I’ve spent my adult life hunting the world’s worst predators—first overseas as a U.S. Navy SEAL, and later at home as the founder and CEO of Covenant Rescue Group, working to pull children out of trafficking networks most Americans never see. That work teaches you a hard truth: predators only stop when someone stops them.
President Trump understood that truth.
He also understood exactly who Nicolás Maduro is—not a legitimate head of state acting in good faith, but the illegitimate president of Venezuela and the head of a criminal regime that fused government power with cartels, traffickers, and terror networks. Maduro wasn’t governing a country. He was running a pipeline—moving drugs, money, and human beings north while his people starved.
So Trump acted.
Maduro was taken—dragged from his bed, black-bagged, put on a plane, and delivered to New York to face justice for turning Venezuela into a narco-state that exports poison and human misery across our hemisphere.
His regime was never a misunderstood socialist experiment. It was a criminal enterprise—a cartel state that partnered with traffickers and gangs to flood American streets with cocaine and fentanyl. Those drugs kill tens of thousands of our children every year.
While that poison flowed north, the regime’s trafficking pipelines moved human beings like cargo. I have seen it firsthand: border chaos weaponized, children deliberately targeted, cartel-linked individuals attempting to buy, sell, and abuse minors inside our own country.
Even now, Maduro shows exactly who he is. Standing before a U.S. court, he called himself “a decent man” while pleading not guilty to narco-terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking.
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Decent men do not turn nations into drug corridors. Decent men do not work hand in glove with cartels that poison American communities. Decent men do not preside over trafficking networks that destroy children’s lives for profit.
We have all seen the footage—Maduro dancing, grinning, celebrating himself while his regime exported death northward. That wasn’t bravado. That was contempt. Contempt for parents burying their children. Contempt for law enforcement overwhelmed at the border. Contempt for victims whose lives were shattered so his inner circle could get rich.
When a man like that calls himself “decent,” he is not defending himself. He is dancing on the graves of the people his regime helped kill.
President Trump did not respond with another strongly worded letter. He did not wire another pallet of taxpayer money. He did not fund another NGO to host conferences and issue reports. Instead, he sent professionals to eliminate the threat at its source. Strength. Clarity. Resolve. Peace through strength—not surrender.
That is where the lines are drawn. Democrats erupted in outrage—lecturing about “imperialism” and handwringing over “sovereignty.” Not because Maduro deserved defending, but because Donald Trump was the one who acted. Meanwhile, Venezuelans themselves celebrated the removal of the man who destroyed their country.
This moment in history strips away all illusions. There are only two paths forward for Americans: we project strength and defend our people, or we keep negotiating with evil and feign surprise as the body count rises. I have faced evil head-on—as a SEAL sniper, as a law-enforcement officer, and as the leader of an organization rescuing children from hell. I do not believe in half measures. I believe in results.
Alabama’s next senator needs to be a warrior who will take on Washington. Secure the border. Crush the cartels. Defund the woke waste. And I will stand shoulder to shoulder with leaders—like President Trump—who act with strength and put America first, not apologize for it.
Protecting America isn’t controversial. It’s the bare minimum.
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