Americans woke up to the sound of decisive action — a midnight operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from his throne of corruption and narcotrafficking and put him into U.S. custody, just as President Trump announced. The seizure followed strikes around Caracas and was carried out with the kind of precision our military trains for but too rarely gets to use in defense of liberty.
Explosions and power outages were reported across parts of the capital during the operation, a stark reminder that confronting evil sometimes requires forceful measures. Venezuelans who have suffered under Maduro’s kleptocracy for years deserve nothing less than the truth: a regime built on drug profits and repression finally met a moment of reckoning.
President Trump made clear that the United States will take responsibility for stabilizing Venezuela temporarily and that American energy companies will help rebuild the nation’s ruined oil infrastructure so that Caracas’s riches stop flowing to tyrants. This is the kind of pragmatic, America-first policy that protects our interests and forces bad actors to pay for the consequences of their crimes.
Make no mistake: Maduro is not a head of state in the honorable sense — he’s a wanted narco-criminal long indicted by U.S. courts, and the administration has said he will face justice on American soil. For decades Democrats and global elites lectured the world about “norms” while letting drug cartels and socialist kleptocrats flourish; tonight those empty lectures met reality.
House Republican leaders and conservative voices rightly hailed the mission as a necessary action to protect American lives and interests, and they demanded briefings to ensure our troops remain supported and our legal obligations met. This should unite patriots of every stripe: apprehending a criminal who profited from poisoning our neighborhoods is not politics, it is law enforcement backed by strength.
The predictable chorus of outrage from tyrants and United Nations bureaucrats will follow, but America cannot cower every time a regime with bad allies squawks about sovereignty. The real sovereignty to worry about is that of the Venezuelan people — free markets, free institutions, and the rule of law will never flourish while thugs siphon off the nation’s wealth and traffic poison into our communities.
Let’s be clear-eyed: this was not a quest for empire, it was the enforcement of justice and the protection of the American homeland. Our servicemen and women executed a high-stakes mission under a president who promised to put America first, and they did it with skill and courage worthy of praise, not scorn.
To hardworking Americans watching from kitchen tables and factory floors, know this: your country still has leaders willing to act when diplomacy and sanctions have failed. Stand with our troops, demand accountability from any elected official who undermines them, and celebrate the fact that, for now, criminals like Maduro will answer for their crimes rather than laugh from a palace as they have for so long.
