Jon Stewart can't believe Trump is saying the quiet part loud about Venezuela
On a new Daily Show Jon Stewart loses his mind over Trump's invasion of Venezuela, which has nothing to do with America First. It's all about that bubblin' crude, oil that is.
New year, new war. Over the weekend, U.S. military forces kidnapped the president of Venezuela over the weekend in a raid described as “dark” and “deadly” by the president of the United States. As is his wont, rather than letting the American people or even Congress know that America was back in the regime change business by bombing Caracas and stealing away President Maduro in the dead of night, the Commander-in-Chief disappeared into the situation tent at Mar-a-Lago and watched the whole thing on TV. While the ordeal is among the most shocking and dangerous moves of a shocking and dangerous presidency, what really caught Jon Stewart by surprise was Trump’s bluntness over the reason. It’s the oil, stupid.
Only a month ago, Jon Stewart was calling Venezuela the new Iraq, and tonight’s Daily Show was a bizarro version of the many rants that made up the show’s golden era, when Stewart would go off about the War in Iraq being about oil, not weapons of mass destruction. But rather than playing hypocrisy cops at the government officials making high-minded arguments regarding the spreading of democracy, freeing political prisoners, or the rooting of terrorism and drugs, President Trump said the quiet part loud and proud: He did this for that bubblin’ crude—oil that is, black gold, Texas tea. In press conferences and Air Force One interviews, Trump continued to insist that he and the Mar-a-Lago brain trust would be running the country and taking control of Venezuela’s most valuable resource, while also saying that he briefed the oil companies “before and after” the raid took place. As Stewart kept putting it, whoever thought Trump was a dove of peace is sorely mistaken because America running another country isn’t very “America First” of the president. But it won’t stop there. In those same interviews, Trump has already begun naming future targets, including Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Greenland. It’s the kind of thing that makes for a good Daily Show but a horrible reality.
“Look, this is all exhausting and exposes the Gulf of America,” Stewart said. “Not the body of water, the real gulf of Amierca, the gap between the high aspirations that embodied the founding of this country and the thuggish gangsterism that this crew thinks makes us great again.”
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