When reading about what's going on between the United States and Venezuela — and I've done a lot of that lately — there are a few phrases in headlines and articles that I just can't take seriously. When I see someone use them, I know that anything else they're going to say is probably not worthy of my attention.
"President Maduro"
Number one is "President Maduro." Nicolás Maduro is not the president of Venezuela. Even Joe Biden was cognitive enough to know this. Nearly 70% of that country voted for Edmundo González during the 2024 July election. That number was likely much higher, but Maduro's team used intimidation tactics to keep people from going to the polls, and I'm not sure the votes were ever fully counted because, at some point, there was no reason to continue. Dictator's gonna dictate. Maduro had the National Electoral Council of Venezuela come out and declare him the winner, saying he'd gotten over 51% of the vote compared to González's 44.2% despite a lot of evidence proving otherwise.
So, anyone calling that guy "president," like he's some respectable head of state, automatically tells me they don't know what they're talking about, and I stop reading.
When I hear someone say “war with #Venezuela,” I check out, no matter how smart I’m supposed to think that person is. That shows me they don’t know what they’re talking about or have an agenda. Same for the phrase “President Marduro.”
— SarahDownSouth (@SarahDownSouth) October 25, 2025
"War with Venezuela"
Number two is a bit more nuanced. The mainstream media and many others love to put this "war with Venezuela" talk out there to conjure up an image of the U.S. invading the South American country with tanks and bombs in an expensive, chaotic years-long affair like what we saw in Iraq. The military build-up in the Caribbean Sea helps them frame this wording, which is often meant to make Donald Trump look like some sort of aggressor. Despite the fact that this defies current logic, many have taken it and run with it.
For what it's worth, Maduro is also using the same wording, and propaganda is his go-to language. Though he's been experimenting with English lately. It's pretty comical.
Maduro to Trump in English:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 24, 2025
Not war, not war. Yes peace, yes peace.
No crazy war, please, please, please. pic.twitter.com/VPmhiAYRvg
But when you look at the facts, that doesn't make sense. Why would the "peace president" who is so intent on ending wars start one? Venezuela's military is in such bad shape that it couldn't take on the United States, especially considering how many allies we have in the region willing to help. That military build-up in the Caribbean has been going on for months — most people just realized it when Trump began striking narco-boats. Polls show anywhere from 70% to 90% of the people in Venezuela want the U.S. to intervene and somehow rid them of Maduro so their elected leaders can come out of hiding and take over (something that would benefit our country for dozens of reasons, too), and we've been working on that for quite some time.
Actually, as I'm writing this, Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado is on Fox News saying, "The tyranny is trying to create the narrative of a problematic transition and comparing it to Libya or Iraq. That is totally false." She's right, and the problem is that our own U.S. media is doing the same thing.
If you want to use the term "war with Venezuela," at least be honest about it. We've been at it for years with this man and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, just not in the way that makes for shiny new headlines. You can say the United States has been engaged in irregular warfare with Maduro's regime for a long time: sanctions, seizing assets, supporting Maduro's opposition, interdicting narco-boats (before we started blowing them up), covert intelligence ops, etc. Maduro holds up his end of the bargain, too, by financially backing communist anti-U.S. groups, making deals with our adversaries, and sending migrant gang members to destabilize our communities, among other things.
My guess is that someone on the inside will take Maduro down (with our help), and, at some point, if that doesn't work, any military action we see will be an extremely precise and limited decapitation strike. Think hitting Iran's nuclear facilities at best, 1989 invasion of Panama at worst. I think a lot of this "escalation" is merely pressure with a back-up plan.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
I mentioned this on Friday in my new weekly column "The New Monroe Doctrine," but Politico interviewed James B. Story, Trump's former ambassador to Venezuela, and he echoed a lot of the thoughts I've had on the matter. Politico point blank asked him if we're "heading to war with Venezuela," and while he had no definitive answer, here's what he did say:
President Trump has been quite clear that he’s willing to use all of the tools at his disposal in order to stop narcotics trafficking flowing north, but as is evident as far as the first Trump administration, he’s always been very concerned about the lack of democracy in the country, the human rights abuses that’s led to migration, the illegality and criminality coming out of the country.
Certainly the assets are there that would enable the president to make a decision. There are not enough assets for an invasion but there are enough 'exquisite assets' on site that could overwhelm the air defenses of the country, take out the Air Force, take out the Navy, potentially decapitate the government if that were a decision that he decided to take.
