Re: “Trump: U.S. to ‘run’ Venezuela,” p. 1, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 4, 2026:
President Trump has overthrown the government of a sovereign country and kidnapped its president (and his wife), whom he intends to prosecute in the U.S. for what sound like made-up offenses (such as “a narco-terrorism conspiracy”). He claims he will now personally “run” this foreign nation according to his personal whims, and he “plans to sell large amounts of the nation’s oil to other countries.” As has become the norm in what used to be America, all of this was done without Congressional oversight, without any consultation, and without any justification.
The American president has openly declared that he personally has the authority to overthrow governments, claim possession of their land and resources, and to sell them as he wishes. There is no pretense that there exists any legal or Constitutional basis for these acts of international piracy. This behavior is comparable to Putin invading Ukraine or Hitler invading Poland.
Evidently, Trump feels that risking starting World War III is worth it to distract Americans from his Epstein scandal. Whether they realize it or not, every American citizen is now complicit in the commission of war crimes on an enormous scale. The old excuse “I was just following orders” will not fly. Because President Trump has brow-beaten the Republican Party and the spineless Supreme Court, he now imagines he has limitless power. But despite the bravado of the President and his sophomoric “Director of War” Pete Hegseth, the U.S. no longer has the most powerful military in the world, China does. We now stand on very dangerous ground, and being represented by a man who lusts to appoint himself the King of the World is perilous indeed.
Tom DeCoursey
Oak Park
