[American Thinker] National security adviser John Bolton has never suffered fools gladly, so just now, from Abu Dhabi, he's let Venezuela's dictator, Nicolás Maduro, have it, telling him to cut the clown show in Caracas and just get out.Here is what the Associated Press reports:
The United States stepped up its criticism of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday with an explicit call for the formation of a new government in the South American country.Bolton's remarks are refreshing, because he's not even pretending Maduro's president these days. He actually isn't, because, having gotten himself into office by a fraud election and then illegally swearing himself in in front of judges instead of the opposition legislature, as the law says he must, he hardly is.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it stood behind the head of Venezuela's opposition-run congress, Juan Guaido, who said on Friday that he was prepared to step into the presidency temporarily to replace Maduro.
The statement was the latest in a series of Trump administration attacks on Maduro, whose inauguration to a new term as president on Thursday has been widely denounced as illegitimate.
First thing we see from this is a new U.S. willingness to take a logical response from the reality on the ground, and that's good. That's also new, because for 20 years, the U.S. kept pretending.
Second, Bolton's saying what everyone in the region is thinking and, up until now, has been too afraid to say. He knows he has these nations behind him, so what we are seeing is that America is finally taking the lead, and there may well be an avalanche of other nations to follow.