When President Trump ordered U.S. forces to seize Nicolás Maduro, it was the kind of decisive action this country sorely needed after years of watching cartel-backed tyranny spill drugs and violence into our neighborhoods. Conservatives should cheer that American courage and competence brought a wanted narco-terror suspect to justice instead of endless press conferences and finger-wagging. This was about protecting American families and upholding the rule of law, not about empire-building.
The predictable outrage from the Democratic Party exposes their real priorities: outrage theater and process obsession when the actor is Donald Trump, not principle. While Democrats howl about legality and call for UN condemnations, the rest of us see a corrupt regime finally stripped of impunity and a president who acted when Washington’s usual paralysis failed to protect the homeland. If the law is the concern, where were these crusaders when Maduro’s narco-network was shipping poison to our streets for years?
Let’s not pretend this was consequence-free for Maduro’s patrons — Cuba has already admitted dozens of its security personnel were killed during the extraction, which underscores the stakes of confronting a regime intertwined with foreign proxies. The Democrats’ crocodile tears for international norms ring hollow when those norms have been used for decades to shield murderous kleptocrats and drug lords. American power, when used prudently, protects Americans; that must be the priority.
Now Maduro is in U.S. custody facing charges that were filed years ago, and he’ll get his day in court — precisely what proponents of law and order should have demanded from the start. The spectacle of media elites and blue-state lawmakers denouncing an extraction that finally delivers accountability makes their posturing obvious: their real gripe is that the president who actually acted is a Republican. Americans deserve a justice system that works, not endless diplomatic back-and-forth that protects criminals.
Washington must now move from moralizing to muscle: secure the border, choke the drug pipelines, and use seized assets to help Venezuela’s trapped citizens while bolstering American energy security. The fallout is already hitting Venezuela’s state oil apparatus and global markets — that reality requires sober management and a plan to redirect resources to the Venezuelan people and American consumers, not performative press conferences. If Democrats want to talk about rules, they should explain why their rules protected the corrupt instead of ordinary Americans.
