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The maniacal, Machiavellian, murderous monstrosities of the Trump White House fall upon the world like a monsoon. Small private boats continue to be bombed by Pete Hegseth and the new Department of War Crimes. The Trump-backed gangsters in Tel Aviv continue to slaughter innocent people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. The Trump-backed ISIS head choppers continue to murder Christians and Alawites. And now, in an act of brazen piracy, Trump seizes a Venezuelan oil tanker in international waters.

Under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), piracy and murder are punishable by life in prison or death. And prison is exactly where Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and Admiral Mitch Bradley belong. Then again, that's where Joe Biden, Barack Obama and G.W. Bush also belong.

Kevin Barrett writes:

If you've been following Trump's build-up for war on Venezuela, and are experiencing feelings of déjà vu—specifically, the uncanny premonition that it's 2003 all over again—your feelings are fully justified. Like George W. Bush in 2003, Trump is amassing forces off foreign shores in preparation for an invasion of an oil rich sovereign nation. And like his predecessor, Trump is working overtime to sell the war under ludicrously false pretenses.

Like Bush Jr. in 2003, Trump is mendaciously hyperventilating about a nonexistent but terrifying-sounding threat. For Bush, it was mythical Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. For Trump, it's another kind of alleged "chemical weapon": fentanyl. In both cases, the link between the planned US invasion and the pretext is purely imaginary.

There was never any credible evidence that the relatively stable, prosperous, but sanctions-crippled pre-2003 Iraq possessed an arsenal of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. That story was pure propaganda, the product of overheated neoconservative imaginations. The neocons knew that to stampede the public into war, they needed to invent a terrifying big lie. "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," Bush famously intoned. In other words, who needs proof? Who needs evidence? Let's just launch a huge war, slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, and ruin a whole nation, based on preposterous accusations backed up by nothing at all.

Trump's claims about Venezuelan fentanyl are every bit as ludicrous as Bush's WMD flim-flam. Trump has killed more than 80 people on the 20 boats his military has summarily blown up in extrajudicial killings that amount to premeditated first degree murder. But the Killer-in-Chief has not presented a shred of evidence that even one of those boats was carrying fentanyl. And we can safely surmise that they were not, for the obvious reason that almost all fentanyl consumed in the USA is manufactured in Mexico, not Venezuela or Colombia! Trump, whose cronies say has never read a book in his life, is no geographer, so he presumably doesn't realize that Mexico lies immediately south of the US, in North America, while Venezuela and Colombia are in South America and cannot have anything to do with Mexico-produced fentanyl.

Trump's unhinged lies on the subject almost beggar belief. In one speech, Trump claimed that "every Venezuelan (fentanyl) boat"—of which there are none, as we have seen—"kills 25,000 people." In another speech, the orange baboon stated that each boat he blows up "saves 25,000 American lives." These are bizarre claims for many reasons, not the least of which is that if they were true, it would only take three drug boats to kill the roughly 75,000 Americans who overdose on Fentanyl every year. Since Trump has blown up 20 boats, he claims to have saved 500,000 people. Those numbers obviously do not add up. But they don't need to, since there are no Venezuelan fentanyl boats. The whole thing is preposterous hogwash, a gross insult to the intelligence of the American people, the US armed forces, and the world.

While he murders innocent fishermen and boaters, Trump pardons actual drug smugglers. On December 3, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Even Republicans were shocked and baffled by the pardon, which revealed the whole "war on drugs" pretext for war on Venezuela as a total sham.

Hear! Hear!

However, even if the boats were carrying illegal narcotics, it is still murder to kill them without due process. The term "narco-terrorist" is not a legal term. The court recognizes no such person. It is a political term to salve the conscience of the politicians and con the American people into allowing the politicians to violate the law. Drug enforcement is a police matter, not a military matter.

If Trump and Hegseth have the lawful right to kill unarmed, unnamed, unconfirmed "narco-terrorists" in the ocean nearly 2,000 miles away from the United States, then they must have the lawful right to kill unarmed, unnamed, unconfirmed "narco-terrorists" driving a truck travelling along I-95 in Florida. Or if DEA agents spot what they believe is a "drug-deal" taking place in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, they have the lawful right to take out their firearms and kill the suspects on site. Right? WRONG! 

America is a nation of laws, NOT men. That is Americanism 101. Under the laws of the United States, no man—not even the President of the United States—is above the law.

Scott Ritter states the facts of this matter in typical Ritter plain-speak:

If I hear one more vet bro or some wannabe tough guy who calls himself a Reagan conservative say, "This is what I voted for." You do understand that doesn't matter, that your vote doesn't change the law. I mean, that's why we have a constitution, so that we have a rule of law and mob rule won't sweep in. That's why we protect due process. We [protect] people who have been accused of crimes from lynch mobs.

