Tea at Trianon: Trump Acted. Raskin Whined.

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Trump Acted. Raskin Whined.

From Direct Line News:

Let’s start with the core reality Raskin tiptoes around while pretending to acknowledge it: Nicolás Maduro is not a normal head of state. He is not a misunderstood reformer. He is a narco-dictator indicted by the United States, accused of turning an entire nation into a cocaine pipeline while starving its people and exporting chaos throughout the hemisphere. When the U.S. government acts against someone like Maduro, it is not “imperialism.” It is law enforcement on a scale.
Raskin’s constitutional argument collapses under scrutiny. The president did not declare war on Venezuela. He authorized a targeted military operation to apprehend an indicted criminal enemy of the United States. Presidents of both parties have conducted such operations for decades without prior congressional approval against terrorists, warlords, pirates, and narco-traffickers. Congress is not consulted before every special operation any more than a judge convenes a jury before issuing an arrest warrant. The Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief for a reason.
Raskin’s second claim that drug trafficking was merely a “pretext” is even more detached from reality. The U.S. Department of Justice has spent years building a case against Maduro, accusing him of conspiring to flood the United States with cocaine using state institutions and foreign terrorist groups. This is not speculative. It is documented. Maduro’s regime has been sanctioned, indicted, and internationally isolated precisely because it operates as a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government.
To distract from that reality, Raskin points to President Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. This is classic whataboutism masquerading as moral clarity. Hernández’s pardon, controversial or not, does not magically erase Maduro’s crimes. Nor does it invalidate the mountains of evidence against the Venezuelan regime. Law enforcement does not stop arresting bank robbers because one criminal elsewhere received clemency. That argument would be laughed out of any courtroom. (Read more.)