Venezuela Enters the "Find Out" Phase

*And why it feels shocking (even though it shouldn't)

DISCLAIMER: I am no geopolitical expert. If you’re here, it’s for palatable, humorous hot takes on current events—not NATO briefings and satellite imagery. I am not condemning or condoning recent U.S. military action (yet); I’m merely mapping the competing narratives. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

There are historical events that anyone can see coming from miles away—and then there are historical events that cold-cock the entire world at once, leaving the majority of us checking our teeth and trying to figure out if anything’s broken.

This weekend’s presidential kidnapping was definitely the second kind.

For folks living under bridges, Nicolás Maduro—Venezuela’s longtime strongman, serial election “winner,” and the mascot for the see-how-great-socialism-isn’t movement—was captured by U.S. forces on Saturday and transported to the United States. Maduro has been facing federal criminal charges since 2020, but under the Biden administration, those charges lived in the same filing cabinet as “symbolic gestures” and “strongly worded condemnations.” On Saturday, the filing cabinet was yanked wide open.

The reaction was immediate, loud, and predictably unhinged.

It’s not hard to see why. Imagine France unilaterally decides the U.S. justice system is irreparably corrupt. Macron sends troops into Florida in the middle of the night, where they abduct Donald and Melania Trump from Mar-a-Lago, announce that he’s been “problematic for democracy,” and inform Americans they’ll be overseeing our transition… until further notice. I’m no bookie, but I’m betting a lot of people are going to be extremely freaked out (and suddenly very interested in international law).

Let’s start with the inconvenient images the media doesn’t quite know what to do with: Venezuelans celebrating. Not cautiously. Not nervously. Celebrating-celebrating. Honking horns, waving flags, sobbing happy tears, hugging strangers, dancing like the power grid just flickered back on for the first time in a decade. Not shockingly, when you remove the guy presiding over food shortages, political prisons, mass emigration, and complete economic collapse, the people living under that system don’t respond with editorialized nuance.

Go figure.

Watch him here.

I’ll needlessly remind my incredibly astute readers here that two (or two hundred) things can be true at the same time. Nicolás Maduro was a brutal, corrupt authoritarian who hollowed out his country, jailed opponents, and presided over economic devastation. Simultaneously, seizing another nation’s leader is not a small act, or a comfortable one, or something anyone should cheer without a knot in their stomach. Acknowledging the first does not require pretending the second is irrelevant. This isn’t a Marvel movie; there are no storybook heroes or villains, only tradeoffs.

Regardless of how actual Venezuelans are reacting, Western media spiraled into DEFCON hysteria. Within minutes, headlines heralded “dangerous precedents,” “imperial overreach,” and “the collapse of international norms.” Many of those warnings came from the same outlets that have long described Maduro as illegitimate, cartel-adjacent, and authoritarian, while simultaneously treating his indefinite rule as a regrettable but immovable fact of life. (Apparently, condemning tyranny is fine; it’s the doing something about it part that inspires indignation.) Now they’ve discovered Venezuelan sovereignty. Touching.

To be fair, this wasn’t a spontaneous burst of American adventurism. Maduro was indicted under Trump 1.0 for allegedly running a narco-state—accused of coordinating with drug cartels to traffic massive quantities of cocaine into the United States. A bounty was announced. The allegations were public, specific, and severe. What changed wasn’t the evidence or the accusations—it was the decision to stop treating enforcement as a hypothetical exercise.

Not everyone is outraged.

And let’s also dispense with the idea that this is some unprecedented Trump invention. The United States has removed, captured, or facilitated the removal of foreign leaders under presidents of both parties. (So has just about every other major power.) George H.W. Bush took Manuel Noriega out of Panama. Barack Obama authorized the operation that killed Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan without permission. Bill Clinton bombed Serbia into submission and helped sideline Slobodan Milošević. Even Democrats who now speak reverently about “norms” have a long record of deciding that sovereignty ends where American interests begin. That doesn’t make it right—it just makes it not-new.

It should also go without saying that capturing a sitting head of state is not ideal. No sane person would argue that it is. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of whipping out the fire extinguisher: you don’t do it for ambiance, you do it because something is already on fire and prayers, press releases, and politely asking the flames to self-extinguish aren’t working. Sanctions, diplomacy, elections, negotiations—Venezuela has seen it all, repeatedly, with the same result: Maduro stays, the people suffer, and millions flee.

