Decoding Trump Derangement Syndrome -- A Deeper Dive

American  Thinker 

In 2003, conservative political commentator Charles Krauthammer coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS) to describe opponents' intense, often irrational reactions to George W. Bush's presidency, defining it as an acute paranoia in normal people towards the President. Krauthammer was a trained psychiatrist, so he knew the workings of the human mind.

The unhinged reaction to President Trump, dubbed "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS), is a million times more irrational than that aimed at Bush. The premise of TDS is that President Trump is driving his rational critics to insanity. 

Back in 2019, I wrote an article titled "Decoding Trump Derangement Syndrome." The main thesis of that piece was that otherwise disturbed, unstable, and morally reprehensible individuals use President Trump as an excuse to engage in rage-filled behavior and feign righteous indignation. Even if President Trump weren't in politics, they would be behaving badly. Hence, President Trump has nothing to do with the derangement in "TDS"; it's just that some people are behaving badly, using it as an excuse.

A perfect example of such an individual is Alec Baldwin. Baldwin's record of physical and verbal abusive behavior is consistent. 

But when Trump entered politics and eventually won the Presidency, Baldwin noticed that he could continue his insanity but disguise it as the 'resistance' to Trump. Hence, he continued, often disguising his viciousness as comedy. It earned him approval and accolades within the liberal echo-chambers; perhaps he even gained employment. 

Robert De Niro is another instance of this category; he was undoubtedly rude and mean-spirited long before Trump joined politics. He's now targeting Trump to give his insanity a righteous hue.

But this theory didn't apply to Rob Reiner.

Based on the tributes Reiner received from his peers, he was an affable, kind, generous, and helpful individual. 

Usually, when a prominent but problematic individual passes away, peers restrict their tributes to the departed's talents or record. But that was not the case with Reiner. 

Reiner championed many newcomers; Jerry Seinfeld said that without Reiner's backing, the Seinfeld series wouldn't have been possible. Many others have attested to Reiner's backing, helping their careers.

Yet his kindness melted into thin air with respect to President Trump.

Reiner amplified all the Democrat misinformation campaigns against President Trump, such as the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. 

He called Trump and his supporters racist. He compared President Trump to Hitler. Reiner called the Trump presidency cancerous. He claimed that Trump was worse than serial sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.

Reiner ridiculously claimed that Trump was “directly” tied to the assault on Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband, Paul Pelosi. He celebrated the sacking of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. He attacked Rush Limbaugh a day after his death. 

On 16th July 2024, Reiner claimed that if Trump won in November 2024, it would be the nation's last Independence Day. Ironically, this turned out to be true.

He recently made unfounded claims that Trump will use the military to intimidate voters for the 2026 midterms. 

When Reiner appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher asked Reiner if spreading falsehoods was justified if the hoaxes helped defeat Trump. The context was the mainstream media's acceptance that the Hunter Biden laptop story was factual years after the 2020 elections. Reiner first feigned ignorance about the matter, then proceeded to deflect and filibuster, and eventually dodged the question. 

His attacks were incendiary, the kind that incite violence against Trump and his supporters. 

There was no record or even an allegation of abusive behavior on Reiner's part. Yet when it came to Trump, Reiner was, by his own admission, a hater.

Does this prove that TDS exists, i.e, could President Trump cause regular individuals to be driven to anger, anxiety, and eventually insanity? 

We look at Reiner's life beyond the spotlight. We focus on his son Nick Reiner, who was arrested on suspicion of murder after the director and his wife were found dead.

Nick’s struggles with substance abuse began at 15, leading him into a cycle of dependency. He underwent multiple rehabilitation stays and experienced periods of homelessness as a result of his addiction and struggles with recovery. The NY Post reported that Nick's massive blow-up with his parents at Conan O’Brien’s party left Reiner terrified for the future. Days later, Nick was charged with two counts of first-degree murder of his parents.

