“Today, President Trump presented Venezuela’s military officers with a choice — work for a democratic future for all Venezuelans or see the financial circle close for their families and loved ones,” tweeted US National Security Advisor John Bolton today following a Miami speech by the president.

If you know anything about John Bolton, you just know he typed “noose” first instead of “circle”.

This would be the same John Bolton, for the record, who once threatened to murder an international official’s children for obstructing his attempts to manufacture support for the Iraq invasion which killed a million human beings and plunged the region into terrorism and chaos. A man named José Bustani was the director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in early 2002, during which time The Intercept reports he came under fire for having too much success in diplomacy with the Iraqi government, which undermined the case for an invasion. So Bolton attempted to scare him off.

From The Intercept:

“Cheney wants you out,” Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. “We can’t accept your management style.” Bolton continued, according to Bustani’s recollections: “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.” There was a pause. “We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.”

And now we see this same psychopath threatening to starve and impoverish the families of a sovereign nation’s military with economic warfare if they don’t facilitate a coup by the most violent government on earth in the most oil-rich nation on the planet. All in the name of spreading Freedom and Democracy™, of course.

Bolton, who was in attendance at the president’s speech, gave a more direct and honest summary of what was happening than the one Trump’s speechwriters fed him:

“We seek a peaceful transition of power, but all options are open,” Trump said of the US-led Venezuela coup agenda. “We want to restore Venezuelan democracy, and we believe that the Venezuelan military and its leadership have a vital role to play in this process. If you choose this path, you have an opportunity to help forge a safe and prosperous future for all of the people of Venezuela. Or you can choose the second path: continuing to support Maduro. If you choose this path, you will find no safe harbor, no easy exit, and no way out. You will lose everything.”

This would be the same President Trump, for the record, who just hours earlier tweeted about “an illegal coup attempt on the President of the United States,” regarding statements made by former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe that there had been discussions among top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI about possibly using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. This same man who is outraged about an attempt to oust him early on in his administration using laws and bureaucracy has no qualms about ousting the government of a sovereign nation using starvation sanctions, CIA ops, an aggressive campaign to delegitimize Maduro, and now outright threats to the nation’s military personnel.

Trump has also been tweeting furiously about the “lies” McCabe told about him, who wrote the following in his new book about a 2017 Oval Office meeting:

“Then the president talked about Venezuela. That’s the country we should be going to war with, he said. They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door. He continued on, rambling and spitballing about whatever came to mind.”

I am sure that McCabe is as much of a deceitful sleaze as every other FBI boss, but that part at least sounds truthful.

For the rest of Trump’s speech he very tediously introduced all his loyal sycophants backing his Venezuela agendas, he bloviated repeatedly about the horrible horrifying terror of socialism, he kept referring to Venezuela’s elected leader as “Dictator Maduro” and some rando that fewer than one in five Venezuelans had even heard of until last month as “President Guaidó”, he tossed out nonsensical red herrings about Venezuela being controlled by Cuba, and he repeated his administration’s braindead talking point about the Venezuelan government refusing to let in US “humanitarian aid”, which the Red Cross, the UN, and even war-happy NPR recognize as a transparent ploy to foment regime change.

These are the people you’re meant to believe are the “good guys” coming to the rescue, America. The guys who threaten to kill the families of officials if they aren’t given their way. The guys who threaten to starve the families of military officials who don’t turn on their government and kill anyone who tries to stop them. The guys who pick mass murder facilitator Elliott Abrams to spearhead Venezuela’s transition to Freedom and Democracy™. The guys who helped murder a million Iraqis and plunge us into a new era of military expansionism and Orwellian surveillance. Those guys.

Sometimes it’s hard to say what’s more frustrating: the fact that these deadly imperialist regime change power grabs keep happening, or the fact that people keep buying the same tired old stories that are used to sell them.

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