One hundred twelve (112) area residents came out Saturday afternoon, 1/3/25, to participate in a short-notice emergency protest called by Indivisible Grand Junction to oppose convicted felon/sexual abuser/President Trump’s unprovoked early Saturday morning attack on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, the abduction of the country’s president and U.S. seizure of Venezuela’s oil resources.
The protest was held in front of the Veteran’s Administration Hospital on North Ave., at 23rd Street.
Innocent civilians killed
Trump’s early morning bombings of Caracas killed at least 40 people, according to the New York Times. One U.S. airstrike destroyed a three-story civilian residential complex, killing an 80-year old woman named Rosa González, and her family. Another bomb caused a TV and telephone tower to collapse onto a home, killing another woman and injuring her daughter, according to USA Today, which published multiple Reuters photos of the aftermath of the bombings. Another attack targeted medical warehouses near an airport. The New York Times published videos of the attack taken by Venezuelans with their cell phones and posted on social media.
Trump says the U.S. “will run Venezuela” in the U.S’s best interests and that “a group of people” would step in to run the country, to include U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump said American oil companies would be given military back up as they move into the country and begin seizing Venezuela’s oil reserves and selling their oil.
Trump said he gave U.S. oil companies advance notice of the attack on Venezuela.
He did not give any members of Congress notice about the impending attack, however, even though Congress is the only entity that can legally declare war.
Mesa County Democrats immediately issued a statement condemning Trump’s attack on Venezuela.
Mesa County Republicans apparently have not issue a statement about the attack as nothing about it appears on their website, their Facebook page of X account, and they did not answer their phone on Monday, Jan. 5.
U.S. House CD-3 Rep. Jeff Hurd posted a statement on Facebook praising Trump’s attack.
As of this writing, his post had drawn 455 comments, the overwhelming majority of which strongly oppose the attack.
Above is cell phone video of the U.S. attack on Caracas, taken by a Venezuelan citizen and posted on social media. The authenticity of the video has been verified by the New York Times.
Cartoon one commenter posted on Jeff Hurd’s Facebook post praising the attack on Venezuela:
