Omnibus Trump conquest plans thread

I kind of doubt that the public's familiarity with Trump was much of a factor. I think there were three reasons why Trump won:

1. The Republicans waged a skilled and successful campaign blaming Biden for inflation. People tend to vote with their rice bowls; MAGA propaganda successfully sold Trump's lie that everything would be bigly wonderful as soon as he waddled back into the Oval Office. Only a fool would have bought that? Sure. We have enough fools who did? Yep.

2. The attention paid to Biden's running or not running and all the internal debate sapped the energy of the Democratic party. There wasn't enough time or effort left for messaging. They told themselves, doesn't really matter, we can beat Trump easily, especially after she cleaned his clock in the debate. 

3. Harris is a woman. Polls dating back to the 60s consistently show that about 5% of the electorate would NEVER vote for a female Presidential candidate under ANY circumstances. Too much of a handicap for Harris to overcome.

They appear to have flipped the flag shortly after it left port on the tanker to avoid the sanctions.  

I've heard it didn't actually have oil, it was transporting cash, gold and/or silver.  

Of course Trump would want to seize that to build himself a gold outhouse with expansive windows and a 24hr live video feed on the White House lawn for all the liberals to watch him poop.

Somehow I doubt that anyone would try to transport cash or gold on something as massively obtrusive as an oil tanker. I would expect something like a small sailboat.

In any event, the US had no right to seize it. Trump can add piracy on the high seas to his long list of crimes.

The Freedom of the High Seas treaty (I might have the name slightly wrong), to which we are a signatory, specifically prohibits piracy. But we all know how Trump feels about treaties, agreements, and contracts.

The US seized the tanker pursuant to a US federal court warrant issued because of sanction violations ( the Venezuelan blockade of last month).The tanker had been tracked by the US Coast Guard for two weeks which involved efforts to evade authorities by operators.

The US has no authority or jurisdiction in international waters, unless a DECLARED state of war exists between the US and the nation that owns a vessel.

A federal warrant cannot be lawfully executed outside US territory.

Period.

Nope..look it up. Though specific laws are involved , jurisdiction can include actions in international waters. I don't claim to know if those specific maritime/ UNCLOS laws apply in this case. In any event, we might expect court proceedings in this case (FWIW)

The laws you refer to specifically designate that such actions must be in the course of waging a war.

It's illogical to say that a given country's administration gets to decide whether it has jurisdiction in international waters or not. The default setting should be "not" in the absence of a treaty signed by, at the very very least, every nation.that borders/trades in/is affected by what happens in the waters in question.