One Venezuela or Two?

 

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One Venezuela or Two?

Who would not applaud the capture of a narco-terrorist drug kingpin directly complicit in the murder of 400,000 Americans? Of course, I am speaking of the recently arrested Nicholas Maduro. Unfortunately, there are many.

One would expect fellow dictators like Putin and Xi to condemn such action. After all, they have invested a lot of money, and hate to see fellow dictators fall, as it could set off a domino effect. But we have also seen Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Spain, and Uruguay (which are either run by like socialists or narco-drug leaders) issuing a joint statement condemning the arrest. Birds of a feather?

Given the twenty-seven years of dictators running Venezuela, one would NOT expect ANY US elected official to condemn Maduro’s arrest. Yet, Democrats, and a few (so-called) Republicans, did condemn this arrest despite the drugs Maduro trafficked are directly responsible for the murder of nearly a half million Americans, and advancing China’s and Russia’s dominance in America’s backyard.

My assessment is that there is a clear alignment of values, intent, and objectives - a quest for absolute power between the dystopian dictators and Democrats. Naïve Republicans think the dissent is due to Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). No, it is due to their like objective to obtain absolute power in an ongoing Cognitive War – a set of battles we are losing to influence the human mind.

If we pay attention to history, the Democrats dissent and alignment with dictators is obvious. Democrat Presidents enabled not one, but two invasions of Ukraine by Russia. Biden removed the heavy sanctions Trump had placed on the Maduro regime. Biden and his son traded US prestige and access with China, Russia, and Ukraine for millions of dollars – pardon me for being so blunt, as his family was, via autopen. Obama and Biden, via the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, removed massive sanctions on Iran placed by Trump, but returned one-hundred billion dollars to the terrorist regime that was used to fund the Hamas 7 Oct terrorist attack on Israel. Biden under the green new scam, sent billions of taxpayer dollars to China for solar panels and wind farms, while he and Obama destroyed US energy independence. The dictators in Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China benefited greatly under Democrats.

Under Democrats, Americans lost our civil and constitutional rights, were censored and cancelled, debanked, imprisoned, and illegally spied on. Democrats destroyed many innocent people via lawfare. They weaponized the government and national security elements to conduct a false Russian dossier coup, two impeachments, while enabling twenty plus million to illegally enter the US. Democrats rolled out the red carpet for China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and others to send us their illegals, drugs, felons, narco-terrorist gangs, and radical Islamists to name a few. The dictators of the world could not have asked for a better partner than the Democrat party.

There is a nexus, an alignment, and purpose in the actions taken by Democrats that may not be readily apparent when looked at by event. But when taken on whole – their actions, policy, and narratives tell an alarming story and show a pattern of alignment between Democrats and dictators. I have captured these patterns in three distinct opinion pieces in the Washington Time - “The Democrat’s Blood Revolution,” the “Radical left Democrats’ terror-influencing strategy revealed,” and the “Radical left borrowed playbook from Soviet Union.”

There is a clear alignment of values, intent, and objectives between Democrats and dictators – a quest for absolute power. My analysis is this alignment is why we see a majority of Democrats dissenting to the arrest of Maduro. Democrats’ including the communist mayor of New York city, Mamdani. The Congressional, err Somalian, representative, Ilan Omar (by the way, why is she not in violation of FARA?). The champion of fraud, Governor Tim Waltz. The illegal constituent representatives of the year, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Senator Ruben Gallego. How ripe they protest the arrest of Maduro as illegal, as the latter all enabled a massive illegal invasion of 20-30 million illegals into this country and continue to turn a blind eye to felons and fraud.

Americans must understand the path Democrats are taking this country down is the very same path Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro took a prosperous country and destroyed both economic and independent freedom nearly three decades ago. No this is not TDS, this is a purposeful, strategic, and a well thought out strategy by Democrats using the same tried and true tactics of prior dictators over centuries.

President Trump stated the US will run Venezuela for the time being. He also stated that if not for his election in 2024, that America would have become another Venezuela! Given Democrats last two decades of governance, and the path to tyranny we were on, I do not see how anyone could disagree. Do we end up with one Venezuela or two? Trump is fixing one, Democrats are creating another. Let us make sure that does not happen.

• Edward Haugland is the author of “The Cognitive War” and a leading national expert in this field. He is an award-winning CIA analyst and retired Defense Department intelligence executive, as well as a U.S. Air Force veteran, with more than four decades of service in national security across multiple executive branch departments and agencies.

 Edward L. Haugland, © 2026, all rights reserved.