Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicolás Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.
In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said in a phone interview with the network.
And at a year-end press conference at the state department, Marco Rubio doubled down on remarks by other top Trump advisers that the US could coerce Maduro through its campaign of strikes on alleged drug boats travelling toward the United States.
And I did nothing
It brought back a much older memory. In the 1980s and 1990s, media stories, television shows, and political rhetoric frequently claimed that elderly Americans were so destitute, they were “forced to eat cat food,” because it was all they could afford. I remember hearing this as a child, and even then it didn’t ring true. I’ve been a pet owner most of my life. I know what cat and dog food cost, even the cheap stuff. And as a mom who often lived on the edge of poverty, I know what human staples cost, too. Tuna, ramen, rice, beans, oatmeal — these have always been cheaper, pound for pound and calorie for calorie, than commercially prepared 
