Donald Trump Will Tell You Exactly What He Wants From Venezuela

Late Friday night, the United States launched airstrikes on Caracas, Venezuela, and military special forces landed, captured, and extracted President Nicolás Maduro. He was arrested and is expected to appear in a New York federal court within days on narco-terrorism charges. It was an insane thing to wake up to on Saturday, and it feels no less insane after the passage of a day: The U.S. kidnapped a sitting head of state, and now he's in a jail cell in Brooklyn.

It's the culmination of the Trump administration's longstanding aim of regime change in Venezuela, which has only escalated since Maduro was declared the winner of sham elections last summer. There are still a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why now? Who will run Venezuela next? Was this done with the cooperation of any of Venezuela's remaining government? What's not in question is why the U.S. acted in the first place. Donald Trump will happily tell you that himself.