"Trump insisted in Saturday's press conference that, by deposing Maduro, he had removed the "kingpin of a vast criminal network" that trafficked huge amounts of cocaine into the U.S. Ironically, just weeks before, he had extended a full pardon to the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2024 was convicted in the Southern District of New York of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. Trump's reasoning was that, like him, Hernández had been "treated very harshly and unfairly" by political opponents."
"Many Venezuelans support Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the apparent winners of the Presidential election that Maduro stole in 2024. González was the Presidential candidate, but the real power is Machado, a conservative Catholic from a wealthy family who built a following as an ardent critic of the Maduro regime. Both have been in hiding, though Machado appeared in Oslo last month to collect the Nobel Peace Prize."
The operation to remove Maduro occurred thirty-six years after the U.S. invasion of Panama that deposed Manuel Noriega. Noriega, a former American proxy, had criticized the United States, was taken into custody and accused of drug trafficking, and later insisted on his innocence while expressing regret for opposing the U.S. The U.S. president claimed removing Maduro eliminated a major cocaine-trafficking kingpin, while previously pardoning convicted Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández. Venezuelan opposition figures Edmundo González and María Corina Machado emerged as apparent election winners; Machado remains influential, has been in hiding at times, and recently received and dedicated a Nobel Peace Prize.
Read at The New Yorker
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