Trump Isn’t Defeating Terrorists. He’s Helping Them.
Gen. Francis L. Donovan, head of the U.S. Southern Command, essentially acknowledged the limited scope of the deadly strikes when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, saying that in the future, “boat strikes will be one of the primary tools, and probably not the most effective.” It appears that the US military’s removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who now faces narcoterrorism charges in the United States, has also been ineffective. Because Trump’s strategy did not overthrow the government, leaving key figures like Venezuela’s corrupt Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello in power, “the country’s criminal ecosystem as a whole remains largely intact,” Papadovassilakis reported. Yet our inefficiency hasn’t come cheap, as ongoing military raids and boat strikes have cost at least $4.7 billion, according to a joint analysis by the Progressive Institute for Policy Studies and Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Meanwhile, a recent New York Times The briefing revealed that we are inadvertently supporting Colombia’s major drug cartels by purchasing gold from the mines they control, even though we have declared that the final products that pass through our factories are “100% American.” This is a practice that predates the Trump administration, but which it seemed blithely unaware of, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. Times he will investigate. There is no indication that this will in any way affect the release of the 250th anniversary commemorative gold coin depicting Trump’s fake tough guy look.
The fight against drug cartels has been further hampered by Trump’s pardon policy. At the request of Roger Stone, himself a recipient of a Trump pardon, the president pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for his role in a massive drug conspiracy. Hernández helped cartels smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for millions in bribes, but Trump says it was simply a stunt by Biden. Trump may even seek to return Hernández to power, according to an explosive report published by Canal Red and Hondurasgate.
