Neither Maduro nor Trump
By Jorge Ramos* (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – They are so similar. Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro have gigantic egos and believe themselves invincible. They both weigh about the same, it’s obvious they don’t exercise, they are hunched over, and they are the same height (1.91 meters). They are accustomed to judging from above and seeing others as inferior.
Like all authoritarian leaders, they surround themselves with yes-men—people who never contradict them or tell them the truth—and what they value most is loyalty, not intelligence, morality, or justice. They take any disagreement as a personal attack and always believe they are right. They don’t care about data or facts. The only thing valid for them is their own opinion. They are know-it-alls, and if they don’t know something, they make it up. They imagine that the world revolves around them and not the other way around.
They are unbearable, impatient, arrogant, rude, and they laugh at their own jokes. They have no sense of humor. I have never heard them laugh heartily or seen them smile naturally. They dance in public as if they knew how to do it and as if people wanted to see them. But deep down, people mock them: their physique, their borrowed hairstyle and mustache, their constant blunders in rambling and endless speeches, that terrible propensity to talk about themselves and no one else, their belief that they are the last Coca-Cola in the desert, and the knowledge that they are dealing with grotesque, inflated figures fueled by hatred.
Trump and Maduro are everything we would never want our children to be.
They are experts at instilling fear. They personify the concept of the Marquis de Sade; better feared than respected or loved. They are champions of resentment; they can remember an affront or a bad gesture for years, and they know how to exact revenge at the moment that hurts the most. Businessmen, journalists, and other politicians bend over backward to avoid fighting with them. And to stay on their good side, they praise them, pat them on the back, tell them “very good, sir,” and give them invented awards.
They live on lies. Trump and Maduro claim to have won elections they lost. (Trump in 2020 and Maduro in 2013, 2018, and 2024.) They create their own reality, promote it as true, and then forget that they live in a bubble.
That’s where the similarities end.
Last night, Maduro, in an orange prisoner’s uniform, slept in a jail cell, while Trump—perhaps in silk pajamas—slept in the White House. Maduro is a brutal dictator (responsible for murders, fraud, and political prisoners) and, like it or not, Trump legitimately won the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections.
Fortunately, we don’t have to choose between the two.
It’s perfectly acceptable to reject both.
Venezuela is better off without Maduro, and there is a certain poetic justice in the fact that, finally, the dictator is in jail. Many Cubans would have liked to see Fidel Castro in prison, just as many Chileans waited, unsuccessfully, for Augusto Pinochet to die incarcerated. Therefore, I understand and applaud the celebrations of Venezuelans in exile after Maduro’s fall. Celebrations that, for the moment, cannot take place in Venezuela due to the repressive regime that still prevails.
But, at the same time, as a Mexican and a Latin American, I cannot support a US military intervention in the Americas. I have said this several times. There is a very long and sad history of US invasions and interference, from Mexico to Chile. It would have been preferable for the Maduro regime to collapse from within and for Venezuelans, and only Venezuelans, to determine the fate of their country. Furthermore, the military operation ordered by Trump did not receive congressional authorization, as required by U.S. law, violated international law and the United Nations Charter, signed in 1945, which prohibits the use of force, and sets a terrible precedent in case China wanted to invade Taiwan, Putin wanted to seize parts of Ukraine, or even if the United States were to attack drug cartels within Mexican territory.
Trump feels he is above the law. In a revealing interview with The New York Times, he said that he “doesn’t need international law” and that his only limit is “his own morality, his own mind.” This is very dangerous.
So, it is possible to say no to both Trump and Maduro.
For me, this is nothing new. I’ve had to confront both of them. Trump during a press conference in 2015 and Maduro in an interview at Miraflores Palace in 2019. Neither of them is used to being questioned. And their authoritarian nature immediately became apparent: Trump forcibly removed me from the press room with a bodyguard, while Maduro confiscated our cameras, cell phones, and the video cards from the interview, arrested us, and deported us the next morning. All just for asking questions.
But that’s what independent journalists do.
Neither one nor the other.
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*This article was originally published by Jorge Ramos News.