https://x.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1991552118948524408

I know that isn't much of an article. Just a title and an image. But that qualifies as a linkable source these days. Either way the point is someone else besides me has reported it.

Of course this is a funny situation because it's not like Venezuela is the only country smuggling drugs. It's not even close to the leader. Columbia, Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru are all involved in production and distribution to the US.

I'm not one to support communist countries, but we aren't threatening Cuba the last time I checked. So why are we singling out Venezuela?

Maybe it has something to do with this:
https://polymarket.com/event/which-countries-will-recognize-israel-by-june-30

While we are on Polymarket let's look at if Trump's announcement has had any impact on what will happen in the world.

The odds of us having an engagement by the end of the month just became plausible:
https://polymarket.com/event/us-x-venezuela-military-engagement-by-october-31

And at the same time our odds for having an engagement by the end of the year went from less likely to more likely than not.

The odds of them talking have increased:
https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-talk-to-nicols-maduro-by-december-31

The odds of a proper invasion are quite low:
https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-us-invade-venezuela-in-2025
https://polymarket.com/event/us-forces-in-venezuela-by

I guess this engagement will have to happen outside of their territory or we are talking about cruise missiles. I say this because of the huge difference between the markets for "military engagement" and "invasion" and or "US forces in VZ".

Maduro's estimated "out by" probabilities are interesting:
https://polymarket.com/event/maduro-out-in-2025

The out by Dec 31st probability has increased a good amount in the past two days since Trump made this announcement. But when looking at a longer term probability like March 31st we see the probability hasn't gone up much. One way to look at this is this pronouncement by Trump is less of an indicator of "if" and more of an advancement of "when."

And all Venezuela really needs to do to avoid it is recognize Israel.