New York Post: Madur-GO! Nashville Hating Pol Seeks to Represent Nashville in Congress. More on National Guard Tragedy. Word of the Year. & More
Will Dancing Dictator Nicolas Maduro be—uh—persuaded to dance off stage and into exile? The feisty New York Post front page screams “Madur-GO.” President Trump has given “an ultimatum to the Venezuelan thug”: “Step down or else!” More on the ultimatum. And here.
A more sober take on the impending crisis with our neighbor to the south is put forward in this editorial in the Wall Street Journal—it is headlined “The High Stakes in Venezuela”:
President Trump is in a high-stakes showdown with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and the dictator’s backers in Havana and Moscow. One of the two presidents is going to lose, and it will be Mr. Trump if Mr. Maduro isn’t ousted one way or another. …
[Maduro]may not be entirely master of his own fate. Cuba’s intelligence service is solidly behind him and no doubt is urging him to stay. Our sources believe Cuban intelligence is working closely with Mr. Maduro’s military counterintelligence network, the DGCIM. They work together to spy on the country’s officer corps to disrupt a potential coup attempt.
Venezuela matters to Cuba as a force for revolution on the Latin American continent. Leaders in Havana also know that if Mr. Maduro falls to a pro-American government, Mr. Trump may next turn his attention to them. They know Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s history as an enemy of the Castros and the Latin left. …
The editors also consider that Moscow has an interest in keeping Maduro in power, but conclude:
We think deposing Mr. Maduro is in the U.S. national interest given how he has spread refugees and mayhem in the region. No one should think this would be an American “coup.” Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly to elect the opposition in the 2024 presidential race, but Mr. Maduro refused to cede power. Deposing him in favor of the elected president would restore democracy….
But if Mr. Maduro refuses to leave, and Mr. Trump shrinks from acting to depose him, Mr. Trump and the credibility of the U.S. will be the losers. Mr. Trump chose this showdown, and it will cost America and the region dearly if Mr. Maduro emerges triumphant.
Miranda Devine’s piece on the troubles of FBI Director Kash Patel is grim—Devine reports on the “withering criticism” Patel is receiving, but (and here’s why this may be so bad for Patel) doesn’t refute it:
The Patel-led FBI is described in the 115-page report as a “rudderless ship” and “all f–ked up.” …
A troubling new report card on the first six months of Patel’s leadership concludes he is “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “something of a clown,” according to the alliance, which in two previous reports warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI during the Biden administration.
There’s a special election for a seat in Congress tomorrow in Tennessee, and if Republicans don’t win, they should panic—it’s not just that it’s a ruby red district that Trump carried by 20 points. It’s that Dem candidate Aftyn Behn has professed her dislike for the cultural norms of the district:
“Some of your past tweets have gotten attention, including in 2020 when you posted to — and then deleted — a post that said, ‘Good morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified,’” Raju said. “Another you appear to support a demand to ‘defund the police.’ Do you regret posting those comments?”…
Raju then pressed Behn about comments from a 2020 podcast in which she sharply criticized Nashville, the largest city in the district she hopes to represent. The clip resurfaced during the campaign.
“I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country. But I hate it,” she said in the recording.
Despite Behn’s reservations about the District she aspires to represent, it appears to be a close race. The Republican candidate is Matt Van Epps, a West Point graduate, combat veteran, and advocate for families. Go figure.
We’re all reeling from the Thanksgiving-eve ambush of two members of the National Guard blocks from the White House by an Afghan refugee. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died; her father announced her death on Thanksgiving Day. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in critical condition. The reactions to the shootings, focusing on President Trump rather than the shooter, were infuriating. Rafael Mangual writes in City Journal:
Jane Mayer, a vocal Trump critic, took to X to blame the president for the tragedy. Mayer wrote that the Guard members “had virtually nothing to do but pick up trash,” that the Guard’s presence in D.C. was “for political show,” and that Beckstrom and Wolfe “should never have been deployed.”
Echoing Mayer on PBS, former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem criticized the president’s decision to deploy Guardsmen in D.C., which she said left them with an unclear mission that “made them vulnerable.” In its coverage of the shooting, the New York Times ended a reported piece with a quote from a West Virginia resident who blamed the president, stating that the Guardsmen “shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Some might make that same claim about Lakanwal [the suspect], but the Times apparently could not find anyone saying so for its coverage.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came to the U.S. under the auspices of the Biden resettlement plan after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and was recently granted asylum. Townhall notes that 5,000 Afghanis settled in the U.S. have been flagged as security threats. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has said Lakanwal was “radicalized” after he came to the United States.
In disputes over property, an axiom is that “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” Being here already is maybe not nine-tenths of the law, but it makes addressing the issue traumatic and violence-prone, as open-border advocates knew all along that it would be.
The Washington Post published a story on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s alleged command to leave no survivors in the first sinking of an apparent narco boat in the Caribbean. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review that, if what the newspaper alleges is true, it was “at best, a war crime under federal law.” Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter counters that there is a “Democrat/Regime Media Plot Against Pete Hegseth“:
It’s almost painfully obvious what a scam and a setup this whole “Pete Hegseth is killing innocent drug dealers!” thing is. Mysterious anonymous sources just happened to say exactly what the Democrats needed said following their illegal orders nonsense of last week, and exactly when they needed to change the subject from the murder of a soldier that was arguably contributed to by their illegal orders nonsense of last week.
Must Be Mentioned: “I grew up in public housing, and I know how to fix Obamacare,” avers Senator Rick Scott. Because Obamacare is a failure that cannot survive without massive subsidies, the Senate will have another chance to debate it. … Legendary playwright Tom Stoppard has died. David Mamet and John Podhoretz take note. … Oxford University Press has named “rage bait” and word of the year for 2025. Isn’t that two words?
In the crush of last week, Ms. Must unforgivably forgot to mention a Wall Street Journal article on the conservative women who “Flip the Script: Kids First, Then Career.” Our own Carrie Lukas was quoted as saying, “If you decide to not work or not lean in in the first 10 years of being a mom and you do that in your 20s, there’s still plenty of time to start working in your 30s and have a meaningful career.”
