This one is really bad.
To date, I’ve only had one serious falling out with The Donald. I called Trump out on tariffs. Tariffs are canker sores on the face of history. They are pointless IN THE LONG RUN. They disincentivize our trading partners and ultimately while you might be pulling in some dollars with one hand, you are killing commerce and losing dollars with the other. Free trade is the only answer to the future MASSIVE shifts in business and demographics coming.
Tariffs on. Tariffs off. 25%, no 80%, no…wait…we’ll hold off on your country for now. Talk of tariffs producing hundreds, or even tens of billions already is simply untrue. It isn’t happening, and even if it were ever possible, it would happen over a period of years. They are counting every dime of revenue we generate from trade and saying it is all coming in due to tariffs.
Beyond that, I was pretty much okay with everything he’s been doing. (Well putting his name on the Kennedy Center was stupid. But that’s minor trolling of Dems on DJT’s part.)
Things are different now.
I was more than happy with killing drug runners as they plied the waves and plied their trade. Drug running is considered piracy and we are prevented nowhere from sinking and killing pirates on the open seas. They are civilizations enemy. I thought hitting the docks was dicey. That’s foreign territory. That is an act of war. It was a small one, but that makes it no less an act of war.
I intentionally put the next paragraphs here because people will read a little of what is above and accuse me of siding with Maduro. I’ve been accused often of favoring the Little Russian Jerkoff too, because I don’t think we should sell the farm to support Ukraine. We should certainly NEVER go there. But people freak out even when you reject something even as a matter of degree.
That said…
Capturing Maduro, a head of state, no matter how stupid he is; no matter how much we hate him…without a declaration of war is WAY over the top, even for Trump.
We’ve always known Maduro was a cheap version of his predecessor, the fat-headed Hugo Chavez, for whom Maduro was a butt boy. And Chavez was a piece of shit. He utterly wrecked the country with the kinds of programs Mamdani has planned for NYC. They both aligned with Cuba and Russia (basically because no one else would have them). Both were even more oppressive than the Obama administration.
But this event breaks all the PRODUCTIVE norms. This IS an act of impulse and hubris. There is NO excuse for kidnapping another head of state. It sets a precedent not acceptable in Western Culture for centuries. It WILL inspire similar cross-border raids and assassinations around the world.
I mean, if the United States does it… Right?
We’ve crossed a Rubicon of The Donald’s making folks. It matters not whether China, the EU, NATO piss their pants over it, or let it slide. There is no way to fix this.
Talk of running Venezuela is even more crazy. It is NOT OUR COUNTRY! CONGRESS HAS NOT DECLARED WAR ON THEM! WE HAVE NO CHARTER TO DO THIS! And Trump can’t create anything remotely legitimate by executive order.
This government is comprised of most of the entrenched bureaucrats that ran this country into the ground. How do they propose to run Venezuela as well. This is utter nonsense.
We cried about millions of foreign invaders (assisted by Democrats) not respecting our laws, coming here and being criminal and violent. Well, that argument goes out the window!
Too many of us will say of POTUS, my president, right or wrong. Too many already do. I never gave credence the whiners on the Left when they’d talk about Trump having a cult-like following (in reality all politicians have a bit of that).1 I have always said that Trump is just different, brash, unpolished, in-your-face. But as he has moved into this term in office, his following - and possibly the man - are becoming quite cult-like.
That is not to say the actual policies in question are all bad. Most will be very good. But few have come as a result of winning an argument, and many are truly outside the purview of the office. And it doesn’t all become proper by saying, well, the Dems do it! I would assert that ANY actions we take in imitation of the Dems, and their corrupt ways, are suspect.
There is something to be said of wielding the power Congress has foolishly ceded to the Executive over the several decades. Using the power as a lesson for Congress to step up and resume some responsibilities has its appeal. Rolling up Maduro, as such a lesson, is a step too far, as it involves another country and international law.
It pains me that I am in opposition at the same time as the likes of that slouching pustule, Chuck Schumer. I hate that I am voicing opposition at the same time as the NYC jihadi. But I take comfort from the reality that they are political whores who don’t care one bit about the American people, and my stance is a principled one.
And I don’t care what happens to Maduro or his wife. They could both fall down a sinkhole…and take Putin with them. But there are limits to power for a reason. The limitations our founders placed on government, especially the Executive, are the wisest in history. Overstepping those limitations, whether as a lesson to Congress, or due to impatience. or because you really, REALLY want to, is not a valid exercise in governance.
But here is why I am most concerned. I want to see Trump succeed. As there is no other MAGA personality in the wings, I want his success to have wide and long coattails, lest the Dems regain power. Sadly, the only proper solution to the Maduro situation is a very strong assertion of congressional authority.
And there is the rub. In a year when we could simply move from success to success (that is what ‘26 was shaping up to be), we may now have battle royal raging between the White House and Capitol Hill. And the Dems will milk it. They won’t have a valid stand of their own. They never do. But because few in Congress will likely step up and take a principled stand on this issue2, the results lean toward the Dems advantage. The average voter does not understand nuance. They’ll only see DC bickering. And the networks will not help them see more.
I will say this in favor of Trump’s actions. They weren’t carried out in the dark. The Deep State didn’t fund a group of our assholes to kill their assholes, carry out a coup, and later say, “we didn’t do anything!” Trump owned his actions. In that, he is morally superior to generations of Deep State actors who have tarnished our reputation repeatedly over the years, making enemies all over the planet. Many of those enemies were the ones our spooks “helped”.
So, the genie is out of the bottle. It is a terrible precedent. Right or wrong, it WILL be used by international actors to justify all manner of cross-border mischief. But we can’t un-ring the bell. Hang on to yer ass, and we’ll see how this all shakes out.
Carry on smartly. Cheers.
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In fact, in 2016 when DJT was at his tweeting worst, I called his fans a cult. It upset a lot of my friends. But it was clear that one could not criticize Trump, even as a matter of degree without being treated as if one was the spawn of Nosferatu.
Rand Paul probably will. But instead of listening, the GOP will likely commit fratricide and shout him down.
