POLITICS: How to follow up on Trump’s smashing Venezuela success

“If you don’t know, now you know,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio summed up Saturday: Drug lords and dictators around the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere, are on notice after US forces blew through prepared defenses to arrest Venezuelan “President” Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Operation Absolute Resolve was stunningly successful, fresh testimony to the tremendous professionalism of America’s servicemen and -women — and of course to the resolve of President Donald Trump.

This was a surgically precise operation to arrest a goon who has impoverished his nation and undermined our own by exporting drugs and vicious criminals; the European Union, like Washington, refused to recognize him as the legitimate president after he blatantly stole the 2024 election.

Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, takes charge for now in Caracas — and says she won’t let the country be a US “colony.”

Trump says we’re “going to run the country” and has noted that the Pentagon has a “second wave” ready to act if needed; he told The Post’s Steve Nelson that he sees no need for US boots on the ground in Venezuela as long as Rodríguez ­behaves herself.

His goal is a “safe, proper and judicious transition,” which means national voting as soon as possible, for a return to full democracy. Excellent: Let the people decide in a free and fair election.

That should be the top priority of all people of goodwill, around the globe and in US politics: Make sure what comes next is the best for the people of Venezuela.

Of course reflexive America-haters like UN Secretary-General António Guterres prefer to wring their hands, while Trump-bashers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted that the operation is “about oil and regime change” as well as a bid to “to distract from Epstein + skyrocketing healthcare costs.”

OK: Taking out an international criminal who controls a once-sovereign nation plainly does overlap with “regime change,” and Trump (being Trump) keeps talking about Venezuela’s oil resources, but this is endlessly far from any foolish crusade to remake the world.

It is about fighting the global cartels; this operation signals other players from Mexico to China that Trump is deadly serious about ending  the flow of deadly drugs.

It’s also about restoring the Monroe Doctrine, the centuries-old US policy against letting old-world nations interfere in this hemisphere: Maduro’s bid to remain in power despite the wishes of Venezuela’s people relied not just on Cuba, but on Iran, China and Russia and even the Mideast terror group Hezbollah.

As for the oil: The regime’s feckless management of Venezuela’s industry was central to the nation’s impoverishment as exports dropped from over than 3 million barrels a day to under 900,000 — with the profits benefiting only Maduro’s clique.

Fixing that (adding a half-million barrels a day should be within reach in a matter of months) will be a huge win for living standards and political stability.

Gov. Kathy Hochul gave a more-centrist Democratic complaint by tweeting about “President Trump’s flagrant abuse of power by acting without congressional approval”; it’s a near-guarantee that Dems will focus on such procedural gripes since the substanceof this operation is so plainly righteous.  

And never mind that notifying anyone in Congress would’ve risked a leak that might well have cost American lives. 

Trump gave Maduro plenty of chances to exit voluntarily, clearly signaling with months of strikes on drug boats and a massive buildup of US forces that he wasn’t going to back down; Maduro chose to treat it all as a bluff.

Oops.

Maduro and Cilia Flores, his wife, are being extradited to the Southern District of New York to face justice, facing drug trafficking/ narco-terrorism charges based on a 2020 indictment.

Uncle Sam pegged Maduro as the leader of the “Cartel of the Suns,” the cabal of Venezuelan military and civilian officials and dirty cops who’ve gotten rich off the cocaine trade.

As for what comes next in Venezuela: Everyone will be better off if a new, fully legitimate and secure civilian government is installed as rapidly as practical.

Happily, Venezuela is not Afghanistan or Iraq: It has long decades of experience as an orderly democracy from 1958 until Hugo Chavez took over in 2002; those institutions need rebuilding, not “nation-building.”

Its society is homogeneous, without the deep ethnic or religious divisions — and it is surrounded by other democracies who will be eager to foster a positive transition.

Yes, major questions remain about what comes next: Edmundo González was the legitimate winner of the last election, a stand-in for María Corina Machado, who’d led the opposition for years now (winning the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize) — and while that opposition united firmly against the Chavez-Maduro regime, a return to normalcy will also bring democratic disagreements.

Plus, many Iranian and Russian agents are embedded in Caracas, while the Cuban forces that Maduro brought in for his own protection also lurk in the capital, and the regime-sponsored “colectivo” paramilitary gangs as well as menaces like Tren de Aragua are active across the country.

Yet those are problems Venezuela’s new government is best fit to handle — and more reason for Team Trump to ensure that “safe, proper and judicious transition” is also rapid.

Roughly a quarter of Venezuela’s 31 million people have fled their homeland under the rule of Chavez and Maduro, even as the regime shacked up with the cartels and America’s enemies around the globe: President Trump’s bold leadership has put an end to that horror, an immediate boost to US security.

Now comes the tricky work of ensuring that the followup to Operation Absolute Resolve is every bit as much of a smashing success.

Will Trump’s domestic critics help make that happen, or stand in the way? Consider that a litmus test of patriotism.