Hip, hip, hooray for yet another forever war
Donald Trump needs a distraction
So in between the off-topic and utterly irrelevant and totally incoherent ranting, I think we know what Donald Trump’s address to the nation tomorrow (December 17) night[1] will be about. Supposedly, “White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president will discuss his accomplishments since taking office in January and what he plans to do over the course of the next three years.”[2]
But I’m guessing it’s gonna be about Venezuela. It seems “[t]he U.S. is preparing to seize more sanctioned oil-filled tankers off Venezuela” and that a “new phase also could soon include ‘land strikes on Venezuela.’”[3] So there can be little doubt what this is about: Trump wants Venezuela’s oil.[4] It’s certainly not about drugs.[5]
In announcing the blockade, Trump said, “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”[6]
If you’re mystified about how or when Venezuela stole oil, land, and other assets from the U.S., I assume it refers to nationalizations that occurred under Hugo Chávez and his predecessor, Carlos Andrés Pérez.[7]
Trump will pretend that restitution to U.S. corporations—which in some cases had already received fair compensation[8]—will somehow benefit the U.S. public, which is already facing hard economic times.[9] He will also pretend that the U.S. can win, when the U.S. has not won a war of any significance since World War II, which itself could be argued to have actually been won by the Soviet Union.
Trump has no shortage of domestic problems. Yet another forever war might prove a valuable distraction.
[1] Kathryn Watson, “Trump says he'll deliver prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday,” CBS News, December 16, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-prime-time-address-wednesday/
[2] Kathryn Watson, “Trump says he'll deliver prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday,” CBS News, December 16, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-prime-time-address-wednesday/
[3] Marc Caputo, “‘Quite a buffet’: U.S. ready to seize more tankers with Venezuelan oil,” Axios, December 16, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/12/16/trump-seize-oil-tankers-venezuela
[4] Maureen Tkacik, “The $30 Billion Identity Theft of Venezuela,” American Prospect, November 26, 2025, https://prospect.org/2025/11/26/30-billion-dollar-identity-theft-of-venezuela/
[5] Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott, “Trump’s push against Venezuela faces Republican blowback at pivotal moment,” Semafor, December 1, 2025, https://www.semafor.com/article/12/01/2025/trumps-push-against-venezuela-faces-republican-blowback-at-pivotal-moment; Tobi Raji, “Former president of Honduras, convicted of trafficking, freed after Trump pardon,” Washington Post, December 2, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/02/hernandez-trump-pardon-prison-honduras/
[6] Donald Trump, quoted in Samantha Schmidt, “Trump announces ‘complete blockade’ of sanctioned oil tankers to Venezuela,” Washington Post, December 16, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/16/trump-venezuela-oil-tanker-blockade/
[7] Reuters, “Factbox: Venezuela's nationalizations under Chavez,” October 7, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-venezuelas-nationalizations-under-chavez-idUSBRE89701X/; Diana Roy and Amelia Cheatham, “Venezuela: The Rise and Fall of a Petrostate,” Council on Foreign Relations, July 31, 2024, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis
[8] Diana Roy and Amelia Cheatham, “Venezuela: The Rise and Fall of a Petrostate,” Council on Foreign Relations, July 31, 2024, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis
[9] Lauren Kaori Gurley, “Unemployment rate rises, signaling weakness in the economy,” Washington Post, December 16, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/12/16/jobs-report-unemployment-rate/; Joe Hernandez, “Trump calls affordability crisis a ‘hoax.’ The data tells a different story,” National Public Radio, December 11, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/12/11/nx-s1-5639957/trump-affordability-hoax-economy-midterms