\n<\/p>\n
What would Donald<\/span> Trump have to do for the U.S. media to frame what he is doing in Venezuela as an act of war?<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a rhetorical question. It\u2019s an actual inquiry, the pursuit of which can reveal a lot about how U.S. media\u2019s default posture is state subservience and stenography. In the past few months, President Trump has committed several clear acts of war against Venezuela, including: murdering<\/a> \u2014 in cold blood<\/a> \u2014 scores<\/a> of its citizens, hijacking <\/a>its ships, stealing<\/a> its resources, issuing <\/a>a naval blockade, and attacking <\/a>its ports. Then in a stunning escalation on early Saturday morning, the administration invaded Venezuela\u2019s sovereign territory, bombing several buildings, killing at least 40 more<\/a> of its citizens, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife from their bed, and announcing they will, henceforth, \u201crun\u201d the country.<\/p>\n And yet none of these acts of brazen aggression, violence, and violations of international law<\/a> have, in any sustained or meaningful way, been referred to as acts of war, a coup, or invasion in U.S. mainstream media reporting.<\/p>\n This episode seems to indicate that the president can do almost anything in the context of foreign policy, and the media will still overwhelmingly adopt language that is flattering and sanitizing to the administration when describing what has unfolded. This dynamic reached a new low Saturday morning, when the U.S. media rushed to frame the administration\u2019s unprovoked attack as, at worst, a \u201cratcheted up<\/a>\u201d (CBS News) \u201cpressure campaign<\/a>\u201d (Wall Street Journal) and, as was more often the case, some type of limited narcotics police \u201coperation<\/a>\u201d (CNN).<\/p>\n For the past several months, U.S. media has been working overtime to provide pseudo-legal cover for Trump\u2019s aggression against Venezuela, a task the White House itself has barely bothered to feign interest in. It began last month <\/a>when both the New York Times<\/a> and CNN<\/a> referred to \u201cinternational sanctions\u201d on Venezuelan oil in their reporting of Trump\u2019s hijacking and theft of Venezuelan oil ships. But there was only one problem: There are no international sanctions on the Venezuelan oil trade, only U.S. sanctions. <\/p>\n The New York Times even cited<\/a> Mark Nevitt, a professor of law at Emory University and a former Navy lawyer, to say the U.S. hijacking Venezuelan oil tankers was legal because they were enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea without noting, rather importantly, that the U.S. never signed<\/a> the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But it needed to feel vaguely rules-based and international-y, so unilateral U.S. dictates were passed off as ersatz international law.<\/p>\n This pro bono PR for Trump also came in the form of several articles and headlines that heavily implied Venezuela had broken some type of international law by trading its oil and evading U.S. piracy, complete with the breathless reports into Venezuela\u2019s so-called \u201cdark fleet\u201d or \u201cshadow fleet\u201d<\/a> \u2014 which, again, is only \u201cdark\u201d and \u201cshadow\u201d to one of the 193 U.N. member states: the United States. Despite Trump paying little attention to international law or even bothering to reference it \u2014 all while proudly boasting of stealing Venezuelan oil<\/a> and trumpeting the Monroe Doctrine<\/a> \u2014 the idea that the U.S. could be engaging in such shameless might-makes-right power projection was apparently too unseemly to mention. Instead, unilateral U.S. claims, almost in unison, became international law through vibes. <\/em><\/p>\n Left unmentioned is that it is indeed quite unusual for countries to follow the laws of other countries, and Venezuela is under no more moral or legal obligation to follow U.S. law than the U.S. is under a moral or legal obligation to follow Venezuelan law, or Iranian law, or Serbian law. By trading oil and refusing to submit to U.S. piracy, Venezuela was breaking no Venezuelan law and no international law \u2014 a fact almost never mentioned by anyone in the U.S. media.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the past 60 hours, U.S. media\u2019s adoption of this pseudo-legal framing has grown even less tenable, relying heavily on sterile, White House-friendly language that conspicuously avoids any mention of the U.S. wantonly violating international law, beyond a throwaway paragraph<\/a> or \u201cis this legal?<\/a>\u201d explainer where the answer is invariably, \u201cWho\u2019s to say?\u201d<\/p>\n From the first minutes news of the airstrikes and Maduro\u2019s abduction broke, every major outlet \u2014 CNN<\/a>, The Associated Press<\/a>, ABC News<\/a>, CBS News<\/a>, NBC News<\/a>, New York Times<\/a>, Washington Post<\/a> \u2014 all simultaneously called it a \u201ccapture\u201d or \u201carrest,\u201d terms typically reserved for criminals or fugitives, despite the fact that, as with Venezuela\u2019s \u201cillegal\u201d oil trading, only one out of the 193 U.N. member states, the United States, had issued an arrest warrant<\/a> for Maduro. Maduro is not fleeing any international criminal sanction.<\/p>\n Similarly, Trump\u2019s bombing and invasion of a sovereign country suddenly became an \u201cescalating pressure campaign<\/a>\u201d or an \u201coperation<\/a>,\u201d rather than an act of war. From the Washington Post<\/a> to CNN<\/a> to the New York Times<\/a>, not even \u201cinside\u201d detailed reports of the bombing, killing of 40 people, kidnapping of their head of state, or a military assault seemed to demand using the words \u201cact of war,\u201d \u201cinvasion,\u201d or \u201ccoup\u201d even once.<\/p>\n The dictates of the United States government, even if \u201cbipartisan,\u201d must not become the de facto positions of U.S. media. But time and time again, Trump\u2019s unilateral acts in clear violation of international law and norms become the media\u2019s preferred framing. Just as crime reporters mindlessly adopt \u201ccopspeak<\/a>,\u201d military reporters \u2014 despite their recent dust-ups<\/a> with the Pentagon over access<\/a> \u2014 have almost completely, to the reporter, adopted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth\u2019s \u201cpolice action\u201d framing.<\/p>\n When faced with how to frame the first draft of history, the media has simply chosen the words preferred by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s not as if the American media is incapable of using clear and martial language that conveys the aggression and violence at work. The New York Times, for example, routinely<\/a> used the words<\/a> \u201cwar\u201d and \u201cinvasion\u201d when first reporting on Vladimir Putin\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin, like Trump, referred to his aggression<\/a> in euphemistic policing terms, calling it a \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d But U.S. media correctly mocked this term and refused to adopt it, instead calling it what it was: an act of war. <\/p>\n Obviously, the two conflicts are not the same in scope or objective. The attacks do not appear to be ongoing as Maduro\u2019s Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez has assumed control, but the White House threats demanding submission and promise of blockade continue. Still, it shows the New York Times is more than capable of using the language of aggression when describing acts of aggression \u2014 which Trump\u2019s Venezuela attack no doubt was.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nPseudo-Legal Framing<\/h2>\n
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