Ron DeSantis breaks silence on Nicolás Maduro

More than 48 hours after American forces apprehended Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the usually voluble Gov. Ron DeSantis broke his silence on the arrest and regime change, belatedly endorsing the move by the Donald Trump administration.

“For many, many years, we’ve seen the country of Venezuela suffering under the yoke of Marxist ideology, first with Hugo Chavez, and then with Nicolás Maduro,” DeSantis said in Sanderson.

“We’ve had a lot of people in the state of Florida that have firsthand knowledge of that. There’s people that have fled to the United States. We have a big community in South Florida, and you will be hard-pressed to find a reign as destructive as the Chavez-Maduro reign.”

The Governor said Maduro was responsible for taking “a country that had been prosperous and has an abundance of resources, and basically destroying it, making it so that it’s miserable, repressed, and now one of the poorest countries.”

DeSantis then praised the legal moves and the raid that brought Maduro into custody.

“Maduro was indicted, and he is the head of a drug cartel, and he was releasing people from his prisons and sending them to our southern border under the (Joe) Biden administration,” DeSantis added. “He deserves to be brought to justice.”

DeSantis then launched into formal remarks about immigration enforcement.

DeSantis has struck a more cautious tone on Venezuela than other Republicans since becoming Governor. In 2019, for example, he advised against overt American military involvement and suggested that removing Maduro was an issue for Venezuelans.

“I’m happy to provide U.S. support to do what we can, but the idea that you’re going to have U.S. boots on the ground, I think, is something that probably isn’t the wise course of action now.”

“Ultimately,” DeSantis added, “this is a matter for the people of Venezuela to seize their destiny.”

More recently, DeSantis has said he was open to attacks on boats helmed by “narco-terrorists” in what was a prelude to the action over the weekend.

“I think that the U.S. has a right to treat it and engage it as a military threat, simply because we’ve seen over the last 10, 20 years, the amount of people that have been killed by cartels bringing drugs in to our country,” DeSantis said at Good Greek Moving & Storage West Palm Beach.