An acquaintance who is a trained psychiatrist once told me that close relatives of psychiatric patients or recovering addicts are impacted much more by the disorder than the actual patient. The patient with the disorder is usually in a state of fugue and acts out with harsh words or even violence without comprehending the consequences of their words or actions. 

These close relatives of those who are mentally and psychologically sound are left to pick up the pieces and find it hard to distinguish between the patient's conduct and the conduct that is a consequence of the mental disorder. The words are often so vicious and personal, and the actions so harmful that they cause permanent damage to the relationship. It also results in psychological disorders of the once sound relatives or friends who were entrusted to take care of the patient. 

For parents, it's very irrevocably hurtful to witness a child they brought into the world engaging in verbal or physical violence against them. They also become bitter towards society and often display apathy. They often absolve themselves from any responsibility and find ways to distract.

This is what Rob Reiner must have been going through for at least one and a half decades; in the end, the wealth, fame, accolades, love of peers, and awards mean nothing when their child was in such peril.

Reiner conducted himself well with his peers, but there is a limit as to how much one can endure pain, anger, frustration, and disturbance. Unless these emotions are purged, a stable existence becomes impossible.

For Reiner, it was Trump. 

Trump gave him an excuse to vent his rage; the anger against Trump probably replaced the pain regarding his son. It made him overlook his possible personal failure as a father. It won him admiration within Hollywood echo chambers.

Tragically, he spent the last decade of his life fixated on Trump and being hateful, which is unpardonable. 

Once again, it appears that Trump had nothing to do with Reiner's rage; he was merely an excuse. He was merely filling the void caused by pain with hate, but disguising it as righteousness.

Meryl Streep, too, hasn't had a record of bad behavior in the past.

Yet in 2017, Streep surprised everyone with her angry speech targeting President Trump when she received her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. Her supporters will claim that she was so concerned about 'issues' that she used the platform to speak up, and hence, it was an act of selflessness. Much later, it was revealed that Meryl had separated from her husband during that time. Perhaps it was Streep's personal turmoil that made her vent at what should have been a joyous moment. 

In conclusion, there are two categories of people who display 'TDS,' and their excuses do not absolve them from the responsibility of their abhorrent conduct.

There is the Alec Baldwin variety, who have been unhinged all their lives, and the second is the likes of Rob Reiner, who looks to vent to distract themselves from their despondency after insurmountable personal misfortunes have befallen them. 

Successful individuals with wholesome personal lives may occasionally be critical about certain issues or individuals, but they do not elevate their object of criticism to the focus of their existence.

Entertainment and podcast thread for Jan 4

 

Good days are coming.

Jack Smith’s Tyrannical Arrogance

Smith believes the government can prosecute any of us for rejecting official ‘truths.’

American  Thinker 

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who attempted to put President Trump in prison for acknowledging that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud, testified before the House Judiciary Committee the week before Christmas.  Here are the video and transcript of his deposition.  Smith’s testimony is disturbing because his argument in favor of prosecuting the president boils down to this: (1) Every sensible person knows that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.  (2) For President Trump to pretend otherwise reveals that he is knowingly telling a “lie.”  (3) By using this “lie” to undermine the 2020 election results, Trump committed fraud against the U.S. government and the American people.

Consider how dangerous this line of reasoning is.  Essentially, Smith claims to believe that certain “truths” cannot be disputed.  In the case of the 2020 election, if enough certified “experts” in the press claim that something is “true,” then anybody who claims to believe otherwise is maliciously spreading a “lie.”

When it comes to the 2020 election, however, many things about Joe Biden’s supposed “victory” never made sense.  For starters, President Trump won almost every bellwether county — areas whose voters routinely choose the winner — across the nation.  After the press “officially” called the election for Biden (four days after America’s putative Election “Day”), The Epoch Times pointed out an “intriguing phenomenon”: For forty years, “19 counties in the nation have always voted for the winner, be it Republican or Democrat.”  In 2020, eighteen of those nineteen counties voted for President Trump by an average margin of sixteen points!  The one county that went for Biden is in Washington state, and Joe’s margin was a measly three points.

