On the heels of the Trump administration's Saturday military operation that resulted in the arrest of puppet president and dictator Nicolás Maduro, the legacy media has been working overtime to set particular narratives. Among them: Trump is starting a war; Trump wants to steal Venezuela's oil; Trump overstepped his constitutional powers; and Trump is ignoring the American people and their concerns.
What has made the difference in these narratives not sticking is that independent and new media have flooded the zone. Also, the country's citizens, and those in the Venezuelan diaspora, are making their voices heard. The Venezuelan nationals understand better than anyone why President Trump's military capture of Maduro is exactly what their nation, and the nation of the United States, needed, as well as what is truly at stake in the coming days.
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Here is one Venezuelan national who articulated this so succinctly.
This is a message for my American friends watching the news today in English. There is a serious inaccuracy in the coverage. Venezuela is not undergoing a regime change. Venezuela already has a democratically elected president. Edmundo González. He is the president. Nicolás Maduro is not the president. He never was. He stole the last election and led a criminal organization linked to terrorism and drug trafficking. El Cartel de Los Solis. And today, thanks to the vision and courage of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the decisive leadership of President Donald Trump, and the actions of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the United States has finally recognized a fundamental truth: Protecting our hemisphere from terrorism, drug cartels, and authoritarian ideologies is a matter of national security for the United States.
Mic drop. Pointing out the inaccurate coverage is key: it's a feature, not a bug, with the legacy media. This Venezuelan young man is basically saying, "in your face" to all the Democrat politicians crying that we have no business in Venezuela. This young man has just let us know that we do, and what we do from this point forward, matters for the security of his nation and the national security of the United States.
WATCH:
Must Watch: A message from a Venezuelan citizen telling us the truth about what was really going on in his country, who the real president should have been, and how grateful he is to President Trump and his administration. pic.twitter.com/JuPE0q8p0w
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) January 3, 2026
That has always been the case, and our elected leaders up to this point have chosen to push it aside for their own ends. The decades-long, and frankly, useless, "War on Drugs" is a testament to this. First, Black Americans watched as cities that were once cohesive communities fell to crack cocaine. The response? The Reagan administration mounted its War on Drugs, then the HW Bush and Clinton administrations continued the farce, allowing cities to be further eviscerated while the people who could afford it fled to the suburbs, the ones remaining became more dependent on government, and the consultancy class created more NGOs to fill in the gaps with "refugees."
Clinton upped the ante with his so-called "War on Crime," penalizing Americans and imposing harsh prison sentences on low-level drug offenders while creating the corporate prison complex we know today. Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, and Biden took away jobs via globalism, destroying suburban and rural America. This, in turn, opened the door to meth and fentanyl addiction, further ravaging the heartland. Biden then opened the gates to the Southern border and herded in the criminals who could keep the drug and human trafficking trade flowing, and the NGOs paid more "refugees" to flood middle America to complete its destruction.
All while American citizens and citizens in foreign countries suffered under violence, healthcare crises, and watched their daughters disappear while their leaders played at diplomacy, put on stern faces, wagged their fingers for the cameras, and then profited on the back end. These American presidents and their Secretaries of State wholesale sold our national sovereignty for money, prestige, and cozy relations with China and Iran, while peddling cheap goods and globalism to erode the fabric and the people who made America great.
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The arrest of an illegitimate actor like Maduro not only removed a major conduit of this corrosive evil, but it cut off the haven that the wicked leaders of Iran, China, and other terroristic regimes could run to for sanctuary and easy cash.
During the U.S. attacks on Venezuela they reportedly also struck an Iranian factories producing Shahed drones. The Islamic republic has used Venezuela as a South America base thanks to Maduro for many years. Venezuela has also been used as a money laundering playground for the…
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) January 3, 2026
During the U.S. attacks on Venezuela they reportedly also struck an Iranian factories producing Shahed drones. The Islamic republic has used Venezuela as a South America base thanks to Maduro for many years. Venezuela has also been used as a money laundering playground for the regime with hundreds of millions (if not billions) being laundered through Caracas. Khamenei has reason to worry after this decisive action from the United States.
Venezuelan journalist Mariana Atencio reinforced the truth and debunked the legacy media talking points. She reiterated that Maduro's arrest is not about regime change, and it is not about "blood for oil"; it is a humanitarian crisis and a catastrophe for which the actions of the Trump administration have created a bulwark against the flood.
Atencio told Bloomberg News:
This is about us as a nation wanting to come back to the fold of Western democratic nations and to the values that those nations represent, and I believe it is in the interest of the United States and every single American citizen to want that as well. We have tried by every means necessary, including democratic means to get rid of this regime.
Atencio made even finer points: Maduro's regime and his actions against those he considered his enemies were being adopted by other nations: Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and more, resulting in the disenfranchisement of their citizens and the destabilization of these countries. Atencio felt the removal of Maduro could have a possible domino effect to unravel that connective thread, just as the fall of the Berlin Wall helped to usher in the glasnost and the dismantling of the U.S.S.R.
WATCH:
Worth listening to Mariana Atencio, native Venezuelan journalist, on what the people in Venezuela actually wanted when it came to Maduro. pic.twitter.com/M28fO8lWMn
— amit (@amitisinvesting) January 3, 2026
Both the young man in the above video and Mariana Atencio utter the same urgent message: Americans must understand that investment in Venezuela's outcome is as essential as investment in our own backyard if we expect to maintain and strengthen American sovereignty and national security. What ultimately hangs in the balance is that if the Venezuelan people do well, it will benefit America and its people. If Venezuela falls in this power vacuum, then they will be destroyed, and in the end, America will continue to be eroded from within.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote on his X account:
Nicolas Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. I just spoke to @SecRubio, who confirmed that Maduro is in U.S. custody and…
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 3, 2026
Nicolas Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. I just spoke to @SecRubio, who confirmed that Maduro is in U.S. custody and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens. I commend President Trump and our brave troops and law-enforcement officers for this incredible operation.
The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran and Cuba or whether to act like a normal nation and return to the civilized world. I urge them to choose wisely.
This is weighty stuff. Our elected leaders in the past assumed it was above our heads and not worthy of our time and attention. The Trump administration has taken a different tack: actually taking tangible action to protect America's borders and also revealing to us why that matters.
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