Why the surprise over Trump’s Venezuela coup? US presidents promise isolation – and deliver war | Simon Jenkins

Last week's events in Caracas come in a long line of American interventions. The White House has awesome power and is never shy of using it

It is starting to trickle out. Last week in Caracas was not an invasion, it was a putsch. It was the militarised kidnap of one ruler to aid his more amenable deputy into power. Since April last year, according to reports, vice-president and now interim president Delcy Rodriguez and her brother Jorge - the president of the Venezuelan national assembly - have been dealing secretly with Washington. This has reportedly been via that hotspot of informal diplomacy, Qatar.

We have yet to know the details. But the rumours are plausible that last week's episode was staged to look outrageous, including Delcy Rodriguez's initial condemnation of it as atrocious. President Nicolas Maduro was handed over to the Americans swiftly and peacefully. The only slip was Trump describing Delcy as quite gracious" before she was hastily sworn into office soon after the raid. A more serious slip was his dismissal of the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, as lacking the support within or the respect within the country". She had championed Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, probable winner of the rigged 2024 Venezuelan election, for which she won the Nobel peace prize Trump so coveted. Why no mention of him from Trump?

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist and the author of A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump