In the early hours of Jan. 3, 2026, President Trump directed a smooth, targeted operation to arrest NicolΓ‘s Maduro for numerous drug-related crimes.
The usual suspects (the regressive left, the Democrat party, Thomas Massie, Sloppy Steve Bannon) are complaining that Trump took an illegal action, an act of war that requires Congress’s approval.
But here’s the truth: The United States military enforced a DOJ indictment, and the United States government has done this before.
The United States has resisted evil leaders with similar boldness.
In 2005, President George W. Bush talked about an “Axis of Evil” waging terror and rampaging war around the world: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Twenty years later, that Axis of Evil has expanded, including China, Russia, and Venezuela.
Islamist terror and communist predation, foreign and domestic, are the United States’ primary concerns.
Pushing back on this double threat should be a high priority for any leader.
President Trump has redirected our foreign policy efforts to focus on America’s vital interests to thwart this growing Axis, but without shedding American blood or squandering American treasure. Trump is succeeding where Bush struggled.
Regarding foreign intervention, Bush 43 failed because he focused on nation-building, exporting by force our democratic norms to regions inherently hostile to the voice and vote of their citizens. Many of those same citizens are hostile to the franchise, too. Many Russian citizens, for example, want strong leadership, not a choice of leaders.
In the Arab-Muslim world, there is a higher primacy placed on authority, not the will of the people, too. These are still more collectivist types of societies, and the transformation from autocracy to republican governance does not happen overnight, or even in one century!
President Trump is not George W. Bush 2.0. His action against Venezuela was long overdue, and its purposes align much more with putting the interests of the American nation and its citizens first. Still, neo-isolationists on the Woke Right are sounding the alarm over Trump’s latest military foray into Venezuela, and their fears need to be confronted and challenged.
Some critics are pouting that Venezuela’s illegal immigration and drug trafficking are not overwhelming the country, and therefore, this action is all wrong.
My response is “So what?” They are pushing drugs into our country. They are allying with subversive leaders around the world who want nothing but America’s failure (China, Russia, Iran). Venezuelan gangs like Tren de Aragua have been operating in our nation with impunity, all with the blessing and enabling of the Maduro regime.
Venezuela has stolen American property, including American oil and oil rigging infrastructure, too. We could talk about the fraud and theft that the country has engaged in for the last 27 years, ever since Hugo Chavez came to power and imposed communism on the once-resource-rich and prosperous nation.
But Venezuela’s narco-communist leaders’ greatest crime against the American people has been the humanitarian crisis that Chavez and Maduro forced upon it and much of the rest of the world. Millions of Venezuelans fled their country, some 9 or 10 million, a third of the country in the world's worst refugee crisis. A great deal of the migrant flood that harassed the United States’s border came from Venezuela.
And that is the larger point: Trump’s larger goals remain focused on ending the mass legal (and illegal) migration crises harming the United States. How do we get people to stop coming to our country? Make their own countries better! The Venezuelan diaspora has been celebrating nonstop since Maduro’s arrest, and in time they will all want to go back.
Let’s give foreign migrants a reason to return home. If their countries are unsafe, and the United States has the opportunity and authority to do something about it, let’s do the bare minimum so that they will go home again.
This is the way.
Venezuela’s fraught transition hangs in the balance. Trump and his team have discussed who will run the country once Maduro was removed from power. George W. Bush dropped the ball on this. During the Iraqi invasion of 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld allowed the Iraqi army to disband following the American invasion. Unprecedented chaos ensued.
Still, with the bad leaders removed, who will run the country in their place? The United States military leadership took this problem into consideration during World War II. When they targeted Japan with the atomic bomb, they deliberately ignored Tokyo to preserve some government infrastructure to lead post-war Japan.
Regarding Venezuela, Trump and his cabinet have considered these matters more thoroughly. I trust that they will guide the transition process, ensuring that Venezuela’s eventual new leadership respects the natural rights of its citizens and the property rights of American investors, but most importantly, the sovereignty of the United States.
The hope of the Venezuelan people in celebrating this targeted military move should give us all hope. They suffered under communism for nearly thirty years, and they watched Maduro steal the latest election. The Venezuelan people have lived in liberty before. They have held elections before. They have recognizable borders, language, and culture. Their problem has been a corrupt system that kowtowed and silenced the public from speaking out and changing their system to reflect the best interests of the people. They are ready to take back control of their country.
Despite the initial victory, should Americans maintain some concerns about this Venezuelan venture turning into another nation-building debacle? Yes, of course. There is nothing wrong with American citizens vetting each foreign policy foray with skeptical eyes.
Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president turned acting president, has taken over for Maduro, but has no more legitimacy than Maduro, since she’s also a hardcore communist and the fruit of the election fraud. The country still faces a crisis of legitimacy, and Trump needs to connect all the key Venezuelan opposition leaders to restore order, peace, and prosperity to the country.
I am concerned that President Trump has reserved support for Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. He claims that she does not have the respect of the people (this, after winning the 2024 election in a two-thirds landslide), the experience, or the capacity to control the army to take over.
What a strange criticism, since Trump didn’t have government experience, either, since he had never held elected office.
However, during his two terms in office, Trump has exceeded expectations and accomplished more good than other accomplished politicians. In Venezuela’s case, Trump should give the celebrated opposition leader a chance.
Or is he engaging in a sly rhetorical strategy to quietly facilitate Machado’s transition team and restore order to the country?
Despite these serious concerns, the initial actions and outcomes of Trump’s strike on Venezuela suggest that we are looking at a relatively small political investment in the region, a restoration of larger private American investment into the country, another element of the Axis of Anti-American evil has been removed from power, and a chance for True Liberty vs. Socialist Tyranny to take hold in Latin America.
All of these developments spell nothing but good for the United States.
America First does not mean sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring the dangers in the world. If we want to secure our borders, language, culture, and constitutional legacy, we have to defend our country from enemies foreign as well as domestic. Trump accomplished exactly that by taking Maduro into custody, and I welcome his future political forays to end harsh abuses from other Latin American tyrants who have harmed American citizens and our interests.
