Badlands Brief

Mad-Lad Maduro, Media Meltdowns & Weapons of the Future

The Badlands Brief is your daily drop of Badlands’ takes on the narratives dominating the info war. Read on, and join the conversation in the comments section.

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Maduro Storyline Ignites Regional and Global Panic Pattern

In a dramatic escalation of US policy toward Latin America, President Donald Trump ordered a pre-dawn military raid on Caracas, Venezuela, resulting in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The operation led to Maduro’s transfer to New York, where he and Flores pleaded not guilty to US federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, and weapons offenses.

Maduro declared himself innocent and a “prisoner of war,” while his son accused the US of kidnapping.

Former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president, condemning the raid but calling for “peace and dialogue” with Washington, proposing a “balanced and respectful” cooperative agenda while insisting Venezuela would “never return to being the colony of another empire.”

For his part, Trump has placed Rodríguez on a “short leash,” demanding she crack down on drug trafficking, expel Iranian and Cuban operatives, halt oil sales to US adversaries, release detained Americans and eventually hold free elections before stepping aside—warning she could pay a “bigger price” than Maduro if she resists, while asserting the US will “run” Venezuela temporarily to exploit its oil reserves.

The intervention has sparked widespread backlash: Russia denounced it as “international banditry” and a harbinger of global chaos, warning of resurgent neo-colonialism and urging Maduro’s release. The UN Security Council held an emergency session, with many nations labeling it a crime of aggression.

Meanwhile, Trump has extended similar threats to Colombia, calling its president a “sick man” enabling cocaine trade, and suggesting a similar raid “sounds good,” prompting President Gustavo Petro to vow he would “take up arms” in defense and demand loyalty from Colombian officers.

According to some, the event marks a sharp return to assertive US interventionism in the region, raising fears of broader instability across Latin America.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: For those that may be new here, or otherwise unfamiliar with my research on both Nicolas Maduro and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, here is a 10 minute clip that provides a decent summary.

So we have some interesting signal in the developments surrounding Venezuela in the wake of Maduro's "arrest" by President Trump.

After dismissing the idea that regime darling Maria Corina Machado would be installed as the new leader, Trump expressed support for Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, telling reporters that she was "picked by Maduro.”

Strange that Maduro's preference would be honored.

Rodriguez decided to honor former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez by being sworn in on top of his sarcophagus, which resides at a large monument in Caracas.

She then followed it with a speech about Chavez, echoing rhetoric that Maduro (who once served under Chavez as his protege) often said, emphasizing that there was only one true president of Venezuela, and that is Nicolas Maduro.

What is interesting is that, after searching through President Trump's Truth Social posts, I only found one instance of him ever referring to Maduro as "President Maduro" (despite posting about him countless times over the years,) and that was when he announced his arrest.

It is rather strange how much respect and dignity is being given to Maduro in spite of everything else happening and the overarching narrative. It's almost like Trump and Delcy Rodriguez's rhetoric is identical.

Then there is this little factoid: Eric Prince of Blackwater went to Venezuela and met with Delcy Rodriguez six years ago. Many analysts are [wrongly] pointing to this as the moment that Rodriguez betrayed Maduro.

The fallout from Maduro's arrest has been interesting. It appears the move has turned him into a folk hero in South America and throughout the world, as he has become the symbol of defiance against American imperialism.

Maduro's son is now giving speeches at large rallies being held in Venezuela, claiming that the Deep State's plan was to start a civil war in Venezuela in order to destabilize the Maduro government.

The comment invokes memories of Syria, and how the operation against Assad was initially conducted. It certainly would fit a pattern that the Deep State likes to use to remove popular foreign leaders.

What if the Maduro "arrest" subverted the civil war plot?

Now Trump is promising to turn his crosshairs on Colombian President Gustavo Petro— whom I have demonstrated in the video above is at the tip of the spear of the war against the cartels. Yet Trump insists that Petro is a cartel drug lord, just like he accused Maduro of being.

In a very cartoonish moment, Trump said Petro better "watch his ass."

Petro is now vowing to fight the American imperialists, as he rallies Colombians in defense of their country. He called Trump a coward, saying, "Come and get me," in a moment that felt like a professional wrestling soap opera.

It is also worth noting that Petro held a rally after Maduro's arrest, where he said that "a clan of pedophiles"— specifically, "friends of Epstein"— were attempting to take over Colombia and Venezuela and must be stopped.

This all feels surreal. The only viable explanation I can offer that addresses all the contradictions and plot twists is the theory of TrumpaMania— that we are watching a cartoonish soap opera that is effectively narrative rope-a-dope against the Deep State

PS - Here’s Trump calling Maduro a “violent guy,” then immediately accusing Maduro of stealing his dance moves.

Now I’m convinced that it was Trump who suggested Maduro dance to make this whole charade as goofy as possible.