Not surprisingly, a big chunk of the internet isn’t buying the whole quit sending us your coke angle here. According to this camp, the capture wasn’t about drugs, corruption, or Venezuela collapsing into a humanitarian disaster. This was about oil. Or Israel. Or the petrodollar. Or election interference. Or all of the above in a trench coat. The United States, they argue, didn’t suddenly grow a conscience—it was acting as an imperial enforcer, doing geopolitical favors, silencing a defiant regime, and sending a message to any country thinking about stepping out of line.

Is that view fringe? Hardly. Is it provable? Also no. But it exists, loudly—and pretending it came out of nowhere requires forgetting a very long, very well-documented history.

And that’s exactly why this moment lands so hard: not because Maduro was a good guy (he wasn’t), but because it shattered the unspoken rule that sitting heads of state are effectively untouchable. For decades, criticism was allowed; action was not. The global consensus on Maduro was basically: Yes, he’s terrible. No, we’re not doing anything about it.

And then he poked the bear.

@thegunlifecoachPresident Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were "captured and flown out of the Country" early Saturday morning, confirming a "large scale strike" by the U.S. that drew quick condemnation and concern from across the globe. The U.S. Army's Delta Force, an elite special forces unit, carried out the operation to capture Maduro, officials told CBS News. A Republican senator said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had indicated that Maduro would face criminal charges in the U.S., where he was indicted years ago, and that Rubio "anticipates no further action in Venezuela." The Trump administration has long accused Maduro of drug trafficking and working with gangs designated as terrorist organizations, which Maduro denies. The strikes follow months of U.S. military buildup in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and numerous other warships positioned in the Caribbean. In recent weeks, the U.S. has seized two oil tankers off Venezuela, launched deadly strikes on more than 30 boats the administration says were carrying drugs, and struck what President Trump called "the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs." President Trump will hold a news conference at Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m. ET on Saturday. Watch and stream live on CBSNews.com and Paramount+. #news #video #venezuala #freedom #maduro

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

(Yes, Trump posted that on Truth Social. But that’s not actually his voice, right?)

The removal wasn’t messy. It wasn’t chaotic. There wasn’t a single leak. Yes, it skipped the ritual approval process. (Surprise attacks often do.) But it was decisive—and that alone explains the panic. Decisive action exposes how much of modern politics is just theater: Press conferences. Panels. Statements. “Deep concern.”

This wasn’t concern. It was consequences.

Are there risks? Without a doubt. Power vacuums are a thing. Transitional governments are wobbly at best. There are questions about precedent, escalation, and what comes next—not just for Venezuela, but for how states think about sovereignty going forward. I mean, if the U.S. can more or less declare itself the Supreme Ruler of the Universe today, what’s stopping China, Russia, or Iran from doing the same thing tomorrow? These are legitimate concerns, and they deserve to be treated as such.

But so does this reality: doing nothing had consequences too, and those consequences were being paid, every day, by ordinary Venezuelans—not op-ed writers uploading impassioned think-pieces from Park Slope.

The strangest part of the backlash is how resistant it is to the most basic observation: this wasn’t hypothetical or symbolic. Something actually happened. Not a summit. Not a statement. Not a task force. No blue-ribbon panel, no sternly worded diplomatic memo. Something tangible and irreversible. It may turn out to be a turning point—or a total disaster. After all, doing nothing is the default; the safest and most responsible option (even though presidents get equal grief for that, too). But one thing is already clear: the illusion that nothing consequential ever happens didn’t survive the weekend.

If you’re looking for the most darkly comic detail of all, consider this: according to reporting, what finally tipped the scale wasn’t some new intelligence revelation or a diplomatic breakthrough, but Nicolás Maduro dancing on state television—broadcasting videos of himself bouncing around to electronic music, brushing off U.S. warnings, taunting Trump like a man daring someone to blink first. That imagery reportedly didn’t play well in the White House. (Which is especially rich, given POTUS’s affinity for dancing on camera.)

Somewhere between the AC/DC soundtrack, the televised shimmying, and the unmistakable message of you won’t do anything, the era of procedural outrage without action appears to have expired.

(1000% true story: When my daughters were about four and six, they shared a bedroom. One night they were still chatting looooooong after bedtime, so I leaned into the intercom and warned, “Go to bed, girls. If I have to come up there, I’m taking away your brand-new Zhu Zhu Pets tomorrow.” Without missing a beat, my youngest calmly reassured her sister: “Don’t worry, Sophie. She’ll never do it.” At that point, I had no choice but to absolutely do it.)

History will no doubt record this as a profound geopolitical moment. Whether that’s in the Book of Revelation or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sense remains to be seen.

I need to know what you think! Share in the comments. :)

The War on Chlorine Dioxide ships next week! YDS is available now. :)