One Bad Man Removes Another Bad Man from Power So He Can Install a New Bad Man in His Place

 

The best way I can sum up President Trump's order to have U.S. military forces capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is that one bad man removed another bad man from power so he can install a new bad man in his place.

Trump basically said so himself:

We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. It has to be judicious. We can't take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn't have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.

What Trump really means is that Maduro's successor has to have the good of Trump in mind.

For her part, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi proclaimed that Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores "will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts." Bondi characterized the pair as "alleged international drug traffickers."

Well, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was a convicted international drug trafficker sentenced to 45 years in prison and yet Trump saw fit to issue him with a presidential pardon.

All of which means Trump doesn't give a shit about international drug trafficking. This is all about rewarding his loyal friends and punishing his enemies. Maduro has long been on Trump's shit list going back to his first term in office when he raised the possibility of military action against him.

Yet it must be said that Maduro is a bad man. Consider this analysis from the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect as of last month:

On 10 January 2025 Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a third presidential term following elections on 28 July 2024, which were widely condemned as fraudulent. Independent tallies from polling centers showed an estimated 67 percent of votes for the leading opposition candidate. Throughout the electoral process and continuing to the present, the government has intensified its persecution of actual or alleged opponents, including ordinary citizens, opposition members, journalists and human rights defenders, to silence dissent and maintain power. Presidential elections were viewed by many Venezuelans as a vital opportunity for a long-term democratic transition and an end to the country’s decade-long multidimensional crisis. Following years of endemic corruption and the gradual erosion of the rule of law, in 2014 mass protests erupted in response to insecurity, hyperinflation and a lack of essential services. Security forces reacted with disproportionate force, torture and sexual violence.

Since then, the Venezuelan government, including the security and intelligence apparatus, has perpetrated systematic arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, sexual and gender-based violence and short-term enforced disappearances targeting actual and perceived opponents. Various security forces have also allegedly perpetrated tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of combating crime, predominantly targeting men between 18 and 30 years-old living in low-income neighborhoods. Over the past decade, an estimated 8 million Venezuelans have left the country in what is considered the largest migration crisis in recent Latin American history.

But what does Trump care about arbitrary detention, torture and il-treatment much less sexual and gender-based violence? Forget about extrajudicial killings. Where it concerns Venezuela, Trump has proven more than willing to engage in extrajudicial killings of his own. I fear that Trump could very well succeed in turning Maduro and his wife into sympathetic figures. 

For now, I have two questions.

First, how will the Venezuelan people react? Will they be initially pleased with Maduro's removal only to grow discontent when life is no better in the next few months than it was under Maduro's regime leading to civil unrest? In which case, how long will it be before Trump order American troops to shoot Venezuelan civilians? Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about the Venezuelan people. He simply wants to install a leader who will do his bidding. If Venezuelan voters do not give the result he wants, then he will simply cry fraud and not allow the will of the people to stand.

Second, how will MAGA react? Will they rally around him? Perhaps in the short term. But how long will it be before the conversation returns to the Epstein files or to Jews in America? And what of Trump's pledge of "no new wars"? However awful Maduro might be, ousting him from power is an act of war.