Furthermore, among fifty-eight bellwether counties that had correctly picked the president since 2000, fifty-one of them went for Trump by an average of fifteen points!  Biden won the other seven by roughly four points.  In Indiana’s Vigo County, a historic bellwether county that has picked every presidential winner correctly since 1888 save two, Trump won by fifteen points (even though an Emerson Poll conducted just before the election showed Trump and Biden tied)!

As The Epoch Times reported in November 2020, “Bellwethers aren’t a crystal ball.”  Their streaks inevitably end.  But what is “striking is for it to end so radically.”  Isn’t it strange that corporate news publications never reported these facts to the American people?  If a rational observer knew nothing else about the 2020 presidential election, the tale of the bellwether counties would be sufficient to give him pause about the election outcome’s legitimacy.  

Then consider this: Joe Biden supposedly won over eighty-one million votes in 2020 — four million more than President Trump won in 2024 and over fifteen million more than Barack Obama won in 2012.  Joe Biden has never had high national polling numbers.  His previous attempts to win the presidency were disasters in which he drowned in single digits.  Yet we are supposed to believe that he won more votes in 2020 than any candidate in American history?  We are supposed to believe that uninspiring Joe Biden crushed Obama’s vote totals, even though Democrats still hail Obama today as the most inspiring political candidate of all time?  The idea that perennially unpopular Joe Biden is somehow the most popular political candidate in American history just doesn’t pass the “smell test.”  

If we knew nothing else about the 2020 election except that President Trump won nearly every bellwether county by double-digits and that Joe Biden somehow “won” fifteen million more votes than Democrat rockstar Barack Obama, it would be entirely reasonable for us to wonder whether the election was on the up-and-up.  

Yet we do know more.  We know that Georgia and other battleground states ignored their own election laws to certify challenged votes.  We know that Democrat-controlled jurisdictions in battleground states reported vote totals that not only exceeded the number of registered voters but also generated implausible 100% returns for Biden.  We know that Democrat judges permitted the unlawful use of anonymous mail-in ballots in violation of statutory law, that Democrat secretaries of state permitted unverified ballots (many without signatures) to be counted in violation of statutory law, and that Democrat attorneys general refused to investigate allegations of election fraud even after witnesses signed affidavits attesting to their firsthand knowledge of crimes.  We know that there were numerous allegations of straight-up election fraud during the extra four days of post-election vote-counting and that the very few allegations that managed to reach a courtroom were dismissed on procedural grounds before ever being adjudicated on the merits.

We know that fifty-one Intelligence Community officials conspired to cover-up Hunter Biden’s criminally damning “laptop from Hell” by lying to the American people and claiming that Hunter’s personal computer had all the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.”  We know that social media companies censored the laptop story and many other stories that were harmful to Joe Biden’s campaign, while actively suppressing the reach of social media posts from Americans who supported President Trump.  We know that the corporate news media ran stories throughout the election cycle that were nearly 100% positive for Joe Biden and 100% negative for President Trump. 

The corporate news machine, in fact, was so proud of its efforts to manipulate the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor that Molly Ball wrote a piece for Time the following February about the “secret history of the 2020 election.”  In that article, she brags that Biden won because of “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”  Although Molly’s essay reads like an admission of guilt, she repeats the mantra of Deep State liars everywhere: “They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”  Sure, Molly.  And when Somalis commit large-scale fraud and steal from American taxpayers, they’re not robbing our country but making it stronger.

What I have briefly outlined here in a few hundred words is a puddle dropped in the ocean of words that have been written to describe the inexplicable vote totals and copious allegations of fraud that undermined the legitimacy of the 2020 election.  A reasonable observer could not possibly look at all this and summarily dismiss the abundant evidence for electoral misconduct, violations of statutory law, and the unlawful certification of unsigned and unverified anonymous mail-in ballots.

Yet Jack Smith has told Congress that because he, The New York Times, CNN, Democrat secretaries of state, the presidents of every Ivy League university, Molly Ball, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Marc Elias, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, The Bulwark, and other anti-Trump RINOs all swear the 2020 election was totally aboveboard, that makes it a fact!

