{"id":15597,"date":"2026-01-05T17:18:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15597"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:28:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:28:06","slug":"trumps-war-on-venezuela-is-about-ego-power-creation-of-alien-enemies-bradcast-152026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15597","title":{"rendered":"Trump&#8217;s War on Venezuela is About Ego, Power, Creation of &#8216;Alien Enemies&#8217;: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 1\/5\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_Trump-Maduro-VenezuelaFlag_010526.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">Well, we&#8217;re back! And I had some great stuff I was looking forward to covering on our first <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a> after a long holiday break. But, of course, our psychotic President of the United States had other ideas. [<i>Audio link to full show follows this summary.<\/i>]\n<p>Don&#8217;t worry. We <i>will<\/i> get to those other things that he&#8217;d prefer we don&#8217;t cover, one way or another in coming days. But today we try to make sense of his stupid, senseless, unlawful attack on <b>Venezuela<\/b> late on Friday night\/early Saturday morning, and of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/world\/how-u-s-forces-captured-venezuelan-leader-nicolas-maduro-in-caracas\">kidnapping<\/a> of that nation&#8217;s corrupt President, <b>Nicholas Maduro<\/b>, and his wife. (&#8220;Corrupt&#8221; if only because he stole his 2024 election.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, as you&#8217;ll hear, I&#8217;m a bit under the weather today. So, I&#8217;m gonna keep this summary short.<\/p>\n<p>We cover what happened; how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/01\/03\/politics\/legal-authority-trump-venezuela?cid=ios_app\">unlawful<\/a> it was; how much both <b>Donald Trump<\/b> and Team Trump lied about it all before, during and after; how clueless they seem to be about what happens next; and, ultimately, <i>why<\/i> he decided to attack Venezuela in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s about distraction from the <b>Epstein Files<\/b> and the <b>Jack Smith<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.readtpa.com\/p\/house-republicans-buried-the-jack\">testimony<\/a>. Yes, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/03\/trump-venezuela-oil-us-companies-return-00709782\">about oil<\/a>, (but only <i>somewhat<\/i>, in my opinion). But it&#8217;s also about <i>at least<\/i> two other things most of all: 1) A raw show of power by a very weak man and 2) Trump&#8217;s rejection by the courts last year when he attempted to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as justification for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants. Tune in for more on that, and for what our callers think it&#8217;s all about&#8230;and which country (<b>Cuba<\/b>? <b>Mexico<\/b>? <b>Colombia<\/b>? <b>Iran<\/b>? <b>Greenland<\/b>?) will be next&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_TrumpAttacksVenezuela-KidnapsMaduro_Callers_010526.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/PC:1000025838\">Pandora<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/256-the-bradcast-w-brad-friedm-30973643\/\">iHeart<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-BradCast-w-Brad-Friedman\/dp\/B08JJRN86R\/ref=sr_1_1\">Amazon<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, we&#8217;re back! And I had some great stuff I was looking forward to covering on our first BradCast after a long holiday break. But, of course, our psychotic President of the United States had other ideas. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.] Don&#8217;t worry. We will get to those other things that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,89,675,272,479,106,477,597,2082,540,198,233,610,533],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-dept-of-defense","category-donald-trump","category-election-fraud","category-kpfk","category-marco-rubio","category-nicolas-maduro","category-oil","category-us-house","category-us-senate","category-venezuela","category-war-on-drugs","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15597"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=15597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}