loading . . . Fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuelaâs largest military complex, is seen from a distance after a series of explosions in Caracas on Jan. 3, 2026. Photo: AFP via Getty Images
What would Donald Trump have to do for the U.S. media to frame what he is doing in Venezuela as an act of war?
This isnât a rhetorical question. Itâs an actual inquiry, the pursuit of which can reveal a lot about how U.S. mediaâs 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 â in cold blood â scores of its citizens, hijacking its ships, stealing its resources, issuing a naval blockade, and attacking its ports. Then in a stunning escalation on early Saturday morning, the administration invaded Venezuelaâs sovereign territory, bombing several buildings, killing at least 40 more of its citizens, kidnapping Venezuelan President NicolĂĄs Maduro and his wife from their bed, and announcing they will, henceforth, ârunâ the country.
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And yet none of these acts of brazen aggression, violence, and violations of international law have, in any sustained or meaningful way, been referred to as acts of war, a coup, or invasion in U.S. mainstream media reporting.
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 administrationâs unprovoked attack as, at worst, a âratcheted upâ (CBS News) âpressure campaignâ (Wall Street Journal) and, as was more often the case, some type of limited narcotics police âoperationâ (CNN).
For the past several months, U.S. media has been working overtime to provide pseudo-legal cover for Trumpâs aggression against Venezuela, a task the White House itself has barely bothered to feign interest in. It began last month when both the New York Times and CNN referred to âinternational sanctionsâ on Venezuelan oil in their reporting of Trumpâs 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.
The New York Times even cited 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 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.
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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 Venezuelaâs so-called âdark fleetâ or âshadow fleetâ â which, again, is only âdarkâ and âshadowâ 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 â all while proudly boasting of stealing Venezuelan oil and trumpeting the Monroe Doctrine â 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 _._
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 â a fact almost never mentioned by anyone in the U.S. media.
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## Pseudo-Legal Framing
In the past 60 hours, U.S. mediaâs 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 or âis this legal?â explainer where the answer is invariably, âWhoâs to say?â
From the first minutes news of the airstrikes and Maduroâs abduction broke, every major outlet â CNN, The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, New York Times, Washington Post â all simultaneously called it a âcaptureâ or âarrest,â terms typically reserved for criminals or fugitives, despite the fact that, as with Venezuelaâs âillegalâ oil trading, only one out of the 193 U.N. member states, the United States, had issued an arrest warrant for Maduro. Maduro is not fleeing any international criminal sanction.
Similarly, Trumpâs bombing and invasion of a sovereign country suddenly became an âescalating pressure campaignâ or an âoperation,â rather than an act of war. From the Washington Post to CNN to the New York Times, not even âinsideâ 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 âact of war,â âinvasion,â or âcoupâ even once.
The dictates of the United States government, even if âbipartisan,â must not become the de facto positions of U.S. media. But time and time again, Trumpâs unilateral acts in clear violation of international law and norms become the mediaâs preferred framing. Just as crime reporters mindlessly adopt âcopspeak,â military reporters â despite their recent dust-ups with the Pentagon over access â have almost completely, to the reporter, adopted Secretary of War Pete Hegsethâs âpolice actionâ framing.
> When faced with how to frame the first draft of history, the media has simply chosen the words preferred by the Trump administration.
Itâs 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 used the words âwarâ and âinvasionâ when first reporting on Vladimir Putinâs 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin, like Trump, referred to his aggression in euphemistic policing terms, calling it a âspecial military operation.â But U.S. media correctly mocked this term and refused to adopt it, instead calling it what it was: an act of war.
Obviously, the two conflicts are not the same in scope or objective. The attacks do not appear to be ongoing as Maduroâs Vice President Delcy RodrĂguez 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 â which Trumpâs Venezuela attack no doubt was.
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There are, of course, exceptions (almost all in opinion pieces), such as âTrumpâs Risky War in Venezuelaâ by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic or âTrumpâs Venezuela Coup Sets a Destabilizing Precedentâ by Jonah Shepp in New York magazine. But overwhelmingly, the U.S. media and its purportedly straight reporters have adopted wholesale the White Houseâs pseudo-legalistic, limited framework of an âoperationâ to âarrestâ Maduro.
Indeed, the New York Timesâ reporting did not refer to anything Trump did over the past 60 hours as an âact of war.â And, as Semafor reports, the New York Times, joined by the Washington Post, knew in advance about Trumpâs unprovoked attack but decided to sit on the story â ostensibly to âavoid endangering U.S. troops.â But how this reason is functionally different than avoiding endangering the lethal efficacy of U.S. military aggression isnât clear. Suffice it to say, the New York Times and Washington Post seem to have felt no duty of care for the more than 40 Venezuelans killed in the attack.
To the Timesâ credit, their editorial board did call the invasion âillegal and unwiseâ and, unlike their reporters, did use the term âact of war.â But this clear language is nowhere to be seen in the Timesâ journalistic output. Even more cartoonish was CBS News, fresh off its goofy, homespun right-wing rebrand. Tony Dokoupil, the evening news anchor newly installed by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, sat down for a groveling interview with Hegseth, where the anchor pushed back on basically none of his assertions. The also-newly-MAGA Washington Post published a fawning editorial praising the attack as âone of the boldest moves a president has made in yearsâ and claiming âthe operation was an unquestionable tactical success.â
What weâre left with is a de facto state media, one in lockstep with an administration thatâs been hostile to the slightest amount of adversarial media. So Trump doesnât âthreaten,â he âbuilds pressure.â He doesnât invade, he launches an âoperation.â He doesnât carry out a coup, he âcapturesâ Maduro. Editors may tell themselves words like âabducted,â âcoup,â âwar,â and âinvasionâ are too loaded, too icky, or too ideologically charged. But whatâs important to understand is that any term carries particular ideological weight _._ When faced with how to frame the first draft of history, the media has simply chosen the words preferred by the Trump administration.
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U.S. media reflexively adopting the most euphemistic terminology used by those in power when discussing a clear-cut case of military aggression against a sovereign country isnât journalism, itâs court stenography that only serves to sanitize and provide the vague impression of legal justification for acts of war that are clear-as-day violations of international law.
If reporters wish to adopt the Trump governmentâs framing, they should at least be open about it, disclose that theyâre happy to carry water for the administration in exchange for access and prestige, and lean into this role. If theyâre going to maintain the pretense of independence and journalistic skepticism, they should maybe, at least every now and then, seek to complicate these euphemisms, ask themselves why they use a different set of terms when it comes to Russian military aggression, and stop lending the dictates of one out of 193 U.N. member states â much less one led by a man who openly talks about âtaking oilâ â the sheen of ad hoc international legal authority when no such international legal authority exists.
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**_ITâS BEEN A DEVASTATING_** year for journalism â the worst in modern U.S. history.
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**_IâM BEN MUESSIG,_** The Interceptâs editor-in-chief. Itâs been a devastating year for journalism â the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the governmentâs full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trumpâs project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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