President Trump Prepares For Showdown With Venezuela

There is going to be a stand off tomorrow on the Venezuela border that could provide the excuse for a military intervention in Venezuela:

“President Trump pressed ahead Friday with a potentially risky gambit that he can help evict what he calls a disastrous socialist dictatorship in Venezuela, dispatching a U.S. special envoy and other officials to the scene of a standoff with President Nicolás Maduro’s security forces.

Elliott Abrams and other State Department officials accompanied an airlift of U.S. humanitarian aid to the Colombian border in a provocative partnership with Maduro’s political rival as tensions rise over the internal power struggle in Venezuela. The Trump administration has not said whether it will attempt to deliver the aid by force Saturday, the day when opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who is supported by the Trump administration, has said the relief supplies will cross into Venezuela.

Trump has repeatedly said that military action is an option, including in remarks Monday to Venezuelan exiles in Miami, setting up a paradox for a president who has argued that the United States wastes money and lives when playing global policeman.

But Trump has seized on Venezuela as an opportunity to condemn socialism and potentially restore democracy — a stance popular with his political base — after elections last year were widely denounced as fraudulent.

Having leaned so heavily into the conflict, Trump risks looking weak or ineffective at home and abroad if the Maduro regime survives in the face of U.S. opposition. …”