I like to say that you can tell how scared Nicolás Maduro is by how boastful and idiotic he acts, but there's another clue you can watch for: He starts picking little fights with Marco Rubio. It's not just him — Cuba's been doing the same for years. Colombia's Gustavo Petro — part-time president, full-time X poet who thinks he’s Shakespeare and Hunter S. Thompson's love child — has now jumped on the bandwagon because nothing says fearless revolutionary like taunting the guy who can shutter your bank accounts, seize your private jets, and turn your mansions and condos into Airbnbs.
The simple truth is that they know few people in Washington, D.C., take their communism as personally as Rubio does, and now he has the authority to make it extremely inconvenient for them. As he should. As he is.
The Donald Trump administration's designation of Maduro's Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) became official Monday morning, and rather than go after Trump himself, Maduro's regime, as it does, went after Rubio instead. Granted, the State Department is the agency responsible for handling the designation, but I don't recall them going after Scott Bessent personally back in July when the Department of the Treasury sanctioned Cartel de los Soles as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
"The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela categorically, firmly, and absolutely rejects the latest and ridiculous fabrication by the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who designates the nonexistent Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization, thus repeating an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela, under the classic US regime change format," Yvan Gil, Maduro's foreign minister, said on Monday. "This new maneuver will follow the same fate as previous and recurring aggressions against our country: failure."
After mentioning that the citizens of Venezuela are too busy enjoying "Christmas festivities" — Maduro, in a move he felt would distract the people from the fact that they can't afford or even access food, declared that Christmas would start in October this year — Gil urged "the United States government to rectify this erratic policy of aggression and threats, vehemently rejected by the people of the United States themselves, which hinders the development of the Caribbean nations and contributes nothing to a genuine fight against illicit drug trafficking."
Related: As It Turns Out, Humble Fishermen ARE Dying in the Caribbean
That's sort of a pattern of the Maduro regime, and all of these Latin American commies, really. They condemn Rubio and then try to mansplain — dictatorsplain? — to Trump and the rest of the U.S. government that they shouldn't listen to him.
In October, Maduro said during a speech, "Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with his indecency and immorality, has declared that Venezuelan military bases are the epicenter of drug trafficking" before attempting to explain to the world that he has nothing to do with drug trafficking at all.
In September, he warned, "Mr. President, Donald Trump, watch out, because Mr. Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood," and promised Trump he would never win a Nobel Peace Prize if he continued to associate with Rubio. He "wants the last name Trump to be stained with blood for centuries," Maduro claimed.
Not one to let Maduro have all the fun — I'm beginning to think he has become so mouthy lately because he's jealous of the attention the U.S. is giving Maduro — Petro has taken to calling out Rubio lately, too.
Speaking over the weekend at some event, el presidente delivered a message to our Secretary of State. "And so I have to tell Mr. Marco Rubio, if you're going to throw me in jail, come and see if you can. If you want to put me in an orange jumpsuit, go ahead and try it, but this nation won’t kneel before you," he said. "No Colombian is to blame for whatever happened to your grandfather or father in Cuba." Of course, he's referring to the fact that Rubio is the son of Cuban exiles.
Um, burn, I guess? No one is actually after Petro in the way he seems to want them to be, aside from backing his opposition. Unlike Maduro, he was fairly elected as the country's first left-wing president, though he and Maduro do have in common the fact that most of their countrymen hate them. Petro has spent more time hugging cartel leaders, sampling his country's top export (allegedly), writing erotic poetry, and doom-scrolling social media than actually governing, and his term ends next summer after elections in May. The folks there can't wait to get him out.
However, after his little Che Guevara cosplay moment in New York City in September — remember when he was in town for United Nations meetings and decided to cap the night off by standing outside with fellow commie Roger Waters, calling for the American military to defy Donald Trump? — Rubio's State Department did take away his visa and decertified him as a partner in counternarcotics efforts. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also added him to the "Clinton List," but again, no harsh words for Bessent.
Neither Maduro nor Petro will be around in any official capacity much longer, but their random outbursts make one thing clear: They know who holds the leverage now. And they know that Rubio is the man who understands their games, their networks, and their playbooks, and he's got the power to stop them with a single signature. The more pressure he applies, the louder they squeal.
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