Do you see how dangerous this kind of demagoguery is?  These are the same people who have told us for a century that man-made global cooling/warming/climate change/extreme weather was going to kill everyone on the planet in the “next few years” unless we allow communist government officials to control all economic activity and relinquish all modern conveniences for Paleolithic subsistence living.  These are the same people who claim that men can magically become women.  These are the same people who covered up COVID’s likely release from a Chinese bioweapons lab, insisted that experimental mRNA injections are “safe and effective vaccines,” bankrupted small businesses for no reason, locked people in their homes, and censored scientific debate.  

These institutional “experts” can’t be trusted as arbiters of “truth.”  They lie for a living.  Yet Jack Smith believes that he and his ideological comrades should be entitled to prosecute any of us for rejecting their manufactured narratives.  Such tyrannical arrogance will tear this nation apart.

Democrats Can’t Help but Side With America’s Enemies

Townhall 

We now control Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro, their former president, is now in American custody and will face trial in New York on major drug charges. And, as if on cue, Democrats are exposing themselves as being on the side of cartels and drugs, ending the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year for the simple reason that President Donald Trump is on the other side. Yeah, they’re that sick.

I have to start off by saying that I don’t really care what happens to Venezuela. I don’t wish it ill, but I don’t care what happens there, except in how it impacts the United States. I believe it is up to each country, no matter how big a pit or worthless their culture or government, to take care of itself. It is why I oppose immigration from the third world – I get that the “best and brightest” could contribute to modern and civilized countries, but since assimilation is now frowned upon, with Democrats actively fighting it, maybe let the “best” stay where they are and improve their countries, if they can be improved upon.

There’s also the reality that, despite the bumper stickers and chants, importing adherents to backward cultures that treat women like garbage and people who do not share their irrelevant characteristics as rubes is not worth having or saving; they can save themselves at home. I’m not a fan of anywhere that has kidnapping for ransom as a top 5 industry; I’m old-fashioned that way.

The White House, naturally, is very happy with how the apprehension of Maduro went – as everyone should be, since no Americans were killed. And some Democrats recognize the good that taking out a despot aiding the smuggling of drugs into the US will do. The Washington Post, of all places, wrote a glowing editorial celebrating it.

Entitled “Justice in Venezuela,” the Editorial Board of the Post wrote, “Millions of people around the world, most of all in Venezuela, are celebrating the downfall of the dictator Nicolás Maduro. President Donald Trump’s decision to capture him on Saturday was one of the boldest moves a president has made in years, and the operation was an unquestionable tactical success. The next step is ensuring that this triumph sets Venezuela up for stability and prosperity rather than more of the same, or worse.”

More than that, the Post took a well-deserved swipe at Democrats and the Biden administration, adding, “Maduro’s removal sends an important message to tin-pot dictators in Latin America and the world: Trump follows through. President Joe Biden offered sanctions relief to Venezuela, and Maduro responded to that show of weakness by stealing an election.”

This was the position of the Editorial Board; no doubt the leftist “reporters” were fuming over all of it, as their fellow travelers on the left were.

Remember David Hogg, the weenie booted from the Democratic National Committee for being too vocal in his active campaigning to make the party even more anti-American? The guy with less muscle definition than Stephen Hawking wrote in a fundraising email, “This morning, Donald Trump bombed Venezuela, dropped U.S. Army soldiers in the capital, and abducted the Venezuelan president and his wife. This is the same man who said, ‘I will be the greatest peace president.’”

I guess you can’t understand the concept of peace through strength if you’ve never been able to open a jar of pickles.

You can expect anger from someone like Pig Boy – there’s a high probability that people he knows only get pure drugs don’t have to worry about stepped-on junk being cut with worse poison – but the head of the Democrat Party should know better, right?

The head of the “party of diversity,” a weasel named Ken Martin – a guy so white his camouflage in a snow storm is nudity – wrote in a fundraising email, “Another day, another unconstitutional war from Trump, who thinks the Constitution is a suggestion.”

