No one knows a person’s true motives except himself or herself. Something I often hear from people who work directly with President Donald Trump, who maybe didn’t know or like him before, is that they’re surprised at just how much he cares about people. They’d fallen for the caricature of the man portrayed in most of the media — one that he admittedly often fuels himself — but behind closed doors, they say he truly enjoys doing things for others.
Take his foreign policy, for example. I don’t know how many wars and conflicts he’s ended or prevented at this point, but one doesn’t do that because one doesn’t care. Marco Rubio has said countless times that the president hates war and sees no reason why people shouldn’t find other ways to solve their problems. Does he boast about it a lot? Sure. Does he want a Nobel Peace Prize and other praise for it? Yes. But, believe it or not, that doesn’t take away from everything he’s done for tens of millions of people. Two things can be true at once.
On Friday, the president signed an executive order called “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People.”
Essentially, what it does is safeguard Venezuelan oil revenue in United States Treasury accounts, so that creditors, activist judges, and other parties can’t touch and/or steal it. The oil is considered Venezuela’s sovereign property, and the U.S. is merely taking custodial control. The funds will not be used for commercial activity in the U.S. during Venezuela’s transition away from tyranny, and they can only be released under Rubio’s authority once a legitimate Venezuelan government is in place.
Let’s not get it twisted. This and all of the president’s other Venezuelan policies are “America First.” To think anything else would be naive. The ultimate goal includes improving our energy resources; creating opportunities for U.S. companies; keeping adversaries, ranging from China to Hezbollah, at bay; curbing mass migration; and stopping the flow of drugs into our country, as well as the organized crime that accompanies them. This isn’t Trump’s charity project.
This isn’t 2003, either. Democrats and other leftists can’t seem to understand that what Trump did in a few hours on a single Saturday morning is the beginning of something incredibly beneficial for our country. Bernie Sanders, for example, was on X on Friday, screaming about imperialism and how Trump is only doing this to line his pockets with oil money.
Maduro was a dictator.
But let’s not pretend Trump cares about democracy.
He cozies up to dictators all over the world when it suits him.
Trump has been clear: he wants Venezuela’s oil.
That’s not democracy. That’s imperialism.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 9, 2026
But what Sanders fails to understand is that even if that were the case, and it’s not, most people in Venezuela — and the Venezuelan diaspora — would not care. They’ve been dreaming about a moment in which Maduro is no longer their problem for years. In 2024, they came close to making it happen on their own. They just needed a little boost. Unfortunately, the Joe Biden administration gave Maduro the boost instead, and helped set back all of their efforts.
One of my favorite Venezuelan analysts and writers pointed this out on X today. Emmanuel Rincón responded to Sanders and said, “We don’t care. Venezuelans want freedom and we are happy. We’ll pay for it with oil — our future in freedom is worth more. We have resources to spare, and we had already spent 26 years giving them away to Cuba, China, and Russia.” Several other prominent Venezuelans echoed this sentiment.
We don’t care. Venezuelans want freedom and we are happy. We’ll pay for it with oil—our future in freedom is worth more. We have resources to spare, and we had already spent 26 years giving them away to Cuba, China, and Russia.
— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) January 9, 2026
As I wrote the other day, Trump’s approval ratings in various Central and South American countries are through the roof in the days following Maduro’s arrest, and his numbers with Hispanic people in the United States are currently high because many of them have seen firsthand, or have family and friends who have seen firsthand, what a cancer Maduro was on our entire two-continent region.
This video, which is from a Venezuelan-owned store that I assume is somewhere in Central or South America, has gone viral on X over the past 24 hours, because the owner hung pictures of Trump on the wall. If that’s not a sign of triumph and gratitude, I don’t know what is.
Venezuelan business owners are now putting portraits of President Trump up in their stores..
Liberals are absolutely FURIOUS.. 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/UnhxsHzNqU
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) January 10, 2026
Something else people such as Sanders either miss or, more likely, purposely ignore, is that our president has made it clear that he wants to do what’s best for both the United States and the people of Venezuela. He has advocated for them and talked about the poor conditions in which many of them currently live, and how he wants to see them safe and financially secure again.
For example, during his meeting with oil executives on Friday, the topic of who would be working for these oil companies in Venezuela came up. The president was quick to speak up and say that he hopes these companies will actually hire Venezuelans to do it. Jobs and prosperity aren’t something that country has seen a lot of lately, and the president knows how important that would be for the people.
He’s called for the release of hundreds of political prisoners, which isn’t really happening yet, but I’ll write more about that later. I have no doubt that he’ll get that done as well.
On Saturday on Truth Social, the president also reiterated his humanitarian support.
“I love the Venezuelan people, and am already making Venezuela rich and safe again,” he wrote. “Congratulations and thanks you to all of those people who are making this possible!!!!”
In the past week, I can count on one hand the number of Democrats I’ve heard say a single word about the welfare of the people of Venezuela. Instead, they’ve raised hell about how Trump hurt their feelings because he didn’t consult with them before taking down one of the biggest tyrants in the world, or they’ve yelled about imperialism or whatever else they can say to make the president look bad. Agree with his methods or not, if you can’t even take a moment to admit what a good thing this is for the millions of people who live in that country or want to return to it, you might have a problem.
It’s funny, I’ve spent a lifetime of the left telling me that because I tend to vote Republican and have conservative values, somehow that makes me racist or xenophobic, which is something I’ve never understood. That type of rhetoric ramped way up over the last decade as Trump entered the political scene. The idea that our side wanted secure borders and opposed mass migration somehow became equated with the idea that we simply didn’t like people from Latin America.
But over the past week, what I’ve seen is my president doing one of the single greatest things for Latin America that anyone has done in decades, giving hope to millions of people who live with daily fear of repression and who face extreme poverty. He’s changing the world.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have not only condemned his actions, but they’ve spent the same week elevating a middle-class white woman who put herself into a precarious situation, as if she were the great tragedy of our time. Was her death tragic? Yes, but it was also an isolated local incident that is only receiving national attention because it’s politically useful for Democrats.
Trump’s not a saint; he’s a dealmaker. He’s a pragmatic businessman. But he’s also a compassionate person in his own way. That’s more than I can say for most of our politicians with “Ds” next to their names. He’s done more for this country and many others around the world in one year than most people do in their lifetimes. That’s real leadership, and it seems like the only thing the Democrats have left to match it with is outrage.
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