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SAY WHAT? - Many Angelenos choked on their coffee or tea Saturday morning as the rambling wreck of a U.S. President took to a microphone at his Florida mansion to gloat about a military raid onto foreign soil.
Donald Trump grabbed credit for arresting another nation’s ruler on accusations of drug trafficking. Because this was Trump, such gloating came overstuffed with falsehoods. One especially noxious lie and insult hit close to home: That L.A. police forces were somehow inadequate for demands they faced on the ground in 2025 and that the L.A. police chief had pleaded for Trump to send federal troops to the city.
This absurdly false and delusional statement came during a press briefing in which Pres. Trump labeled the Venezuelan president the kingpin of a “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States.”
The semi-coherent statement also raises questions about the President’s incapacity to distinguish facts from fantasy. And it shows a profoundly dangerous blurring of lines, in his head and in this White House, between deployment of troops inside the U.S. and outside the U.S. and between law and lawlessness.
Stopping drug trafficking was the supposed basis for the lethal incursion by specially trained U.S. troops into Caracas during the wee hours of Saturday morning. That’s where they located and snatched Maduro and his wife from their fortified compound. Maduro appeared in court in New York on Monday to face accusations of drug-dealing.
But just one month earlier, Trump pardoned and released from a U.S. prison one of the most notorious and large-scale drug dealers in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was convicted in U.S. federal court in March 2023 of directing the smuggling and sale of more than 400 tons of cocaine in the U.S. While conducting his massive criminal enterprise, Hernandez reportedly told co-conspirators that his aim was to “shove drugs up the nose of gringos.”
Trump pardoned Hernandez in early December. He walked out of jail on Dec. 2, a free man. Trump’s sloppy justification for the pardon was political, not factual: “Many of the people of Honduras said it was a Biden setup,” Trump told reporters.
Then Trump, in early December, uttered a bizarre excuse that sounds even more rotten and nonsensical in light of the targeting and extraction of Maduro from Venezuela that he is reveling in now: “You take any country you want, if somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life."
One hallmark of American democracy is stability and consistency in application of the rule of law. Trump’s glaring hypocrisy in his disparate official treatment of Hernandez and Maduro showcase his contempt for this standard and his effort to destroy it.
Reaction from Americans — not only Democrats, but also independents and Republicans — has been swift and strong. Many are calling to demand more rigorous oversight of the President by their Member of Congress and two Senators by phoning the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Response is also strategic and sustained. This Friday, members of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD) will be joining in visibility events on local freeway overpasses to call out the President’s hypocrisy and lies and to urge pushback.
Plus, EAPD is continuing work to educate voters around L.A. about the new Congressional districts that voters approved with enactment of Prop 50 in November. Given the new boundaries, Californians are poised to send 5 more Democrats to the U.S. House. EAPD volunteers will be doing their part, and then some, to turn Congress blue in 2026 and to hold Trump accountable, at last, to the Constitution and the rule of law.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns have appeared in USA Today and leading newspapers across more than 20 states. Based in Eagle Rock, he serves as president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), California’s largest grassroots Democratic club with over 1,100 members. Hans brings decades of organizing and policy experience to his work, advancing equity and accountability in local and national politics.)