Putting aside the gross idea of Democrats trying to raise money by rooting against something that will save American lives, Kenny wrote, “The most important thing we can do right now is work to elect more Democrats who will check this administration’s power and prevent more disaster.”

After decades of floundering, the United States scored a decisive battle victory in the war on drugs, while putting the rest of the world’s scum on notice that the lip service game is over, and Democrats side with the scum.

Actually, it’s not that surprising – Democrats siding with the filth of our species against Americans isn’t shocking, it’s what they do here. The only difference between Somali grifters, illegal alien criminals and international drug traffickers is geography to them, and they view them all more favorably than they do Americans.

Remind your friends of this throughout the year so we can return the favor to them in November.

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Alaska's Pebble Deposit: From Discovery to New Critical Security Asset

RedState 

Alaska is, as I've been saying and writing for some time now, America's treasure chest. Until recently - oh, until January, 2025, in fact - the federal government has insisted on treating the Great Land like the world's largest national park. Democrats and environmental activists, few of whom seem to actually live out in the environment, have pushed a "no development, no extraction, no mining, no drilling, no nothing, no kidding" policy for decades.

All that's over now. Alaska is open for business, and America's treasure chest just opened a little wider with some new survey results in Alaska's Pebble deposits.

Under the 2023 mine plan evaluated in the PEA, using the metal price assumptions applied in that study, Pebble was projected to generate approximately $1.74 billion in royalties, fees, and taxes for the state of Alaska, about $490 million for the Lake and Peninsula Borough, and roughly $1.4 billion in federal tax revenue.

Under the longer-life expansion scenarios extending operations toward a century, those public revenues were projected to rise to roughly $22 billion for Alaska, $4 billion for local government, and about $19 billion for the federal treasury, reflecting the magnitude of the deposit's contribution at both state and national levels.

Since then, rising metal prices and new critical mineral designations have reshaped the context for evaluating the deposit.

In its most recent update, the USGS expanded the federal critical minerals list to reflect updated assessments of supply risk and economic exposure, increasing the total number of designated minerals from 50 to 60 and adding several widely used industrial and energy transition metals.

These are, in many cases, metals and minerals we have been getting from other sources, including China and Russia. And the dollar value of these deposits are, to put it mildly, impressive. 

Collectively valued at approximately $591 billion based on 2025 prices for the contained resource from all categories, this valuation represents a nearly 50% increase from the estimated $393 billion valuation from 2023 metal prices.

Based on contained metal and current pricing, copper accounts for the largest share of Pebble's critical mineral value, at an estimated $431 billion, followed by molybdenum at approximately $120 billion.

Silver contributes another $27 billion, while rhenium – one of the rarest elements in commercial production – adds roughly $13 billion, reflecting its critical role in high-performance aerospace applications.

When the gold also found at Pebble is added in, the total in-ground value rises to $904 billion – nearly a trillion dollars and a 64% increase from the $552 billion valuation at 2023 prices – reflecting both the surge in gold prices and the broader repricing of strategic metals amid tightening global supply and rising geopolitical risk.

The rising geopolitical risk is the elephant in the room.

To put it bluntly, there's no reason why the United States should be beholden to any foreign power for metals and minerals we can obtain from domestic deposits. To rely on countries like China and Russia for mineral resources is well to the left of crazy, especially given today's geopolitical environment. Aside from the jobs created and the economic activity generated, developing resources like Pebble is good for national security.

Of course, if Democrats ever regain control of the levers of power, they will do their utmost to shut all this down.

Pebble, of course, is only one part of Alaska's possibilities. From Prudhoe Bay to the Cook Inlet, Alaska has oil and natural gas resources; gold, silver, and rare earth minerals are found in several deposits, from Pebble to Ambler and more. Our technologically-based modern lifestyle requires the rare-earth metals in particular, and Alaska has a lot of them. 

Add this to your list of reasons to get out and vote in this fall's midterms.

