How Trump May Have Fabricated an Entire Military Operation and the Diplomatic Aftermath
The Venezuelan Affair 2.0 is a classic Donald Trump operation: stupid, loosely based in historical precedent, ineffective, and regarded as a major success before there is any remote possibility of verifying a single detail. But not only is this dumb, it is dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Donald Trump is unfit to be commander in chief, and that must be immediately remedied.
I immediately knew there was something deeply wrong about Tuesday’s alleged U.S. military strike against a Venezuelan drug boat. The timeline was bizarre, the details did not add up, and most tellingly, there was actual silence from Venezuelan officials; despite Hegseth fabricating them by refutation. What I have determined appears to be one of the most audacious information warfare operation in modern history – to present one of the lamest military actions of all time.
But it’s possible that they did not just fake military action, but also fabricated the entire enemy response to justify further escalations. You might have thought you heard Maduro’s response to this drug boat strike, but there is no verification that those comments were made after this strike took place. It looks more like they were attributed after the strike, but reference the original movement of American Naval vessels towards Venezuela.
The Original Venezuelan Affair: Historic Parallels and Modern Differences
This isn’t the first time Venezuela has been caught between great powers manufacturing crises for domestic political gain.
The original Venezuelan Affair of 1902-1903 began as a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana that escalated when Britain and Germany demanded compensation for various claims against Venezuela, including alleged damages to their nationals during Venezuelan civil wars, unpaid debts, and seizures of vessels. When Venezuela refused to submit to arbitration or pay the claims, Britain and Germany instituted a naval blockade and seized Venezuelan gunboats as a form of coercive diplomacy.
The situation escalated into actual warfare when German forces sank captured Venezuelan vessels and both powers bombarded Venezuelan ports. The crisis was eventually resolved through arbitration mediated by the United States under the Monroe Doctrine, with President Theodore Roosevelt pressuring the European powers to accept peaceful settlement rather than continue military action in the Western Hemisphere.
Now, we may be witnessing Venezuelan Affair 2.0. This would be the social media age’s version where entire military operations can be conjured from recycled footage and fabricated diplomatic responses. But this sequel is far sloppier than the original, executed with the kind of strategic incompetence that should terrify anyone who actually wants effective American military leadership.
The Four Pillars of Doubt We Have To Contend With
Any serious analysis of Tuesday’s alleged Venezuelan boat strike must grapple with four fundamental questions that remain unanswered:
1. Did the boat strike actually happen? Beyond Trump’s social media posts and Hegseth’s claims, there is no independent verification of any military action. No allied confirmation, no third-party witnesses, no physical evidence recovered from the alleged strike zone. Even if Hegseth “watched it live” as he claims, watching a video tells you nothing about location, identity of targets, cargo verification, or casualty confirmation without ground verification. The last time Hegseth claimed he was confident in a military operation due to video he watched, he was referencing product marketing video of bunker buster bombs; not the actual strike occurring in Iran.
2. Is the video evidence authentic, or recycled footage? The video could easily be repurposed military training footage, similar to how Operation Midnight Hammer used equipment demonstration videos presented as live combat operations. This would be cheaper, simpler, and more consistent with their established pattern than developing sophisticated AI capabilities which Hegseth refuted, claiming a Venezuelan official said it was. Though multiple news outlets reported this Venezuelan official’s statements as fact, there is no verification on this including no public statement from that individual anywhere.
3. Did Venezuelan officials actually make statements about AI-generated content? Despite being reported as existing, in order for Hegseth to attempt to dispel a rumor that wasn’t actually stated, I have not seen any reporter locate the original Telegram post where Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez allegedly claimed the video was AI-generated.
4. Are media reports about Venezuelan responses based on fabricated U.S. claims? If the boat strike did not actually happen, the video which has been seen is of another boat possibly being destroyed. Even if the boat strike happened, the comments being attributed to a Venezuelan official cannot be verified. This begs the question, whether or not Hegseth fabricated this comment in his refutation of an imaginary claim that the video was AI; in order to discredit doubt.
No journalist (other than yours truly) asked any of these questions.
Instead, they took the President at his word, and rolled with it.
A Closed Loop of Fabrication
The timeline suggests something unprecedented: U.S. officials look to have fabricated both sides of an international incident. Theirs, and their enemy’s.
They potentially:
- Posted recycled military footage as evidence of a live operation
- Invented a Venezuelan response to that footage
- “Responded” to their own invented Venezuelan response
- Used that fake dialogue to legitimize the original fake operation
This creates a complete closed loop of fabrication where the U.S. government conducts both sides of a conversation with itself, then presents it to the American public as a real international incident.
