DEA Administrator Terrance “Terry” Cole looked the ousted Venezuelan tyrant in the face and told viewers on The Record with Greta Van Susteren that he saw the kind of cold, calculating cruelty that explains why the Maduro regime flooded our streets with drugs and terror. Americans should listen when a career lawman who spent decades inside cartels’ hunting grounds calls out pure, deliberate wickedness; this isn’t theater, it’s the reality that cost thousands of lives in our communities.
Cole is no cable pundit — he was sworn in as DEA Administrator in July 2025 after a long career fighting international narcotics networks, and he brings real operational experience to the fight. When people like him say a man embodies “evil,” they speak from a lifetime of boots-on-the-ground encounters with cartels, corruption, and the human wreckage those criminal enterprises leave behind.
The removal and transfer of Nicolás Maduro to U.S. custody was a dramatic, decisive act in a long campaign to hold a narco-dictator accountable, and Maduro’s arraignment in New York shows this administration means business when it comes to protecting American citizens from the cartel-fueled poison pouring across our borders. President Trump’s team executed a complex operation that delivered the man indicted for trafficking and terror to face American justice, and that sends a message to tyrants and traffickers alike.
Make no mistake: this was a law-enforcement and national-security action designed to disrupt the pipelines of poison and power, and it required intelligence, courage, and the willingness to act where other administrations hesitated. Conservatives who believe in law and order should applaud leaders who stop talking and start doing, and should stand with the men and women who planned and carried out a mission that removed a major threat to the American people.
Of course the usual suspects — international bureaucrats and media elites — rushed to denounce the operation, bleating about precedent while conveniently ignoring decades of Maduro’s crimes and the flood of fentanyl and cocaine that have ravaged American families. Hypocrisy from outlets and institutions that spent years normalizing a tyrant isn’t a reason to back down; it’s a reason to double down on enforcement and on bringing those responsible to justice.
This moment must not be a one-off victory lap; it must be the beginning of a sustained campaign to dismantle the criminal networks that empowered Maduro and threatened our streets. We need relentless prosecutions, coordinated international pressure where possible, and the tough-minded leadership of public servants like Terry Cole who understand the stakes and refuse to be intimidated by virtue-signaling elites.
Patriotic Americans should take pride in a government that finally matched words with action and put a narco-despot on trial under American law. We owe the DEA and our armed services gratitude for their bravery, and we owe it to our neighbors to keep the pressure on until the cartels and their state sponsors are finally broken and our communities are safe again.