Convicted Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan Resigns (and Plays the Victim)

Townhall 

On December 18, disgraced Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was found guilty of a single felony obstruction charge. She was also found not guilty of a misdemeanor count of concealing. The verdict came after a quick four-day trial.

Back in April, Dugan was arrested by the FBI for assisting Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant, with evading federal law enforcement officers who were in the courthouse to apprehend Flores-Ruiz. Flores-Ruiz was in Dugan's courtroom on domestic violence charges. His victims, a man and a woman, were also in the courtroom, hoping to get justice. During Dugan's trial, witnesses said the victims looked "uncomfortable" being in the presence of Flores-Ruiz. That's understandable. Flores-Ruiz allegedly  "hit the guy 30 times, knocked him to the ground, choked him" and "beat up the woman so badly, they both had to go to the hospital.

Democrats ran to Dugan's defense, saying her arrest was unjust and retaliation from the Trump administration. But Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld called Dugan's arrest "legit," and the Wisconsin State Supreme Court suspended Dugan "indefinitely" following her arrest.

Now, with a felony conviction and facing impeachment in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature, Hannah Dugan has resigned from her position as a Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge.

In a letter addressed to Democratic Governor Tony Evers, Dugan wrote (emphasis added):

"For the past nine years of service, it has been the honor of my life and a daily blessing to be entrusted by Wisconsinites as their elected judge; to fairly administer justice to the thousands of people who have come before me, uphold our laws and the Constitution, and keep our community safe.

"During this last decade, I have served behind the bench and beyond the bench. Behind the bench I have presided over thousands and thousands of cases -- with a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberatively, and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves. Beyond the bench I have attended hundreds and hundreds of community events, listening to Milwaukee County residents voice their justice system experiences and concerns -- as jurors, witnesses, litigants, victims, and justice-impacted citizens who care about our courts.

"As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary. However, the Wisconsin citizens that I cherish deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 31 rather than have the fate of that Court rest in a partisan fight in the state legislature.

"Therefore, Governor, with a heavy heart, I submit to you this letter of resignation and respectfully request that you give it immediate effect. My faith in God and in our legal system leads me to trust that in the long run justice will be served for our independent judiciary and for me."

Of course, Dugan played the victim card here. She is not the subject of "unprecedented federal legal proceedings." She broke the law, and a jury found her guilty. That's the justice system at work.

Republicans control the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate. Dugan was going to be impeached. There wasn't going to be a partisan fight.

Dugan faces up to five years behind bars. Her legal team is going to appeal and asked a judge to throw out her conviction. So she's right that this fight is not over, but it's not a fight that she's going to win.

On Venezuela, Scott Jennings Reminds Us Just How 'Dumb and Dishonest' Joe Biden Was

Townhall 

The Left's meltdowns over the Trump administration's strikes on Venezuela and our ouster of Nicholas Maduro have been glorious to behold. President Trump knows how to poke them in the eye, too. Earlier, he dubbed the administration's actions in Venezuela a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the "Donroe Doctrine."

All the right people, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are distraught that one of their socialist comrades is no longer in power. As Townhall pointed out, the Biden administration issued a warrant for Maduro back in 2020. It condemned his fake "reelection" last year, saying his opponent was the rightful leader of the South American nation.

This was a legal military operation, and the vast majority of presidents have carried out similar ones in the past. And conservatives are celebrating the fact that President Trump moved to strike a blow not only to Venezuela, but to both Iran and China (which had a delegation on Venezuela when the strikes happened) by proxy. Trump also issued a warning to Colombia's President Gustavo Petro, telling him he had better stop exporting cocaine to the United States or he needs to "watch his ass."

CNN contributor and Salem Radio host Scott Jennings had many priceless reactions to the strikes in Venezuela. He noted that Maduro was the first and only Venezuelan that Democrats didn't want brought to the U.S., and he dunked on the U.K. for withholding intel from the U.S. over the narco-terrorist boat strikes writing, "Man this really slowed us down."

