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Monday’s National Report laid out a stark contrast inside the Republican family, as Rep. Greg Steube stepped up to defend President Trump’s hardline pressure on the Maduro regime and push back against libertarian handwringing. Steube reminded viewers that the primary duty of any president is to protect American lives and borders, and that toughness abroad often prevents threats from washing ashore. Conservatives should applaud a lawmaker who puts national security ahead of ideological purity and petty infighting.
The facts on the ground show why Steube and other patriots are alarmed: the administration has increasingly targeted Venezuela-linked narco-terror networks with maritime strikes and sanctions aimed at crippling criminal revenue streams that fund chaos. Those strikes and interventions are not theater — they’ve degraded trafficking capabilities and disrupted networks that funnel poison toward our communities. Anyone who shrugs at that reality does a disservice to the grieving families whose children were lost to cartel fentanyl and cocaine.
Washington’s escalation also included a move to choke off the regime’s lifeline — a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers and legal designations that treat some Venezuelan criminal networks as terrorist organizations. These are tools used to deny bad actors the resources to export misery, and to hold an outlaw regime accountable for aiding and abetting transnational crime. For patriots who measure policy by results, these steps are morally defensible and strategically necessary.
Sen. Rand Paul, a sincere but sometimes impractical defender of nonintervention, warned the country against “regime change” and urged caution on war powers. That principled caution is understandable in the abstract, but it risks becoming an excuse for paralysis when our southern hemisphere is being weaponized against America by drug cartels and corrupt officials. We can respect constitutional debate while also recognizing that denial and delay are not protection; decisive action can save American lives.
The administration has paired kinetic moves with financial pressure — Treasury and OFAC sanctions have been used to choke off money-laundering networks and affiliates that enrich narco-terror groups operating out of Venezuela. Those designations are the legal scaffolding for a campaign meant to deprive tyrants and traffickers of the spoils that let them terrorize neighbors and export criminality. Lawmakers who reflexively defend procedural niceties over American safety should be pressed to explain which children they would rather leave unprotected.
Republican voters want leaders who will stand strong, defend the homeland, and confront threats where they fester — not hedgehogs who curl up when the going gets tough. If Greg Steube and other conservatives rally behind a unified, lawful campaign to dismantle the narco-regime in Venezuela, the GOP will be keeping its promise to the American people: security first, excuses last. Congress should provide lawful oversight, but it must not hamstring a president who is using every tool to stop the flow of death into our towns.
