via NBC News.
- Climate Crisis Drying Out European Water Reserves While Scandinavia and some areas in Portugal and the UK are getting wetter, southern and southeastern parts of Europe are drying up, including France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and Ukraine. via The Guardian.
- Regime Publishes Lügenpresse Roster, Reviving Nazi Tactic to Demonize Reporters and Manipulate Public The White House is listing specific reporters as enemies of the state on “A leaderboard [that] currently ranks the Washington Post as the top offender, with MSNBC and CBS News taking the second and third slots.” via The Guardian and the demented White House website.
SOME NUMBER
1,000
That’s how many flights were cancelled and delayed across the US because of powerful stormy weather yesterday. It was anticipated to be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history, the LA Times reported, with more than 3 million people scheduled to fly.
ON THE SHOW TODAY
12/1: It’s News Day TuesMonday. Join Sam and Emma as they untangle everything that’s happened over the last few days.
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PARTING WORDS
“We, the undersigned Amazon employees, have serious concerns about this aggressive rollout during the global rise of authoritarianism and our most important years to reverse the climate crisis. We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth. We’re the workers who develop, train, and use AI, so we have a responsibility to intervene.”
-- 1,039 Amazon workers, in an open letter to management demanding they institute guardrails around artificial intelligence. Workers laid out three demands: to halt the use of “dirty energy” to fuel AI, to institute working groups of non-managers to determine how AI should be used and how to mitigate collateral harm, and to cease doing business that perpetuates violence, surveillance or mass deportation. “Amazon sells a huge range of products and services – from physical goods to digital infrastructure to films to medical services. It should not need to be helping surveil civilians in Gaza, collaborating with AI companies that specialize in drone warfare, or supporting a mass deportation machine,” workers wrote. More than 2,400 workers at other companies have joined the Amazon workers on the petition, including from Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Space X, Starbucks and the Washington Post. The action comes after Amazon announced in October that it would lay off 14,000 people because of AI. Read the full open letter here.
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