But he also made a very astute observation about the utter failure of the Biden administration to fulfill Biden's promise to the people of Venezuela.

On June 21, 2020, Joe Biden attacked Trump over Maduro, writing on X, "Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro. As President, I will stand with the Venezuelan people and for democracy."

As mentioned above, the Biden administration said Maduro stole the 2024 election and refused to recognize his presidency, but the Biden administration did nothing to stop or remove Maduro from office.

President Trump did that, and did it so well that not a single American service member was wounded.

Jennings couldn't resist dragging Biden over this post, which aged like milk in the July sun.

"Kind of wild just how dumb and dishonest he was."

And if you want to remember just how "tough" Biden was in standing up to Maduro, recall that the Biden administration attempted to bribe Maduro into holding free elections.

According to The Washington Post, the administration tried a "new approach: a deal. In closed-door talks in Qatar, U.S. negotiators agreed to suspend crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s state-run oil and gas industry in exchange for Maduro’s promise to hold a competitive, internationally monitored presidential election this year."

The Washington Post continued, calling the move "broader and bolder" than initially thought. "But the administration’s offer was even broader and bolder than initially revealed, according to a draft document obtained by The Post. If Maduro complied with all its terms, the United States would lift virtually all of the economic and financial sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

"The Qatar talks led to a breakthrough agreement between the Maduro government and the opposition, in which Maduro pledged to allow parties to run the candidates of their choice, invite international observers and set a date for the election."

In return, Maduro pocketed the money and still stole the election.

So tough, Joe.

Now, President Trump has shown he doesn't "admire" Maduro and has ousted the dictator, something the Biden administration failed to do.

"Dumb and dishonest" barely scratches the surface of the Biden administration.

Vice President Vance Has a Timely 'PSA' for Dems Melting Down Over 'Illegal' Venezuela Op

RedState 

Nicolás Maduro, the Illegitimate Venezuelan leader, is now in custody in New York City awaiting his first in-person appearance in an American court, after U.S. special forces extracted him in an early morning raid in Venezuela on Saturday. Maduro and wife Cilia Flores were indicted on a range of charges in the Southern District of New York, as well.

President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke to media on Saturday morning on the audacious op that captured the Maduros, as RedState previously wrote.

Here are some of the images the White House released as the operation happened in real time:

More in a minute on some whisperings people have been making about who is, and isn't, in those snapshots.

As I wrote earlier, one of the leading opposition voices to Maduro's dictatorial regime, Maria Corina Machado, made remarks on Saturday after the news broke about Maduro's capture and extraction, stating her preference on who will take over the Venezuelan presidential seat immediately.

But it is still up in the air who will lead the country on a long term basis.

The leftists in our country, however, did not take it well, pretty much suffering a massive meltdown, including the newly sworn-in mayor of New York City, Dromcratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who swiftly placed a phone call with POTUS over the matter. Then there were the performative posts by Congressional Democrats, who bemoaned the move as "illegal," and a "war" that was not authorized by Congress.

Vice President JD Vance, though, has bad news for them. First, when responding to the immediate reporting on Venezuela, he stated that the administration gave the alleged narcotrafficker and despot "multiple off ramps," then he praised the U.S. military for its precise work:

The post continued: "Kudos to our brave special operators who pulled off a truly impressive operation."

Vance turned next to any of the Dems who are conflicted over this, adding this timely PSA (public service announcement):

Boom. Plus, if they have any follow-up questions, AG Bondi helpful has the full charges for them to examine.

Some on social media wondered why the vice president wasn't in the war room snapshots, or at the president's press conference. Now there's an explanation, according to Fox News White House correspondent, Aishah Hasnie:

VP VANCE met with TRUMP in West Palm Beach daytime Friday to discuss strikes. He was not physically at Mar a Lago during strikes but joined via secure video line. 

Returned to Cincinnati after the operation concluded. 

The White House is "trying to limit co-locating POTUS and VP when they are away from the White House due to increased security concerns," Fox News reported.

In the meantime, Rubio may be adding more jobs to his workload: