What's Going to Happen in Venezuela?

Trump is bombing the big military base in Caracas.

I really haven’t been following events in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez, an intermittently entertaining politician, kicked the bucket in 2013. Chavez’s successor Maduro is so dull and depressing that I can’t remember his first name. Hence, I don’t have much of an opinion. Therefore, I’d like to hear your views in the comments.

Back on December 11th, I offered various theories about why we were going to war with Venezuela. My personal favorite was that this is Trump’s revenge on Hillary for making her climactic attack on him in their first debate a denunciation of him for fat-shaming the Venezuelan Miss Universe, Alicia Machado:

G. Conquering Venezuela would be Trump’s final vengeance on Hillary Clinton for her (hilariously misjudged) closing denunciation of Trump in their first debate when she trotted out the fact that when he’d first bought the Miss Universe beauty pageant in 1996, he’d shamed Alicia Machado, the reigning Miss Universe from Venezuela, for putting on weight during her reign when she was representing Trump’s business.

The New York Times news section congratulated Hillary on her brilliant stratagem:

Shamed and Angry: Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe Mocked by Donald Trump

By Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey

Sept. 27, 2016

For 20 years, Alicia Machado has lived with the agony of what Donald J. Trump did to her after she won the Miss Universe title: shame her, over and over, for gaining weight.

Private scolding was apparently insufficient. Mr. Trump, who was an executive producer of the pageant, insisted on accompanying Ms. Machado, then a teenager, to a gym, where dozens of reporters and cameramen watched as she exercised.

Mr. Trump, in his trademark suit and tie, posed for photographs beside her as she burned calories in front of members of the news media. “This is somebody who likes to eat,” Mr. Trump said from inside the gym.

Judging from the photos online, Trump was right.

On Monday night, Hillary Clinton turned Ms. Machado’s pain into a potent political weapon on the biggest stage.

In the process, Ms. Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major party, elevated a largely forgotten tale of Mr. Trump, when his oversight of beauty pageants collided with his unforgiving fixation with female beauty.

And Mrs. Clinton put a spotlight on Ms. Machado, Miss Universe 1996, who says she has never recovered from the experience. Ms. Machado, who grew up in Venezuela, said she had had eating disorders and psychological trauma as a result of the episode.

“I was sick — anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in May. “I was 18. My personality wasn’t created yet. I was just a girl.”

Mr. Trump has acknowledged pressuring her to lose weight, saying it was her job as Miss Universe to remain in peak physical shape. On Tuesday morning, he made no apologies for that.

“She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem,” he told Fox News.

On the debate stage, Mrs. Clinton seized on his conduct. At the end of Monday night’s 90-minute confrontation, she reminded viewers of Mr. Trump’s frequently crude remarks about women and their bodies.

“One of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” Mrs. Clinton said as she slowly unfurled the story.

“And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina.”

Mrs. Clinton paused.

“Donald, she has a name: Her name is Alicia Machado.”

Who?

You know, thinking back, Kamala Harris really wasn’t all that bad of a candidate compared to Hillary.

What was Hillary thinking when she and her brain trust came up with that jaw-dropper of a closer? Was Hillary’s assumption that Hispanic feminists would march to the polls to avenge the pudginess of Alicia Machado?

Yeah … probably not.

What do you think?