Oh yes the deep state / neocons are pure evil. Trump is evil too, but he has all these weird hang-ups and hesitations when he "should" be decisive. I think it's some weird TV image thing that he himself doesn't even understand. There's nothing I would put past these people but they also keep fucking up
Definitely a little on the nose. A full-on pump jack would be more recognizable but it would be really weird and hard to draw at that angle. The other traditional trick of cartoonists is to have oil spurting out the top, but that doesn't really work when it is being erected either
People have mentioned torture of Maduro or his wife in other threads and I do agree that a tortured confession would be an easy way out of this for them. The thing that gives me pause is that a cartoon villain always treats a named antagonist with kid gloves, which is how Trump seems to behave in my opinion. If we see Maduro fight the charges versus giving up relatively soon with a confession we should know which way it went
They will have to really tie themselves in knots to put aside the absolutely foundational legal doctrine of sovereign immunity. If any court would though, it's these fuckers.
I still don't see how they avoid a years-long circus in the lower courts
So that's the thing that's most confusing to me, of all the powers and systems and institutions in the US, the only one that has ever meaningfully constrained Trump at all is the courts. (Of course I grant that they have given him completely unprecedented leeway and rolled over in many many instances)
If the Trump DOJ brings charges in federal court, which they seem to be signaling is their plan, then then Maduro will have a right to a lawyer, the right to discovery, the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to appeal....
I guess they could try and have it both ways? Instead of sovereign immunity meaning that the US courts have no jurisdiction whatsoever, try to use sovereign immunity as a justification for why Maduro doesn't get defendant rights? It all seems super messy and like Trump and his clatch of idiots are marching down a line of rakes
Violates Minsk 1
Violates Minsk 2
Refuses to sign Istanbul
"Wow, what a surprising and unprovoked invasion!"
Almost as if the Western puppeteers wanted to destroy an entire generation of Ukrainian men to weaken Russia, no matter the cost to Ukraine