‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

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‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

This session with Judge Andrew Napolitano was a sad start to the New Year, as he stated at both the beginning and end of our conversation.  We are in a new world order created by what I call here Trump’s latest deal with the devil to raise his sagging popularity ratings at this critical time when the USA enters the season of midterm elections.

Whereas at the very start of his new term a year ago Trump made some very promising, even daring appointments, as for example Tulsi Gabbard to Director of National Intelligence, and whereas there were some wonderful actions to curb the Deep State, as for example, the virtual shut-down of US AID, the agency which had directed illicit funds to local NGOs and other actors engaging in regime change abroad, it appears that Trump has reversed course and has agreed to work with the power ministries for the sake of pumping up his political capital.  Nota bene, that this political capital was surely depleted not just by Trump’s failure to achieve a genuine peace in Gaza, not to mention still less success in ending the Russia-Ukraine War, but most recently depleted when he issued the new National Security Strategy document that upended all of US foreign policy priorities since 1949 and must have raised a hullaballoo on Capitol Hill and within the Republican Party establishment.

The net result is that the CIA, State Department and War Department are now once again running the show, setting the targets for foreign and military policy and executing that policy in ways that are simply astonishing and take your breath away, as happened this past weekend in the U.S. attack on Caracas and kidnapping of President Maduro. What we see again is the hubristic behavior of American officials that we have seen without end since Bush Jr. invaded Iraq in 2003. These people, like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are overconfident in U.S. capability to ‘run Venezuela’ not to mention run the world. 

The only thing that can stop this juggernaut is the other two world superpowers, Russia and China.  So far both are silent, which does not inspire confidence in where the world is headed.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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