Making Venezuela Mediocre Again

Is Trump a nation-builder, or nation-breaker?

Here’s hoping you had a restful holiday season. I know Mr. Trump and I did. I caught a nasty two-weeks-long flu, downed about four whole bottles of DayQuil/NyQuil (for medicinal purposes, not because I ran out of Maker’s), lost my sense of taste and smell even while testing negative for COVID, and received this as a Christmas gift from my thoughtful sister-in-law, though I’d have much preferred a Chipotle gift card.

As for President Trump, or as some in our southern Sphere of Influence now call him, “El Máximo Líder,” his was a working vacation, since he never takes a week off from himself, or gives us one. Over Christmas, it was revealed that Trump flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” at least eight times. He then: rejected appeals from Catholic bishops to pause ICE raids on Christmas. Threatened to eradicate TV networks that don’t praise him. Posted over 100 times on Truth Social on Christmas Day, wishing a Merry Christmas to all, including “the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein…..only to drop him like a dog when things got too HOT.” Bombed Nigeria in his capacity as Nobel Peace Prize contender. Cryptically told Dems to enjoy “what could be your last Merry Christmas.” Let the Affordable Care Act subsidies lapse, making healthcare unaffordable for millions of Americans. Then he committed a New Year’s Eve atrocity by allowing Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller to dance to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice, Baby” at his Mar-a-Lago bash.

And this, a (very) incomplete list. Oh, and then the President, who has spent decades decrying foolish nation-building abroad, invaded Venezuela and deposed/captured its dictator, Nicolás Maduro.

When asked by The New Statesman for an instant reaction, I wrote the following:

Maduro was a filthy, rotten dictator. A type Donald Trump usually has a high tolerance for, being an aspiring one himself.

In fact, Trump might have been jealous, since Maduro did something Trump tried, but couldn’t manage to pull off: stealing an election. But Trump’s Make Venezuela Great Again policy (where are our isolationists when we need them?) could make tinpot authoritarians in southern climes quake — unless they’re named Nayib Bukele, who gets a MAGA pass as our foreign-prisons subcontractor in El Salvador.