Make Venezuela Great Again, but forget about the levee
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, January 7, 2026
DEAR READER: Happy New Year! And there’s good news already: We’re going to Make Venezuela Great Again! I know what you’re thinking: You’re thinking that running Venezuela was not one of your New Year’s resolutions.
It wasn’t on my list, either. I did OK in crusty Mr. Fenenga’s Geography class at Aberdeen High School back in the day, but the first thing I did when hearing the news was look at a map. Venezuela is right there at the top of South America, between Colombia and Guyana; tiny compared to Brazil. “Caracas,” in any case, is just plain fun to say. Sounds like a snack.
If he wanted to start our 250th anniversary year with a bold stroke, I was hoping President Trump would make good on his vow to seize Greenland and annex Canada. We’re all sick of Denmark’s foot-dragging, and glad Toronto lost the World Series to an American-as-apple-pie team after breaking our Mariner hearts.
OF ALL the despots in the world I would most like to see perp-walked across the tarmac, Nicolás Maduro was not Number 1. Granted, Maduro is a certified narco-scumbag who stole an election. Despite evidence his opponent had prevailed by more than a 2-to-1 margin, Maduro was awarded a third six-year term in 2024, thanks to a National Electoral Council controlled by his loyalists, and a lapdog Venezuelan Supreme Court.
What kind of president discounts free and fair elections?
That said, Maduro’s infamy pales in comparison to the actions of the fascist thug intent on rebuilding the USSR. In 1983, Ronald Reagan — a real Republican — warned against ignoring “the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.”
I’m getting tired of reminding the Trumplicans what it means to be a conservative. They have slurped so much Kool-Aid and kowtowed so often that they no longer understand, or don’t care, that in a republican form of government where we the people are the electorate, no kings are allowed.
The irony of Trump’s jingoistic kidnapping of a sovereign nation’s president — no matter how villainous — while allowing a stone-faced killer like Vladamir Putin to continue his naked war of aggression against Ukraine was not lost on its valiant leader. Asked about the U.S. attack on Venezuela, Volodymyr Zelenskyy smiled thinly and mused, “Venezuela? Well, how should one react to that? If this is how dictators can be dealt with, then the United States knows what to do next.”
Putin in handcuffs and leg shackles would thrill freedom-loving, small-d democrats everywhere around the world, unfortunately at the risk of World War III. However, had we intervened forcefully, together with our NATO allies, when Putin invaded Ukraine four years ago, the Russian dictator likely would have backed down. England learned a brutal lesson after 1938, when it thought Hitler could be appeased.
Sure enough, the alleged Supreme Leader of 26 million brainwashed North Koreans is now calling Maduro his “friend.” Kim Jong Un immediately fired a test salvo of hypersonic missiles, warning that America will pay a price for a “rogue and brutal” violation of international laws. This Baby Huey tyrant is hair-trigger irrational. But he has a point.
Not to be outdone, China chimed in with, “So, how come we can’t subjugate Taiwan?”
This is shaping up as the year of living dangerously.
For now, if you want to explore the Trump Administration’s true motive for wanting to “run” Venezuela, forget about the cocaine. Do some homework about its leading natural resource: yummy, viscous heavy crude oil.
DOMESTICALLY, Trump could at least remember he carried Grays Harbor County in 2024, not to mention 2020 and 2016. Thousands here rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act subsidies for health insurance, including prescription drug coverage. In this winter of our discontent, rural health care is on thin ice across America.
And here on the Harbor our hopes for a better economy hinge in part on the restoration of $84 million in federal grants for a long-awaited flood protection project. Completion of the levees would decrease burdensome flood-insurance premiums and satisfy building codes that presently discourage economic investment. An estimated 3,100 properties and nearly a thousand businesses would be protected by the levee project, sustaining 842 jobs, with the potential for hundreds more in an area beset by chronically high unemployment ever since the allegedly liberal Democrats told timber towns, “Let ’em eat cake!”
County Commissioner Vickie Raines summed up our chagrin last spring when the grants were rescinded, saying, “And just like that … years of due diligence and hard work” were “now down the drain.” Raines’ retirement this year will be well-deserved after decades of bipartisan public service, yet cause for enormous concern should a knee-jerk MAGA take her place at the Courthouse.
An official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency responded to the outcry over yanking the levee funds by saying that henceforth taxpayer dollars would be used only for “mission critical efforts.”
One can only conclude that running Venezuela is more mission critical than programs that directly benefit working-class Americans, including the 51.4% of voters here — 19,432 Harborites — who helped Donald J. Trump win a second term.
Meantime, the cost of the President’s Big Beautiful Ballroom is now projected at $400 million, double the originally announced cost.
Oh, I forgot: The White House remodeling is being funded by “private donors.”
Gee, Mr. President, please tell your billionaire friends we can build a levee with their chump change.
John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.