Is that a decision that’s been taken? I don’t know. But I can say that there are more assets in the region over the course of the last several weeks. They’ve increased the number of assets in their region. And that’s leading me to the conclusion that something may happen. Now that something could be everywhere from a counternarcotics operation within the 12 nautical mile limit of the country, something that’s on land focused on narcotics, or something broader.
He added:
I believe the intent of the administration is for someone close to Maduro to invite him into exile, extradite him to the United States or encourage his departure through other means. And I think that’s the preferred outcome. If you look at the pressure that’s been put, it’s significantly more than was under the first Trump administration, including certainly the attack against these alleged narcotics trafficking vessels. But then also talking about a covert action program in an overt way certainly is something that that should be read as, this is a decision made to put additional pressure on those around Maduro to encourage him to leave...So there’s a lot of pressure. I think the administration is hopeful for a transition by other means and not having to deploy force itself in order to get there...
It’s the threat of force. Sanctions certainly put pressure on the regime, but they’ve been under sanctions for so long that they’ve certainly learned to live with the sanctions. And the ghost ships carrying oil to China, laundering through Malaysia, and the role of Iran, Cuba, Russia, China and Venezuela. Inside of the regime, it doesn’t really matter to them if people go hungry, if there’s not enough medicine. This isn’t something that they’ve concerned themselves with. Because their existence is what concerns themselves. So they’ve learned to live with sanctions over time. Now this is the real possibility of use of force. That is intended, I’m certain, to rattle those closest to Maduro, encourage them to make the decision to make a change within the government.
I highly recommend reading the entire article if you're interested. It's quite informative.
Even some sympathetic voices are using this language in their headlines. The Telegraph's Daniel Hannan, who is a conservative, wrote a column this weekend called "Trump is planning to invade Venezuela. We ought to thank him."
But when you actually read the fine print, even he admits:
An all-out invasion seems unlikely. Maduro has taken steps to fill Venezuela’s security forces with loyalists, and 10,000 troops is nowhere near enough to overthrow him by force. At the same time, Maduro shows no sign of relinquishing power voluntarily simply because there is a big naval taskforce on the horizon.
The likeliest outcome is somewhere in between. The US is presumably working on Venezuela’s military and police leaders, telling them that Maduro is finished, but that they do not need to fall with him. The USS Gerald R Ford, can launch 90 planes: enough to give total air supremacy to any insurrection. If we see that level of deployment on the edge of Venezuela, we can believe Trump when he incautiously boasts of a covert CIA presence inside the country.
Drug Trafficking Vs. Regime Change
The last issue I have with the way the media reports on this story is the whole "either/or" implication. For example, the BBC published an article called "Drug crackdown or regime change - what is Trump's goal in Venezuela?" I've seen it from other outlets, too, and the fact is that these things are not mutually exclusive. I'd also argue that taking out Maduro is not "regime change." The people of Venezuela made the regime change in July 2024, but this narco-terrorist criminal and his thugs are holding them hostage and preventing the elected leaders from doing their jobs. It'd be like if Biden refused to leave the White House in January, but on a much grander scale.
Maduro and his equally despicable right-hand man, Diosdado Cabello, are the heads of Cartel de los Soles. His government is literally a cartel. It's involved in the drug trafficking from the inside out. That's why the U.S. has a $50 million reward for Maduro's arrest and $25 million for Cabello's.
From the State Department website:
Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials. As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with narcotics traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel of the Suns.
In March 2020, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
He's not an elected leader. He's a U.S. fugitive who's heavily involved in drug trafficking and other anti-U.S. activities. Trump's goal can be and is both.
My point to all of this is: Be careful what you read. There are a lot of people out there making a great deal of sensational noise about this topic, and most of them either don't know what they're talking about or they have an ulterior motive, whether is simply to clickbait you into reading their hot take or to paint Trump as some sort of aggressive warmonger. Or they are pro-Maduro (but let's face it, the MSM has been on his side for years).
But this ain't 2003. And none of those people know anything more than the rest of us.
And I'm not claiming I know anything more than anyone else. As I like to say, Marco Rubio doesn't hand me exclusive scoops...yet. I could be wrong, too, and if I am, I'll gladly admit it. But I have taken time to study this. I've been following it for a long time. The headlines right now don't match the reality. The language these outlets use betray that.
The MSM is going to do what it does, but I would never write a story just to stir the pot. That's not what we do here at PJ Media. When you sign up to become a PJ Media VIP member, you help ensure there's still some integrity in journalism.
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