Venezuela finds itself in an impossible strategic position: if they protest the strike, they risk appearing to defend drug runners, giving Trump the narrative he needs for escalation. If they stay silent, they avoid legitimizing the drug narrative but also avoid defending their sovereignty. Their likely calculation, backed by Russia-China-Iran alliance support, is that vocal protest would be counterproductive when they have more powerful backing through other channels. Russia-China-Iran may also have incentive to provoke or induce military entanglements with the United States, allowing for this operation to continue on unperturbed by their own public statements.
It is hard to know.
One thing is for sure, though: the Trump administration is incompetent, and lethally dangerous to our national security.
The Competence Question Has Been Answered
Regardless of your views on Venezuela policy, or justification for another oil war, the execution here reveals catastrophic leadership failures. Not only that, (11) drug runners on a speed boat is a far fall from grace, from Trump’s other fabricated military adventures. Consider the trajectory: Trump went from claiming to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities with precision bunker busters – to maybe hitting a speedboat with some drugs on it. From global nuclear diplomacy to maritime drug interdiction represents such a spectacular degradation in strategic ambition that it borders on the pathetic.
Not only that, but Donald Trump disappeared from public view for days leading up to this most unimpressive dud of a mission. If the operation was real: Trump chose to use American military assets to play whack-a-mole with drug smugglers while a $1 billion drug bust happened domestically in Florida the same week. The scale disproportion is absurd. It’s like declaring war on corner dealers while ignoring real cartel operations at home. Something is very very wrong here.
If the operation was fake: Fabricating a small-scale drug interdiction would be the most embarrassing military deception in history. Even fictional military victories usually involve impressive targets. Who fabricates blowing up a fishing boat and calls it a major strategic accomplishment? Donald John Trump appears to be losing his edge, and losing his damn mind.
If you were an out & out fascist, and loved the idea of pushing American troops into an amphibious invasion of Venezuela to seize control of their oil production, Trump is not your guy. He can’t get it done. His domestic deployment of military has been sloppy as well, for whatever reason that is actually happening. Even ruthless authoritarians demand effective execution of their military objectives. Hegseth failed miserably to demonstrate strength here, and has deployed our depleted Navy into waters and a nation supported by nations that represent 40% of the world’s population; with no plan of attack and possibly fake news as their real strategic weapon.
The Media’s Dangerous Rush to Amplify
One of the other disturbing aspects of this is how eagerly major news outlets amplified unverified claims without basic journalistic verification. The competitive pressure to avoid being late on presidential announcements has created a systematic vulnerability that bad actors can exploit. Consider what should have happened if you simply did not report on Trump’s “Truth” Social post about this.
When Trump posted the video on “Truth” Social, news organizations could have responded with responsible skepticism. A journalist could have said to their editor, “I haven’t authenticated the content the President shared yet, and we are waiting on comment from Venezuela and I have to do my own analysts before publishing any of that information. In case the President is lying and putting out war propaganda, we don’t want to amplify that irresponsibly…do we?”
Instead, major outlets rushed to report the claims as news, treating presidential social media posts as automatically newsworthy rather than as unverified statements that are designed to get people killed.
This isn’t just poor journalism – it’s tantamount to enforcing prior restraint. That is the definition of not a free press.
If government officials can manufacture international incidents through social media and count on immediate, uncritical amplification by major news outlets, they have effectively weaponized the press as a distribution network for propaganda.
Trump’s social media isn’t “breaking news” requiring immediate coverage – simply because it exists. You know how bad it has gotten? He stopped bullshitting in front of cameras for 72 hours and the news cycle was filled with comment from people who knew nothing about his whereabouts – about the fact he was not doing press – which is patently insane.
Pay Attention For Fuck’s Sake, the World Is At Stake
What we may have witnessed this week represents an evolution in government deception and press complicity: the complete fabrication of international incidents using social media manipulation.
If true, it demonstrates that the traditional guardrails of verification and diplomatic confirmation have been so eroded that entire military operations can be invented from whole cloth.
This should concern everyone, regardless of party affiliation or policy preferences.
Today it’s Venezuela.
Tomorrow it could be any target that serves the President’s political needs. The precedent being set that Presidents can unilaterally announce military actions via social media and expect immediate validation from press and political opponents.
The Venezuelan Affair 2.0 reveals not just one President’s dishonesty, but the complete breakdown of the institutional safeguards that are supposed to prevent such manipulation. Until those safeguards are reinforced, we remain vulnerable to leaders who would manufacture wars for political theater. This affair is not even over.
The original Venezuelan Affair eventually led to international arbitration and diplomatic resolution. This version, conducted entirely through social media fabrication and press manipulation, offers no such path to accountability. That should terrify anyone who cares about the future of American democracy and our role in the world.
