Giving Trump the Benefit of the Doubt

I guess it depends on the meaning of "pretty well".

BREAKING 🚨 Bill Maher: “We did the move in Venezuela, which that one you have to say worked pretty well.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA): “Yeah, well remember people lost their sh*t over Venezuela. Nobody talks about Venezuela anymore... We’re not talking about Gaza anymore, and… pic.twitter.com/i7oUOvAaI0

— Dr Charlie Ward (@DrcharlieWardQ) July 17, 2026

Nicholas Maduro was snatched from Caracas on January 3 and brought to Washington, D.C. to be prosecuted for being a "narco trafficker." He was replaced, as required by constitution in Venezuela and Donlad Trump, by Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who like Maduro has been a part of the Chavista regime, which has ruled the country for over a quarter century. The ousted president

was not the head of a drug trafficking organization, but rather the facilitator and protector of a corruption system that allowed generals and senior political figures to profit from the drug trade. That system – the Chavista regime – remains in place, although the architect of the hybrid criminal governance model is now on trial in New York.

Rodríguez, though outside the praetorian core of the Chavista regime and not facing any US indictments, is believed to have been involved in criminal activity, corruption, and even drug trafficking. The criminal dimension of the tightrope she is walking involves preventing public scandals of corruption and drug trafficking that might provoke further US intervention, while still allowing the flow of criminal rents to regime figures to preserve loyalty. 

That doesn't sound like "pretty well."  On a positive note, the Trump Administration has been assisting disaster relief in Venenzuela. However

David Smilde, a Venezuela researcher at Tulane University, said the earthquake has exposed a deeper weakness in the Venezuelan state.

“They’ve had the capacity to repress people and jail people,” Smilde said, “but they don’t seem to be in a position to offer even some of the most basic elements of disaster relief."

The military is one of the most powerful and well-funded parts of the Venezuelan state. But Smilde added that it has been shaped less around emergency response than around regime survival.....

Smilde said Rodríguez’s government moved quickly at first — declaring a state of emergency, communicating with allies and accepting aid offers from different countries, including former political foes. But what came after, he said, revealed a government with very little capacity to deliver basic disaster relief.

I don't attribute the view of Maher and Fetterman that things have worked out well in Venezuela to anything but ignorance.  There has been little attention paid to that nation since Maduro was arrested in what could be considered a law enforcement operation rather than an intervention in a foreign, sovereign state. No American life was lost and in our country, we would applaud anything the military does as long as Americans aren't killed.

But there is a lesson here. Maher referred to the $330 million for Donald's new ballroom as "couch money" and Fetterman quipped "if he came out for ice cream and lazy Sundays, we would f*ckin' hate it."  The Senator has stated "right now, our party is governed by the TDS (i.e., Trump Derangement Syndrome) and now it's made it virtually impossible without being punished as a Democrat to agree something's good, or I agree with the other side."

The Venezuelan operation, quick and dirty, painless and innocuous, was the foreign policy equivalent of ice cream and lazy Sundays, politically incorrect to question. Yet, it accomplished nothing of value and helped reinforce our nation's reputation as a malign bully.  It stands as an example of how the default position for a Trump action should be that it is self-serving and likely to harm ourselves and others. 

We need to replace  Trump Derangement Syndrome with Trump Is Deranged Syndrome.

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