So, I don't care that this is what you voted for. Nobody who has any authority cares either. For those people who say, "They're drug runners." It doesn't matter what you think. It's the law. You do understand that narco-trafficking is not a death penalty. We intercept guys running drugs all the time in the United States and on the seas. We don't kill them. We arrest them. What you're saying is because they're moving drugs, now we get to kill them. That's not what US law is. And there are no military rules that allow you to do this.

Even Hegseth himself—back before he became Secretary of War Crimes under Trump's Goldfinger Age of America—publicly articulated the responsibility of the military to disobey unlawful orders and Trump's propensity to disregard the law.

Back when Pete Hegseth was a Fox News host and Donald Trump was a seemingly long-shot presidential candidate, Hegseth warned of Trump's rhetoric about the military not following the law.

Back in the 2016 election, Trump struck controversy and even criticism from Hegseth when he indicated the military would follow his orders, even on illegal activities like torture. Here is what to know:

Hegseth: 'Donald Trump is oftentimes about Donald Trump' 

In the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump said he supported waterboarding and that the military would carry out his orders. Multiple international organizations consider waterboarding torture and, therefore, illegal, according to NPR.

"If I say do it, they're gonna do it," he said. "That's what leadership is all about."

Trump received a great deal of pushback on his position and later walked back his position, saying he would not ask the military to disobey the law. Hegseth discussed Trump's remarks on Megyn Kelly's show on Fox News the following day, as shown in video archives.

"It's typical Trump, all bluster, very little substance. He talked a tough game," Hegseth said. "He's an armchair tough guy."

(Source)

In the truest definition, Donald Trump is a mad man; he is a full-fledged psychopath. The world is not safe—America is not safe—as long as this malignant narcissist is in the White House. At no point during the Cold War was the threat of global nuclear war greater than it is right now under the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Pick the enemy: Russia, Iran, China or Venezuela. Trump is a wholesale war provocateur. And Trump's psychotic nature means he is incapable of feeling the emotions of concern, compassion or consequence about any of it.

Take a look at Trump's Grand Ballroom being constructed over the ruins of the East Wing of the White House and the Arc de Trump that the Orange Man is planning to build: Caesaresque monuments to Donald Trump's indefatigable narcissism. 

Take a look at Trump's utterly heartless and contemptible statement on his Truth Social page regarding the horrific murders of Hollywood actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele: 

Donald Trump: A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.

"Reportedly"? Reported by whom? NOBODY! Trump cannot open his mouth without spouting out the most bazaar, certifiably insane falsehoods. Then to blame the couple's murder on Reiner's "massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME."

It doesn't matter how liberal Rob Reiner was. Reiner's disagreements with and criticisms of Trump do not matter. Mr. and Mrs. Reiner were human beings, made in the image of God with an eternal soul. Donald Trump is the one who is DERANGED. His deranged psychotic mind does not compute human suffering. Mr. Reiner (78 years old) and his wife were taken out of this life in a way that no sane person would wish on their worst enemies. But, Trump is NOT sane.

At the moment of the most unimaginable horror that a family could ever endure, the President of the United States uses the tragic deaths as an opportunity to gloat over the murdered man and his murdered wife and blame the horrific demise of the couple on the man's opposition to Trump. In effect, Trump used the unspeakable murders of this elderly couple as a "support me, or else" political commercial.

Now can you understand how Donald Trump can callously partner with Benjamin Netanyahu in murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians? Can you now understand how he can calmly blow up scores of people in the Caribbean waters for no other reason than to use them as a prelude to more and greater bloodshed in a war with Venezuela? 

Donald Trump is a psychopath!

The United States will not exist as a free nation—or perhaps as a nation at all—if Trump stays in the White House for three more years—especially if the GOP holds Congress after the midterm elections next year. 

I have said for decades that from a strict political perspective, America is in the greatest peril when one political party controls both the executive and legislative branches in Washington, D.C. Democrat or Republican, when either party controls the entirety of government, America's descent into tyranny, chaos and war intensifies exponentially.

It happened under Bush II; it happened under Obama; it happened under Biden; and it is happening under Trump—except, while the others displayed the obvious signs of being sociopaths, which is bad enough, Trump is a full-blown psychopath.

To see the real-life pirates of the Caribbean, look no further than Pete Hegseth, Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, John Ratcliffe, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, JD Vance and Donald Trump.

 © Chuck Baldwin

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