The straight line between Trump’s Jan. 6 terrorist attack and his attack on Venezuela

Trump is what happens when crimes go unpunished

Five years ago, Donald Trump incited a deadly terrorist attack upon our nation’s Capitol to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election. There is zero dispute that if Trump had simply accepted his election loss and not called his supporters to the Washington, D.C., then directed that angry mob to the Capitol to “Stop the steal,” the attack does not happen. Trump should have been arrested that very day.

This brazen attack on our democracy is why I wrote an MSNBC op-ed published one year later on January 2022 that warned if Trump was not swiftly held accountable for his attempted coup and Jan. 6 terrorist attack, “I believe historians will count it among the key mistakes that ultimately led to the end of the United States as a democratic republic.”

I repeated that very point in many other articles, on my SiriusXM show and in media appearances. Yet today we are at the precipice of that warning becoming reality—if it hasn’t already.

I’m not a fortune teller. But I am someone who is a student of history and also a lawyer who understands the impact our criminal justice has on people. If criminals are not punished for their crimes, of course they will commit more. And if that criminal is a sociopath like Trump, the crimes can far exceed the run of the mill type and instead reach crimes against humanity.

Yet Trump escaped any accountability for his crimes that attempted to drive a dagger into the heart of our democracy. There is plenty of blame to go around for this—starting with the GOP Senators who protected Trump in his second impeachment trial. While seven Republican Senators did vote to convict, that fell short of the two thirds needed to bar Trump from ever seeking federal office again.

Then came Attorney General Merrick Garland who should’ve appointed a special counsel on day one of being sworn in—instead, he slow walked the investigation into Trump as we learned from reporting. Next up, the GOP Supreme Court protected Trump both being barred from the ballot by way of Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment (engaging an insurrection) and then protecting him from criminal prosecution.

The result is we now have a sociopath in the White House who only cares about what is good for him in terms of power, fame and wealth. And look what we’ve seen from Trump in less than a year in office—who alarmingly appears more dangerous and lawless with each day.

Just this weekend, Trump attacked and kidnapped the leader of Venezuela in clear violation of US and international law given there was neither UN nor congressional authorization. At least 80 people were killed in this attack including numerous civilians. And Trump’s reason for this attack was not to help the people of Venezuela but to help his oil oligarchs who bankrolled his 2024 election have access to the Venezuela’s massive oil resources. In fact on Saturday’s press conference announcing the strikes, Trump mentioned the word “oil” more than 20 times but said the words “freedom” and “democracy” for the people of Venezuela zero times.

Before this attack, Trump murdered more than 100 people in international waters at least 1,500 miles from the US coastline with absolutely no evidence that these people posed an imminent threat to our nation and citizens. Instead, he spewed lies to justify these killings.

Trump has sent troops onto the streets of major cities and built an ICE militia that answers to no one but him. He has utilized the federal government to prosecute his political enemies like NY Attorney General Tish James and to punish media outlets and universities that refused to bend a knee. In fact on Monday, Trump’s regime announced they would slash Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of his military retirement rank and pay because they were outraged he simply reminded people in military to not follow illegal orders.

Trump whimsically--like an emperor--decided to demolish the East Wing of the White House to build at our expense a $400 million ballroom. He also commissioned the “Arc de Trump” monument that we are also paying for to honor him. Still not enough for his ego, Trump renamed the Kennedy Center and other federal buildings in his honor and named a class of navy ships after himself.

And Trump—like dictators worldwide—has personally profited from his time in office. As ethics watchdogs and journalists have noted, Trump has corruptly increased his wealth in his first year back in the White House by well over one billion dollars. We are talking raking in money from crypto investments while his own administration sets regulations for the industry to a luxury jet given to the Trump by the emir of Qatar—which he will personally keep when he leaves office.

Think about what I just laid above and ask yourself: What if you read that about another nations’ leader? Would you sincerely say that nation was a democratic Republic? I’m betting more likely you’d say that it’s a corrupt dictatorship like Vladimir Putin’s Russia. That is where we now find ourselves.

Worse for us, Trump is not done with his dreams of becoming “Donald the Great.” Just hours after attacking Venezuela in clear violation of international law, Trump made it clear he has other nations in his sights. Next he wants to attack or at least depose the leader of Colombia saying about the current President Gustavo Petro: “He’s not going to be doing it for very long…He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

Then Trump—via his regime official Marco Rubio—made a direct threat against taking Cuba saying, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

That was followed by Trump declaring he still seeks to annex Greenland, telling reporters on Sunday that, “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.” Trump’s comments resulted in the Prime Minister of Denmark-which Greenland is a part of their Kingdom—to literally invoke the NATO charter that mandates all member nations must defend Greenland if the United States were to attack. The generally spineless British Prime Minister Keir Starmer even stood up to Trump on this issue Monday by rejecting Trump’s ambitions and instead saying, “Denmark is a close European ally, a close NATO ally.”

Yes, Trump is alienating us from our NATO allies. We are now a rogue nation led by a sociopath. On some level, this must be what it feels like to live in Russia and oppose Putin as he engaged in the same conduct Trump has.

If Trump had been held accountable for his attempted coup and Jan. 6 terrorist attack, none of this happens. Instead, Trump would rightfully be in prison spending the final days of his life in a cell as a warning to all others who contemplate following Trump’s anti-American playbook.

Obviously, we can’t go back in time. The lesson that must be taken is that Trump and his regime officials must be prosecuted for their crimes currently being committed—even if that means relying on the International Criminal Court as I wrote about this week. The attack on Venezuela gives the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others involved.

As to us, we need to prepare for the 2026 election. Thankfully, 2025 closed out with us winning key elections from governor’s races to mayor of Miami for the first time in 30 years. All of that was made possible by people power that began with protests like “No Kings” that fueled the election victories.

Trump—like all aspiring dictators—will not cede power easily. Yes, Trump will try to cheat but we have the people and resources to defeat him. And we are well positioned to win the House and even the Senate. Now comes the time to work to ensure that historians do not one day write that our democratic Republic ended on our watch!

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