It was 2002 when Delcy Rodriguez, sworn in today as President of Venezuela, came to my apartment in London well after midnight to tell me, a BBC television reporter, that the US was planning to kidnap, and likely assassinate, the then-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The coup, Rodriguez said, was planned for March, but I could not get the BBC to send me there on the basis of Rodriguez’s inside info. In fact, there was no coup in March. Chavez was seized on April 2.

President Chavez was kidnapped and flown by helicopter to a prison on Margarita Island off the Venezuelan coast. But President George W. Bush had let Venezuelan plotters operate the coup, and they were incompetent.

Chavez, the first Black and Indian president in Venezuela’s history, was guarded by a young soldier who was the same color as Chavez. He handed Chavez his cell phone. Chavez reached his Air Force generals who made it clear to the plotters — most of them white (race matters here) — that they would be bombed into oblivion unless Chavez were returned in 48 hours to his desk. The coup leaders brought back Chavez within hours.

But today it’s clear that President Donald Trump took no chances, ordering US troops to kidnap Chavez’ successor, President Nicholas Maduro.  

I knew Maduro well, and I have to be straight about the fact that he is not the brightest bulb in the socket. Unlike Chavez, who was elected and re-elected in model democratic polling, Maduro won his re-election only by manipulating the count.

And, unlike the late President Chavez, Maduro does not understand that there is a limit to how much one can taunt Uncle Sam’s oil companies.

The late president Chavez knew that, saying, “Greg, I’m a very good chess player.”

Maduro is not.

The excuse for seizing the president of another country is that Maduro was supposedly some type of “drug kingpin” according to Trump. But the United Nations annual drug trafficking report says that Venezuela neither produces nor is a transit point for drugs going to the US.  

So what’s it about? Venezuela has the world’s largest reserve of oil. Venezuela has four times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

The night President Rodriguez came to my home, she also told me that Chaves refused to give Pat Robertson, the Right-Wing televangelist, a gold mining concession. (Most Americans think of Robertson as the guy who made his money fleecing his born again flock with vitamin Ponzi schemes and huge fees for speaking directly to the Lord on behalf of the Christian coalition schmucks who bought his hoodoo.)'

Robertson’s big money came from diamond mining, but Chavez wouldn’t give him a gold mine concession. So Robertson, on his popular cable show, unashamedly called for Chavez’s assassination, pointing out that Venezuela had parked itself on top of “our” oil.

President Rodriguez understands what Maduro does not. You can’t eat or drink your own oil. The US embargo has literally forced 7 million hungry Venezuelans to emigrate because of the siege stopping Venezuela from selling its oil.

President Rodriguez, who is actually to the left of Maduro, has told Trump that he can, as Trump demands, “run” Venezuela because that’s the reality to stop the starvation.

Maduro foolishly blocked British Petroleum from taking over the French oil concession, allowing the UK to seize $10 billion in Venezuela’s cash reserves.

The US then seized Venezuela’s assets here, all Citgo gas stations and refineries.

How does this end?

I fear that President Rodriguez will also be overthrown and replaced with Trump’s puppet Maria Corina Machado, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize. (A weird choice for a peace prize. Machado called for the invasion of her own country, which could’ve led to Civil War, costing the lives of thousands of your countrymen. And that may still happen.)

And I have one more warning. It’s not a prediction, just a warning. Trump’s overthrow of Venezuela’s government may just be practice for the overthrow of America’s government. The date? How about January 6, 2029.