Distraction? Trump Sends Warships To Venezuela For “Counter-Narcotics Operation”

In late February we detailed how President Trump is not giving up on pursuing military options for Venezuelan socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro’s ouster — even as Washington was forced to increasingly turn its attention to the growing coronavirus threat in its midst — now a full-blown pandemic radically altering the fabric of American society and the economy.

And Bloomberg had also confirmed at the time :”President Donald Trump is frustrated that pressure is building too slowly on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is still considering military options in the country, including a naval blockade, a senior administration official said.” It’s long been reported that Trump favors the naval blockade idea even as his generals have pushed against it on grounds of practical execution of such a bold plan.

Amazingly, considering the timing, the president announced Wednesday that he’s ordered Navy ships to move toward Venezuela as part of broader counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean. 

This follows the White House last week issuing a $15 million bounty on Maduro and his inner circle over drug trafficking charges, amid sweeping indictments against what Washington dubbed a vast narco-state criminal enterprise orchestrated by the regime.

Considering all of this is being executed at a moment the United States now leads the world in numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases, which threatens to decimate an economy still on “pause” and extreme uncertainty still on the horizon, it must be asked: is this move on Venezuela (and it should be added – recent moves against ‘Iranian proxies’ in Iraq) all but a big attempt at coronavirus and record unemployment distraction? 

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Ron Paul certainly thinks so: President Trump and his advisors announced that the US military would begin conducting a “counter-narcotics operation” in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump’s Justice Department indicted Venezuelan president Maduro on drug trafficking charges. Is the US about to “do a Noriega” on Maduro based on half-baked charged that the Venezuelan leader is some kind of drug kingpin?

Have the president’s war-braying neocons convinced him that the best thing to get our minds off of coronavirus is a “nice little war”? Today on the Ron Paul Liberty Report: