You couple that with previous attempts in the first Trump administration by then–National Security Advisor John Bolton, who’s pretty much never met a regime change operation he didn’t like. There had been some efforts in this area, some covert; I don’t even think we know the whole story yet. So there had been plans. And then Rubio, and then I think the other piece of reporting that I’ve seen is that Stephen Miller had seized on this as a way of bringing Trump in on the drugs issue, right? So getting Trump to support this by folding it all into this narrative of narco-terrorism. And so you have Rubio and Miller making common cause. And I think Hegseth—sort of Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense—likes anything that makes him look tough. And so you have what we call in political science a logroll, where everybody can find their reason and get on board.
And what was really shocking about the press conference—right, I woke up this morning and seeing the news, given all that’s happened, I didn’t actually think it was really going to happen in the end. But then when you saw it, it’s okay, it was a close call. We were all making bets about whether he would do it or not, but he sent in an aircraft carrier, so it’s not that surprising. But hearing Trump himself talk about “boots on the ground” and “we’re going to run the government of Venezuela,” and “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground”—that was pretty shocking to me, just as an observer of Trump. I’ve never bought into the Trump as a dove. In the end, he’s been pretty consistent. He likes these pinpoint operations, very risky, but he likes to bomb a target, right? And this is Pandora’s box. And that was… it’s very odd to wake up to very surprising and unexpected news and then to be shocked on top of that. But his press conference, I would say, was very shocking.
Bacon: I think we’re going to hear a lot of talk about Venezuelan oil and oil reserves. You didn’t say that, though. I think it’s important—in Iraq, too—we had a lot of discussions about oil, and I was never totally convinced that was George W. Bush’s rationale, even if it seemed the most logical.
