Dems Hate Trump More Than An Actual Dictator

The State Department’s 2023 Human Rights report on Venezuela sums up despot Nicolas Maduro’s brutal regime. It lists a litany of horrific offenses: arbitrary killings, enforced disappearance, torture or inhuman treatment by security forces, arbitrary arrests, serious restrictions on freedom of expression, and trafficking of human beings. 

And that’s just the report’s first paragraph. 

The document also notes the obvious, Venezuelans’ inability to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections. Dictators typically frown on such freedoms. 

“Although Maduro representatives did not release statistics on extrajudicial killings, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) reported that national, state, and municipal police entities, as well as the armed forces and colectivos (Maduro-aligned armed neighborhood gangs), carried out hundreds of killings during the year,” the report, issued by President Joe Biden’s State Department, noted. 

The Democrat’s administration, days before Biden left office, upped the bounty on Maduro from $15 million to $25 million. While campaigning in June 2020, Biden — or his autopen — bashed President Trump for not doing enough to take on the South American tyrant. 

“Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro,” the Twitter post chided. “As President, I will stand with the Venezuelan people and for democracy.”

Congressional Democrats also wagged their fingers at Trump. 

“And the president brags about his Venezuela policy. Give us a break. He hasn’t brought an end to the Maduro regime,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) railed in a 2020 speech just before the Senate’s final vote in Trump’s impeachment trial. “The Maduro regime is more powerful today and more entrenched today than it was when the president began.”

‘Reckless’

But Schumer and his Dem brethren have changed their tune after the Department of War’s stunningly successful operation over the weekend capturing the narcoterrorist and his wife at their Caracas compound. The two appeared on Monday in a lower Manhattan federal court to multiple charges, including drug trafficking.  

Schumer called the intricately coordinated mission, dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve, “reckless.”

“And the American people are just, this morning, in fear of what’s going to happen here,” Schumer told ABC News host and human colostomy bag George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning, just hours after Trump announced Maduro’s arrest. 

Democrats suddenly sounded like they were defending an actual dictator, a tyrant they once demanded be brought to justice. 

“Maduro’s illegitimate election does not give the president the power to invade without congressional approval, nor does it create a national security justification,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., declared on X. “That contention is laughable.” The blowhard insisted Trump has “started an illegal war with Venezuela.” 

In 2019, Murphy demanded Trump “make the realist case for intervention in Venezuela (getting rid of Maduro is good for the United States) rather than trying to pretend his administration all of a sudden cares about toppling anti-democratic regimes.” 

‘Tested in the Courts’

The hypocrisy is as thick as Caracas flies. And the assertions are wrong, national legal expert Hans von Spakovsky tells The Federalist. 

“That’s not just my opinion. It’s been tested in the courts,” von Spakovsky said in a phone interview. 

Remember Manuel Noriega, Panama’s pockmarked military dictator? President George H.W. Bush didn’t seek congressional approval when he signed off on Operation Just Cause, the U.S. Military’s December 1989 invasion of Panama to bring the ruthless dictator into custody. Like Maduro, Noriega was charged with drug trafficking. And like Maduro, Panama’s drug lord was a real a-hole. Noriega was accused of throwing a young priest out of a helicopter over the Pacific Ocean. 

“At the time, Noriega had an outstanding criminal indictment against him down in Miami for drug dealing,” von Spakovsky said. “There’s a pending criminal indictment against Maduro since 2020 for doing the same thing.”

Noriega’s defense attorneys made the same arguments as Maduro’s legal counsel, that his arrest violated U.S. and international law. 

“Every single one of those claims was thrown out by the U.S. courts, all of whom said Bush acted fully constitutionally within his authority,” von Spakovsky said. 

U.S. presidents have long used the Authorization for Use of Military Force provided by Congress to engage in military actions. Trump rightly argues that Maduro and his drug-peddling regime are a significant threat to the United States, a huge target of the Venezuela drug trade. Such emergencies are detailed in the  War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Von Spakovsky said it’s clear that Democrats lambasting Trump for the military operation in Venezuela haven’t read the War Powers Resolution. 

‘Democrats’ Hypocrisy’

Where were these critics when President Barack Obama ordered military personnel to drop into a foreign country and kill most-wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States? 

“Obama also carried out thousands of drone strikes without congressional approval, and experts then believed he was justified,” wrote USA Today columnist Nicole Russell. 

So what’s the difference? Trump.

Maduro was brought to justice by the duly-elected Republican president that Democrats hate more than Venezuela’s deposed dictator. The brutal reign of Nicolas Maduro reads like a Cormac McCarthy novel, yet Dems keep toting “No Kings” signs and calling Trump a dictator. 

“It’s yet another example of Democrats’ hypocrisy: They seem to hate Trump more than they want an oppressed country to be liberated. That’s pretty remarkable,” Russell wrote. 

That’s Trump Derangement Syndrome of criminally insane proportions. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.