Optional musical accompaniment for the post below. The song is about Venezuela only in that the songwriter had a dream set in that country, which she’d never visited. I like it, and the lyrics are relevant in the sense that a (fictional) Venezuelan’s cherished hopes come to naught.
Dashed hopes are relevant here because we’re seeing cope in real time among South Florida U.S. House Republicans who represent the region’s Venezuelan diaspora. Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez held a press conference in Doral on January 3rd to crow about the Trump administration’s strike on Venezuela and capture of Maduro: (Miami Herald)
“There will be a new world order,” Giménez told reporters gathered outside Díaz-Balart’s office in Doral, the heart of the U.S. Venezuelan community. “It will be a world order that is bounded by and guided by the principles of liberty and democracy, not tyranny, communism and socialism.”
On that day, the three expressed confidence that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would replace Maduro. Just 48 hours later, they were defending the Trump administration’s decision to work with Maduro’s socialist VP instead: (gift link)
After months of calling Edmundo González — backed by opposition leader María Corina Machado — the legitimate winner of the 2024 Venezuelan elections, South Florida’s congressional Republicans are now defending Trump’s comments that Machado doesn’t have the “respect” to lead Venezuela, and Trump’s plans to collaborate with Nicolás Maduro’s allies after his dramatic capture by the U.S. military…
The timeline for any new elections is still up in the air. Trump did not mention democracy once during a press conference Saturday focused largely on his plans for oil extraction in Maduro’s absence. Speaking to reporters on Air Force 1 Sunday night, he said Venezuela would hold new elections “at the right time.” In an interview with the Miami Herald Sunday, Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar defended the president’s comments disparaging Machado as lacking the respect to lead Venezuela.
Nothing about these Republican politicians’ pivot is surprising. Falling in line is what Republican politicians and trolls (but I repeat myself) do. We are governed by right-wing trolls on X, and elected content creators and unelected influencers alike executed the same pivot.
amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders
— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 1:50 AM
The question in my mind is how Florida voters will react. As a lifelong observer, it’s hard not to be cynical about it and bitterly expect them to fall into line too.
There’s a push-pull issue here in the sense that Maduro’s overthrow is already giving Republicans who are primarily focused on deporting brown people a new opening. Here’s Ron DeSantis on that:
Even as he invoked the plight of Venezuelan exiles, DeSantis appeared to support the Trump administration’s announcement that Venezuelans previously in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) can “go home to a country that they love,” as opposed to seeking asylum. The governor claimed that “90-something percent” of asylum seekers entering the country were “bogus,” adding that Congress should “really clean that up.” Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans nationwide lost TPS last year — leaving many of the roughly 230,000 Venezuelans with TPS living in Florida as of March 2025 vulnerable to deportation to a home country still mired in political and economic upheaval.
If there’s a schism among Florida voters, maybe that’s where it will emerge. In addition to DeSantis’s continuing to slander asylum seekers, Stephen Miller still runs the deportation regime, and those 230K Venezuelans will be an attractive target to meet his quotas.
For Miller (and Floridians who hate hearing languages other than English spoken in cities), the rationale will be, “Hey, we overthrew your dictator, so go home and rebuild your shithole country. Next up: Cuba!”
Of course, Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about democracy in the U.S., let alone Venezuela. To the extent there is a strategy in Venezuela at all, it seems like a neo-imperialist project to benefit Trump and Trump-aligned oligarchs, like Putin’s setup.
But Trump is hardly the first Republican who harnessed an exile community’s sincere yearning for freedom in their country of origin for personal political gain. The question now is how much of a pretense is the Trump administration is willing to maintain to keep the diaspora community on side.
Judging by Trump’s deranged remarks last weekend, not much. Your guess at how that might affect Florida voter behavior in future elections is as good as mine.
Open thread.
