Olga Lautman
All of this is so insane that I had to stop and figure out how to even write this post, and in doing so, realized that, like many others, I am left with far more questions than actual insight. And let’s be clear, because facts still matter even when everything else has gone off the rails. Nicolás Maduro is a criminal, an illegitimate ruler who stole elections, brutalized his own population, and for years functioned as a corrupt proxy of Russia until the Kremlin, as it so often does, abandoned yet another client state when the costs outweighed the benefits. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute, and what should deeply alarm everyone, is what followed.
This is not even regime change, and that is, in fact, the most revealing part. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, a core loyalist of the regime, has already been sworn in and remains openly defiant, publicly calling for Maduro’s release and vowing that Venezuela will not become a colony of the United States, meaning the power structure Maduro built remains intact. Yet Trump stood at his presser and told the American people that the United States “will run Venezuela,” openly describing a de facto takeover while simultaneously leaving the same authoritarian apparatus in place, which raises an unavoidable question: What does “running the country” actually mean when the regime loyalists remain in control?
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