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Major Shakeups in U.S. Media Landscape: CPB Dissolves Amid Defunding, CBS Anchor Vows Trust Rebuild, but Faces Backlash

In a series of developments signaling turbulence in American broadcasting, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board voted to dissolve the 58-year-old organization after Congress fully rescinded its federal funding, citing sustained political attacks and inability to fulfill its mandate under the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act.

The board, led by Chair Ruby Calvert, described the outcome as “devastating,” but assured that remaining funds would support public media transitions, preserve historical archives with the University of Maryland, and maintain the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, emphasizing that public media entities like NPR and PBS will continue independently.

Meanwhile, at CBS News, new “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, debuting January 5, 2026, directly addressed eroding public trust in legacy media, acknowledging failures on stories like Hunter Biden’s laptop, Russiagate, and COVID policies, where elite perspectives overshadowed average Americans.

He pledged transparency, equal accountability for public figures, and prioritizing viewers over corporate or political interests, stating, “you come first... I report for you.”

However, Dokoupil’s debut drew sharp criticism for on-air gaffes—including repeated self-introductions, awkward segues, misnaming Minnesota’s nickname, and control room confusion—amid accusations of being “MAGA-coded” under new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, portrayed as shifting CBS toward conservative appeal.

The changes highlight broader tensions over media bias, accountability, and political influence in the post-election era.

Burning Bright: The rout of the Media Industrial Complex from the Info War battlefield is on in full.

And two seemingly-disconnected stories prove it.

In ‘The Wars That Were: 2025 Edition,’ my year-end long-form, I detailed how the narrative enforcers of the System of Systems had been progressively isolated, exposed and eroded over the last decade, their trust metrics cratering to historic lows while their financial lifelines hemorrhaged amid a public mandate that surged against their crumbling edifice like a tidal wave against a sandcastle built on lies.

Which is nothing new to this audience.

As I argued in that piece, 2025 confirmed our collective thesis in cascading fashion—with reputational collapses, staff purges and cultural irrelevance marking the media protectorate's obsolescence not as projected hopium, but as tangible fact.

Now, we're beginning to see tangible evidence in the realm of the real, as Trump 2.0 asserts Actual power projection over the Media Industrial Complex in ways that are beginning to translate the drainage promised a decade ago into perceptual reality.

To wit, the opening salvos of 2026 are delivering what might be the most damning evidence yet that this front is not merely contested, but conclusively lost for the carrion crows who once guarded the doors to the collective psyche.

And they know it.

First up, let's take a look at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB,) a taxpayer-funded bastion of the public media system, steward of federal dollars funneled to NPR, PBS and hundreds of local outlets masquerading as 'independent' journalism.

In a move that reads less like strategic retreat and more like capitulation, the CPB Board has voted to dissolve the organization outright following the Trump administration's rescission of all federal funding.

This marks the Actual severance of the monetary lifeline that has sustained an ecosystem devoid of organic demand for decades.

The Board's framing—as an "act of responsible stewardship" to protect public media's "integrity" from further vulnerability—rings hollow when one considers the alternative they conspicuously avoided: privatization.

If the media harpies nested within NPR, PBS and their sprawling network of local affiliates truly believed in the market viability of their product—fact-based journalism, educational programming and community-based storytelling untainted by partisan capture—they would pivot to private funding models to prove that someone still believes in the public's enduring appetite for their thinly-veiled propaganda.

Instead, they choose slow starvation, a tacit admission that, stripped of coerced taxpayer support/theft, their apparatus would and will collapse under the weight of its own irrelevance.

In choosing to fold rather than fight in the free market, this central node in a centralized system pretending to be anything but signals surrender on the Actual front, with their power projection capabilities cut at the root by a resurgent executive wielding the sovereign will.

And yet, the routing of the protectorate is not confined to the Actual.

In the Narrative realm, where perception shapes reality itself, and which remains my primary focus and theater, their death throes are manifesting in even more revealing fashion, with CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil unwittingly serving as a cognitive cypher for the accelerating death spiral, which is now beginning to look like a death blossom turned inward.

As no doubt many of you already saw in a viral monologue last week, Dokoupil acknowledged the precipitous downfall of trust in legacy media—cataloging missed stories from Iraq to COVID to Hunter Biden's laptop—while vowing to rebuild accountability, transparency and viewer-first objectivity.

"Don't just trust me," he implored. "Make me earn it."

To realists some might call cynics, this might have come off as fool's gold initially, with a legacy anchor turning the ship toward truth in a desperate bid for relevance ... or at least, the appearance of truth and authenticity.

Yet, as is so often the case in the Info War, the reverse indicators swoop in to clarify and further boost the underlying signal.

