Democrats are once again choosing Venezuela and its drug smugglers over the interests and safety of American citizens, folding the issue neatly into their latest “get Trump” scheme.
Over the last few months, Trump’s Department of War has executed dozens of strikes on drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, killing more than 80 criminals who intended to flood the United States with the kinds of narcotics that destroy families and communities. Instead of applauding an obvious win for public safety, Senator Mark Kelly has made it his full-time job to hop from network to network blasting President Trump, insinuating—without evidence, by his own admission—that military forces are violating the Geneva Convention simply by carrying out the Commander-in-Chief’s orders.
This fits a familiar pattern. It’s the same play we saw when Elissa Slotkin admitted she doesn’t actually know of any illegal orders President Trump issued—after implying that he had and encouraging the military to disobey him.
Now the Department of War has released an official statement saying it is reviewing allegations that Senator Kelly may have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice—still applicable to him as a veteran—along with other U.S. code, leaving him in danger of being court-martialed. You don’t encourage 18-year-olds to defy the chain of command and expect no one to notice.
Slotkin, Kelly, and company are doing their utmost to paint Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth as tyrannical maniacs, while omitting the context that matters most: Venezuela is not a normal country. It is a narco-state run by a corrupt strongman whose survival depends on the drug trade.
Even Joe Biden didn’t recognize Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s rightful leader. By every credible account, Maduro stole his election from the opposition—Edmundo González—who reportedly won by as much as a two-to-one margin. Maduro serves no one but himself, and his interests are directly aligned with Latin America’s drug trafficking machine.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated eight cartels as foreign terrorist organizations—two Venezuelan and six Mexican. We’ve already watched Trump deal with Mexico with real success, stopping short of directly striking cartels there—at least so far. Tariffs, extraditions, joint operations, sanctions, and military threats have yielded remarkable results: Mexico has arrested over 37,000 criminals since last year, disrupted money laundering networks, destroyed hundreds of drug labs, and fentanyl crossings have reportedly dropped 25–30%. Venezuela needs the Trump treatment too, but first Maduro needs to go.
Venezuelan officials have reportedly given Colombia their blessing to use Venezuelan border territory to traffic cocaine into the U.S. Maduro supports the presence of Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa cartel in America—two of the most violent criminal organizations on the planet.
In the last five years, Tren de Aragua members have carried out murders, sex trafficking, and robberies in the U.S. In New York and Texas alone, they’ve been linked to gang hits, the murder of a mother in front of her child, forcing migrant women into prostitution, selling laced drugs, and even an attempted murder of an ICE officer in 2025.
The Sinaloa cartel’s main weapon has been fentanyl—causing tens of thousands of overdose deaths yearly. Their turf wars, kidnappings, and cross-border brutality have also killed or terrorized U.S. citizens in Mexico, with multiple high-profile abductions and ransom cases in 2025 alone.
This is why President Trump is rightfully riled up—and why he’s even floating the idea of land operations in Venezuela.
A land operation would be a massive next step. My guess is Maduro could be taken off the board long before that becomes necessary. Still, a lot of Americans believe Trump should do whatever it takes to remove him.
Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants in the U.S. are among the strongest supporters of Trump’s push to oust Maduro. They know exactly what kind of evil that regime represents. In fact, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Florida’s Miami-Dade County since 1988, in large part due to these communities and his promises to end Venezuela’s reign of terror and its spillover into the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Miami native with Cuban roots, has taken a central role in the pressure campaign. He argues that Venezuela has made itself a willing puppet for America’s adversaries, including Iran and Hezbollah.
Venezuela is one of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest problems because it welcomes influence from Iran and takes big money from Russia and China to undermine U.S. interests.
Trump has even amplified a columnist on Truth Social who argued that removing Maduro would be a strategic way to kneecap Vladimir Putin. Trump campaigned on ending the war involving Russia, but nobody is suggesting direct conflict with Moscow—a road that could lead to global war. Instead, Trump has been steadily stripping away Putin’s rogue-state allies. Iran, once a client state of Russia, has been de-nuclearized. Syria, another client state, fell when Bashar al-Assad was overthrown. Now Venezuela is in Trump’s crosshairs for plenty of good reasons—and squeezing Putin is only one of them.
Some will ask why diplomacy isn’t enough. Why the show of force? Rubio’s answer is simple.
Trump has reportedly offered Maduro a way out, but Maduro demands amnesty for more than 100 officials and wants to relocate to Cuba while running a shadow government from afar with his cronies still embedded in Caracas. That’s a win for nobody.
What makes this all more galling is that Democrats used to understand the danger of narco-terrorists. Back on September 5, 1989, Biden—then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee—responded to President George H.W. Bush’s drug war address by pushing for tougher action and insisting there be no safe havens for narco-terrorists.
Hit ’em where they live.
And in 1986, Chuck Schumer voted yes for the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, authorizing the military to fire on drug-smuggling boats. The House passed it 392–16; the Senate passed it 97–2. Schumer even co-sponsored it. Back then, Democrats didn’t clutch pearls about “war crimes” when drug boats got blown out of the water—they called it protecting America.
Today, they’re playing dumb on purpose, trying to incite civil conflict and encourage insubordination because they don’t like who’s in charge. They’re willfully downplaying the threat Venezuela poses to U.S. national security, all while laying the groundwork for another impeachment circus.
I see through the spin, and I’ll keep calling it out as long as this sedition-by-soundbite continues.