Jon Lee Anderson
Early Saturday morning, when President Donald Trump launched a bombing raid on Venezuela and captured its strongman President, Nicolás Maduro, few observers were entirely surprised. Trump has long said that he wanted Maduro out of power, branding him a narco-terrorist and placing a fifty-million-dollar bounty on his head. In recent months, Trump and his “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, have deployed a huge military force to the region, launching attacks on at least thirty so-called narco-boats and killing more than a hundred alleged drug runners.
Maduro and his wife were taken into custody aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, an assault ship; unverified photos circulated of Maduro in handcuffs. Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly congratulated Trump, saying that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on drug-trafficking and other charges and would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who by all accounts was key to the campaign, re-shared a post on X that he made in July: “Maduro is NOT the president of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government. Maduro is the head of the Cartel de los Soles, a narco-terror organization which has taken possession of a country.” Rubio’s assertions, like Trump’s claims that the attacks on boatmen have stopped fentanyl smuggling into the U.S., were unaccompanied by any publicly available evidence.
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