Dokoupil's supposed peers in the media protectorate wasted no time dogpiling him following his evening news debut, with outlets like The Daily Beast branding him "MAGA-coded" amid descriptions of a "rocky," error-strewn performance that allegedly insulted the storied legacy of CBS, at least in their estimation.

Oh, the irony.

To wit, Dokoupil's only apparent 'sin'—acknowledging the industry's trust hemorrhage and pledging to hold power to equal standards, to prioritize citizens over elites—is instantly reframed by the rest of his peers as partisan contagion, as if calling for basic objectivity now codes as allegiance to the very movement that exposed their capture in the first place.

This internal cannibalization lays bare the machine's desperation: a protectorate turning inward, devouring its own as the broader awakening renders their narrative shield wall brittle, battered and prone to fracturing.

Adding it all up—from the Actual defunding that forces dissolution over adaptation to the Narrative fractures that are punishing even mild calls for reform, earnest or otherwise—I believe we're seeing the beginnings of the unmistakable confirmation of a thesis I've held since Trump first descended that golden escalator in 2015 and marked the fake news media as the prime enemy of the people.

With their monetary arteries severed and their perceptual hold crumbling from within and without, the collapse of the legacy Media Industrial Complex has been happening very slowly, in the minds of many.

Now, we're on the cusp of 'all at once.'

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Ashe in America: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is calling it quits because they aren’t funded by Congress anymore, and just a few months of relying on audience funding like the rest of us proved for them impossible.

It was always impossible. Government content is incapable of competing.

CPB never had to compete and, after spending decades functioning as a leftist mood ring, they now find themselves stuck on orange.

The sudden moral clarity is impressive, as CPB decides it can’t operate without being “misused” — after years of carefully curating narratives, selectively deploying outrage, executing social justice change programs, and aligning with the same one side of every major cultural fight, the opposite side of the majority of the nation.

After years of being misused.

They lost public trust a long time ago; now they’ve lost public funding and couldn’t even make it a year.

When is this going to extend to their local sister sites?

I have personal beef with the ones in Colorado, and I can’t wait to cover their demise.

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Hilton Severs Ties with Minnesota Franchise Hotel Following Allegations of Denying Service to ICE Agents

Hilton Hotels has terminated its franchise agreement with the independently owned Hampton Inn by Hilton in Lakeville, Minnesota, after allegations that the hotel refused accommodations to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducting deportation operations.

The incident came to light when agents’ reservations, made using official government emails and rates, were canceled, with staff citing the guests’ “immigration work.”

A DHS post on X condemned the actions as a “coordinated campaign” by Hilton to impede law enforcement, sparking widespread conservative backlash, boycott calls and comparisons to the Bud Light controversy, including cancellations of Hilton credit cards and reservations.

Investigative journalist Nick Sortor released a video showing the hotel continuing to deny service despite earlier assurances it was resolved.

Hilton, emphasizing that its hotels are “welcoming places for all,” investigated the matter, determined the franchisee was not meeting brand standards and immediately removed the property from its systems.

The hotel’s management company, Everpeak Hospitality, had claimed commitment to non-discrimination and resolution, but Hilton proceeded with termination.

Shareholder Bill Ackman praised CEO Chris Nassetta’s swift response in addressing the “rogue franchisee.”

The episode highlights tensions over corporate neutrality amid heightened immigration enforcement.

Ashe in America: In yesterday’s Brief, we talked about Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s new “Tenant Czar” in NYC, and I shared a bunch of videos of her past comments.

I also talked about Weaver with @ patel_patriot on The Daily Herold yesterday:

Resistance to federal immigration enforcement is sedition, isn’t it?

Ginger Yellen is trying to turn 2026 New York into 1860 South Carolina.

Democrats and their slaves...

It’s the same dynamic, and the same DSA ideology, in Minneapolis where Hilton has severed ties with a franchisee after the hotel refused service to the federal government.

That hotel will likely turn into a slum without that Hilton money, but “DSA rising” is a race to the bottom.

Cut all the discretionary federal funding to NYC. Ban the DSA and roll up all the constitutional officers in all of these states that are engaging in insurrection.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. It matters to all of us, but most immediately to those of us in so-called blue states.

All around the country, we see DSA rising.

We’re gonna need more helicopters.

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Israel and Syria Establish US-Supervised Joint Mechanism for Intelligence Sharing and De-Escalation

In a significant diplomatic breakthrough, Israel and Syria, with United States mediation have agreed to create a joint “fusion mechanism” or communication cell for intelligence sharing, military de-escalation, diplomatic engagement and exploration of commercial opportunities.

The agreement follows senior-level talks in Paris hosted by the US, involving Israeli officials (including Ambassador Yechiel Leiter and National Security Council representatives), Syrian Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani and intelligence chief Hussein Salameh, and US envoys such as Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Tom Barrack.

