What did Donald Trump do today?

He launched an attack on Venezuela in furtherance of a plan he hasn't come up with yet.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the United States launched an aerial attack on Caracas as an apparent distraction for the apprehension of its president, Nicolás Maduro. At least forty civilians are reported dead so far. Relatively little else is known about the attack almost a full day later.

At a press conference this morning, during which he struggled to stay awake when others were talking, Trump made perfectly clear that this his motivation was not the Maduro's supposed involvement in drug trafficking, or the questions around his legitimacy, but rather Venezuela's oil industry. (Venezuela produces a moderate amount of low-quality crude oil.) Trump claims to believe that the oil in Venezuela belongs to the United States by right, because Venezuela nationalized its oil industry fifty years ago and expelled American companies. He also claimed that those same American oil companies would participate in the takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry, saying that the United States was "in the oil business." He said, "We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country." 

Asked for comment, no American oil company was willing to validate Trump's claim. 

Trump also insisted that the United States would "run" Venezuela in the meantime. How this was possible was immediately unclear: there are no American troops on the ground (that Trump has acknowledged, anyway), although he didn't rule out the possibility of American forces being deployed to Venezuela, which is roughly the size of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Trump and his administration seemed to genuinely believe they would have the cooperation of Venezuela's vice-president and now acting president, Delcy Rodriguez. But Rodriguez immediately and passionately denounced the capture of Maduro as a "barbarity," calling him Venezuela's "only true president," and vowing that there would consequences for the United States.

It's not clear why Trump believed Rodriguez would support what amounts to an external coup. She is generally regarded as an integral part of Maduro's administration, and is under personal economic sanction by the United States. Confusing matters even further, Trump specifically rejected the idea that the Venezuelan opposition—widely regarded as having a legitimate moral claim on the Venezuelan presidency after the disputed 2024 elections—could now form a government. 

In other words, based on what is known tonight, Trump launched an attack that killed at least 40 Venezuelans in order to apprehend Maduro, then confidently but wrongly claiming he had the support of the second-in-command of the same regime—the one who was supposed to allow him to "run" Venezuela. 

The official justification for Maduro's apprehension was an indictment in U.S. federal court for his alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking. This is the same offense for which Trump pardoned a different former head of State, Juan Orlando Hernández. 

Trump himself was indicted in two different federal districts and remains liable to prosecution—and presumably capture by the United States military—when and if he leaves office. 

Why does this matter?

• The skill and capability of the United States military does not make up for this kind of incompetence at the executive level. 

• Innocent people died today for a plan that Donald Trump hasn't bothered to think through.   

• The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to exactly this happening, and Trump knew it.