Wagging That Dog

 Trump is going to address the nation tonight. Sometimes he hypes these event and then it's a huge nothingburger, but there is at least some evidence that involves our escalation against Venezuela. Why are we apparently on the verge of going to war with Venezuela? Maduro is objectively awful, but that's not a casus belli. The drug issue is bullshit, and also it's not a casus belli. 

One possible explanation include the fact that Trump has ceded basically all of his policy making to the various creatures in his orbit - think Miller and deportations - and Marco Rubio really wants to do some regime change in Venezuela. For Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba, Maduro is just another Latin American Marxist that needs to be deposed. The question then is: why not Cuba itself? I mean, if you're going to start (another) illegal war, why not strike at the motherlode?

Another possible explanation is that Hegseth just has his war hard-on so bad that he wants any excuse to "increase lethality" and look like a tough guy in the mirror. The combination of Maduro's leftist politics, the presence of at least some drugs and the general waddling deeper into belligerent waters puts Hegseth's curdled idea of toughness and Rubio's neo-con arrogance into common cause.

The final reason is simply the old "Wag the Dog" scenario from an old movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro about starting a war to deflect the press' attention from scandal. 

Friday is the deadline for releasing the Epstein Files.

If that wasn't enough, we have a weakening economy, the Susie Wiles disaster and the general collapse in Trump's aura of invincibility. His rancid tweet after the Reiner murders has enraged all but his most loyal sycophants. He appears increasingly old, addled and unhinged. Perhaps the thinking is that they need to escalate this crisis that they made to pressure Maduro to abdicate into a full blown war simply to change the subject from Trump's eroding power.

Or maybe he goes on TV tonight to tell us how great his new ballroom is and how Americans should stop complaining about his economic performance.

UPDATE: Apparently he's going to be boasting about what a great job he's doing, two weeks before millions lose their health insurance. I do hope he continues to try and square the circle of "The economy is great, but it's all Joe Biden's fault."