The US-supervised channel aims to manage sensitive exchanges, coordinate security messaging, resolve disputes promptly and prevent misunderstandings, while also paving the way for civilian discussions between Jerusalem and Damascus on medicine, energy and agriculture.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized priorities including citizen security, border threat prevention and protection of Syria’s Druze minority, with further talks planned to advance shared goals.

The development, built on months of quiet US-brokered contacts, signals potential reduction in regional friction and aligns with broader Trump administration diplomacy in the Middle East.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: In a 13-month period, we’ve seen two leaders of different countries forcibly removed from power.

All the same people who cheered for the regime change 13 months ago are cheering today, and they will be the same group cheering months from now when Cuba, or Iran, or Colombia goes next.

I have no doubt that Witkoff, Kushner, and Barrack will succeed in delivering a deal that looks great on paper, and easy enough to implement.

The question is when the other shoe will drop, as the zealots surrounding Netanyahu have made it clear that they want to annex southern Syria as part of Greater Israel.

This is lip service being paid to President Trump last week, when he told Netanyahu that he needed to get a deal done with Syria.

They’ll get the deal done, but will Israel honor it?

Fortunately for President Sharaa and Syria, the Diaspora is currently salivating over the thought of regime change in Iran, still basking in the afterglow of overthrowing Maduro.

As long as President Trump keeps teasing that he may be willing to back an escalated conflict with Iran, the Israelis are going to be on their best behavior so they can avoid distracting Trump with any sideshow antics. They don’t realize they are being given the rope-a-dope.

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Trump Media & Technology Group and TAE Technologies Launch Site Selection for First Commercial Fusion Power Plant

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and TAE Technologies have initiated the site selection process for a pioneering 50 MWe fusion power plant, with construction planned to begin in 2026 following the closure of their $6 billion all-stock merger.

The project aims to deploy TAE’s advanced beam-driven fusion technology, promising safe, carbon-free electricity and industrial heat without risks of meltdown, long-lived radioactive waste, or proliferation—positioning the U.S. to meet surging power demands, lower energy costs, and lead in AI development.

Sites must span at least 20 acres, offer grid access, proximity to metropolitan areas and talent pools, supportive local governments and robust security. Future expansions envision larger 350–500 MWe reactors.

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes described the effort as steps toward an “American energy renaissance,” while TAE CEO Dr. Michl Binderbauer highlighted fusion’s timely momentum amid growing electricity needs.

Upon merger completion in mid-2026 (pending approvals), Nunes and Binderbauer will serve as co-CEOs of the combined entity.

The announcement underscores a bold push into clean energy innovation from the Truth Social parent company.

Burning Bright: If you’ve been following some of my stranger—but also best—work on Substack, you’re probably aware of my 2024 piece, Amerigeddon.

In that piece, which is part of what I later named the Weapons of the Future series, I posited that the American Dream was both subverted and inverted into a Nightmare by the powers that would be, and have been since the close of the Kennedy epoch.

None of which is surprising or revolutionary to this audience.

The somewhat original angle I took at the time, however, was in my focus on the Actual AND the Narrative of the word ‘Nuclear,’ which Donald Trump keeps gleefully referring to as ‘The N Word,’ and with good reason.

I firmly believe Nuclear energy—particularly, Nuclear FUSION technology—WAS and IS the key to the Age of Abundance, which is being promised by both Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which is precisely why the original Manhattan Project was designed to subvert and poison said word in the global mindscape for approximately a century.

So, aside from running a social media company that hasn’t made a dent in the day-to-day lives of most Americans, what as Trump’s private company been up to?

Nothing much … aside from charging full speed ahead into the rapid development of the world’s first commercially viable Nuclear Fusion plant.

There’s a reason Trump keeps bringing up the New Manhattan Project.

It’s an inversion of the original, in the best way possible.

“We’re going to show you a new world.”

“I’m returning back to YOU, the people.”

Believe it.

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BONUS ITEMS

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Greenland and Denmark Seek Urgent Ministerial Meeting with US Amid Renewed Push for Territory Acquisition

Greenland and Denmark have formally requested a high-level ministerial meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to address escalating U.S. interest in acquiring the Arctic territory.

The joint request, announced by Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt via social media, follows repeated unsuccessful attempts throughout 2025 to engage Rubio, aiming to establish direct diplomatic channels in response to strong statements from the Trump administration.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reaffirmed that President Trump views acquiring Greenland as a “national security priority” to deter adversaries in the Arctic, with the administration exploring “a range of options,” including military force as a potential tool at the President’s disposal.

Rubio, in a closed congressional briefing, clarified that recent rhetoric is not signaling an imminent invasion, but is intended to facilitate negotiations for purchasing Greenland from Denmark.

The development highlights growing tensions over Greenland’s strategic importance, as the autonomous Danish territory seeks dialogue to navigate U.S. pursuit of enhanced Arctic influence.

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