Axios: Dems Wonder Whether Championing A Narco-Trafficking Dictator Is a Winning Message

Ooo! Ooo! I know the answer to this one ... Pick me, teach!

In fairness, almost the entire classroom and school know the answer to this question. Only Democrat leadership seems fuzzy on the optics of thundering to the defense of [checks notes] a narco-trafficking dictator who stole an election and has built a partnership with Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere. Case in point – Senator Chris Murphy, who tried to attack Donald Trump for seizing Nicolas Maduro, only to run into a surprising buzzsaw of receipts on CNN yesterday:

Democrat Chris Murphy - who opposed the successful raid to capture Maduro - gets confronted by CNN for previously calling for him to be outed.

CNN: "In 2019, you wrote an oped and you called for Maduro to be gone..." pic.twitter.com/zlHM4IVQ5O

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 4, 2026

BASH: In 2019, you wrote an op-ed and you called for Maduro to be gone. You said: "Let's get one thing straight, there should no longer be any debate about Maduro's lack of democratic legitimacy. The Trump administration is right to put restoring Venezuelan democracy at the center of our approach to this crisis. A return to a stable democracy is in the interest of the Venezuelan people and the United States and the hemisphere."

We don't know what's going to happen with regard to the civilian leadership there. Tom Cotton was just here saying that he hopes that there are democratic elections. Isn't that what you want?

MURPHY: Well, the rest of that article, right, was a criticism of President Trump's early moves to saber-rattle around regime change.

Murphy attempted to argue that Trump should have requested congressional approval of the operation before launching it. Bash had a receipt or two for that argument as well:

MURPHY: The president cannot run a military operation of this size, cannot invade a foreign country without coming to Congress first, without allowing the American public to weigh in. America doesn't want this war. Nobody asked for this, because it has nothing to do with American national security.

And I think that's the most important conversation to have. Listen, Venezuela is not a security threat to the United States. They're not threatening to invade us. There is no terrorist group like al Qaeda operating there that has plans to attack the United States. ...

BASH: Can I just go back to the legality and the point that you made about needing to come to Congress first? 

You know that, for decades, Congress has let Democratic and Republican presidents sort of go for it on military actions. I mean, look at President Obama and Libya. And so it's not new that Congress has become, frankly, impotent on issues and matters of war.

MURPHY: That's absolutely true. And Congress needs to own its own role in allowing a presidency to become this lawless.

First off, Murphy exposed his complete ignorance of the security threat Maduro posed. It may be true that al-Qaeda does not operate out of Venezuela, but Maduro and Hugo Chavez have partnered with Hezbollah for more than a quarter-century. Iran has used Venezuela as a base of operations for its proxy terrorism, black-market oil sales, and narco-trafficking. They have infiltrated the United States, especially during the Biden Regency's open-borders catastrophe, and have participated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans in the drug trade. 

It's both the idiocy and hypocrisy of this rage coming from the vanguard of Democrat leadership that has the rank and file wonder just what hell their party is doing. Axios reports today that some have begun speaking up in an attempt to point out the politically obvious:

What we're hearing: One swing-district House Democrat told Axios in a text message on Saturday, "Nuance is dead in politics."

• "Maduro is bad, glad he is gone ... You can't have it both ways," the lawmaker said, venting that "everything Trump touches must be bad according to the base."
• Another vulnerable House Democrat told Axios in a phone interview: "As Democrats we can't just condemn what happened ... I wish the Democratic Party would be a little bit more measured on this."
• "I think it looks weak," a third centrist House Democrat said. "If you don't acknowledge when there is a win for our country, then you lose all credibility."

Forget credibility. Some Democrats wonder what happened to the party's explicit label, not to mention coherence:

Between the lines: It's not just about politics. The second lawmaker who spoke to Axios noted that Democrats widely condemned Venezuela's sham elections last year and have long advocated for democracy abroad.

• "What happened to when they had the election and Maduro stole the election? There were Democrats condemning that," the House Democrat said.
• "Have we forgotten what's happened ... in that country?"

The truth: It doesn't matter. Democrats have gone all-in on La Résistance, attempting to negate the election results in the US in 2024 for the past year. Should it surprise us that they're no longer invested in the legitimate election results in Venezuela? Maduro has become their model of power – to seize it despite the results of elections, to force opposition leaders into prison, and to ally themselves with the avowed enemies of our country for the sake of cheap political posturing.  

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