What the hell just happened? Our government, our President, just carried out an act of war, invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s sitting president with the intent to bring him to New York to face drugs and weapons charges. The indictment reads, in part, “for over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions” and “corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States” that Maduro is “at the forefront of that corruption” having “tarnished every public office he has held.” Yet in December, Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45 year sentence, convicted in 2024 for his role in trafficking nearly 400 tons of cocaine in the US, calling it a “Biden administration set-up.” On the same day that Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, Honduras’s Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez asked government agencies and global police agency Interpol to arrest Hernández, who is accused of money laundering and fraud.
The head swims. This ain’t about drugs. It’s about oil. It’s about power. From a beacon of democracy we are fast becoming a beacon of hypocrisy. From a president who hungers for a Peace Prize to a president who hungers for wars of easy pickings. A president who bombs boats and countries on the flimsiest of excuses, to swagger on the world stage. Are we no better than Putin? And where does this leave us? These acts of war, of invasion, of unilateral kidnapping? Of arbitrary and greasy-palmed pardons? Who benefits? How does this make us better off? Greater? Safer? Maduro isn’t the only one doing the tarnishing, the corrupting, and we will all be the worse for it.