I think that ship has sailed and legitimacy was left on the dock.
Because she âstoleâ the Nobel Peace Prize from him last year.
That she dedicated it to him is not the same, nor is the Fifa peace Prize.
Actually the legally elected President is Gonzales, as recognized by the US at the time:
Machado is proposing that he should be taking the office, not her.
Nice Mr Maduro has now agreed to tell Americans all about the Joe Biden administration. Yes! This Venezuelan has spoken.
He said,
âWith all due respect, Mr. President⊠go pull the last four years of FBI and DEA reports out of their Colombia offices yourself.
Youâll see exactly who financed, who moved, who directed, and who ran the âfamous Tren de Aragua,â who took it to Colombia, and who took it to the United States⊠and youâll discover it was people with deep ties to the previous Biden administration who wanted to use that gang to bring terrorism to Venezuela.
Weâre the ones who crushed it.âThen he flips to a loving smile: âOur migrants are not criminals, theyâre good, hardworking people who only left because of sanctions⊠and we welcome them home with a warm embrace.â He literally accused the Biden admin of creating Tren de Aragua, shipping it into the U.S., and trying to use it as a terrorist weapon against Venezuela - then dared Trump to declassify the intel to prove it! How is the left going to spin this one?
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âRubioâs brother-in-law spent over a decade in federal prison for moving cocaine. I already knew this part. And it wasnât for small-time dealing - weâre talking hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs through a Miami operation that used exotic animal cages as cover.
Orlando Cicilia ran the logistics for what court records show was a $79 million drug ring while young Marco built the actual cages - cleaning parrot shit for cash to buy Dolphins tickets.
The American Prospect just published something remarkable - and I want to be clear, this is Maureen Tkacikâs reporting, not mine. She traced how that teenage connection to Miamiâs cocaine cowboys connects directly to Rubioâs current job as Secretary of State - where heâs backing every drug-connected strongman in Latin America while claiming to fight narco-terrorism.
Hereâs what Tkacikâs reporting shows:
The same family that employed teenage Rubio - the Tabraues - ran cocaine for the CIA. Not allegedly. Not conspiracy theory bullshit. A CIA handler named Gary Mattocks testified in open court in 1989 that Guillermo Tabraue had been his Agency asset for years through something called the DEACON program. The Agency paid him $1,400 a month in the 1970s to inform on rival drug traffickers while running his own loads.
So the setup was this - according to the American Prospect investigation - Cuban exile groups from the Bay of Pigs got folded into CIA operations. Those operations needed funding that Congress wouldnât approve. Drug money filled the gap. And anyone who threatened to expose it faced serious consequences. âDEA agent Kiki Camarena was tortured and murdered in Mexico in 1985 - and three officials involved in the investigation have claimed FĂ©lix RodrĂguez orchestrated the hit. RodrĂguez denies involvement.â
Thatâs the machinery Rubio grew up adjacent to.
Not metaphorically - literally.
According to court documents -Tkacik cites - testimony from gang members at trial - cocaine was being stored and packaged in the same house where 14-year-old Marco lived with his family in 1985. The house was an active drug operation while the Rubios were staying there.
Fast forward to 2025. Rubio is now running point on Latin America policy. And the pattern Tkacik documents is remarkable.
In September - five months after investigators revealed that Ecuador President Daniel Noboaâs family banana business had shipped 700 kilos of cocaine to Europe - Rubio called him an âincredibly willing partnerâ in fighting narco-terrorism. The American Prospect cites reporting from OCCRP and Revista Raya showing the drugs were found hidden in containers at the familyâs own port. Three separate seizures between 2020 and 2022. But Noboaâs the good guy because heâs right-wing and cooperative.
For years - right up until his March 2024 conviction - Rubio publicly praised Juan Orlando HernĂĄndez of Honduras as a champion drug warrior. According to the DOJ indictment Tkacik references - HernĂĄndez was personally taking bribes from El Chapo. He was using the Honduran military to protect cocaine shipments. He facilitated 400 tons of cocaine entering the United States while U.S. taxpayers sent his government $156 million for âanti-narcoticsâ work. His own brother got indicted in 2018 for trafficking 158 tons with containers literally stamped âTHâ for Tony HernĂĄndez.
Rubio met with him anyway. Posted photos. Called him a partner. The American Prospect includes the receipts - Rubioâs own Facebook posts praising HernĂĄndez.
Trump just pardoned HernĂĄndez. Rubio said in an interview YESTERDAY - that he was unfamiliar with the case.
I wanted to make sure I got this part right - so hereâ exactly how it went down:
When pressed by George Stephanopoulos about the difference between pardoning HernĂĄndez and capturing Murado on ABCâs âThis Weekâ on January 4, 2026:
STEPHANOPOULOS: HernĂĄndez was convicted by a jury.
RUBIO: I understand. Youâre asking â the pardon authority is something that Iâm not involved in in my role. Iâm not criticizing it. I canât just comment on it because I just wasnât involved in those deliberations.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you support it?
RUBIO: I wasnât involved in those deliberations. I havenât looked at the case file. I havenât looked at the arguments made by â Iâve got a bunch of other things going on that are within my purview as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, but pardons arenât one of them. So I just â I canât comment on a case that, frankly, Iâm aware of but not deeply familiar with, and I donât want to comment on something that I havenât had a chance to be involved in reviewing the file and the rationale behind it.
SO - to be clear - Rubio has:
Publicly praised HernĂĄndez multiple times while he was under investigation.
Posted photos with him on Facebook thanking him for âtargeting drug traffickersâ
Met with him repeatedly as a Senator focused on Latin America policy
Had three of his staffers lobbied by BGR Group (the firm HernĂĄndez hired to improve his image in Washington)
BUT HE IS UNFAMILIAR WITH THE CASE?
This is the âMike Johnson playbookâ - playing dumb to avoid defending the indefensible. The timing is particularly striking given that Rubio is Secretary of State with Latin America as a core focus, and the pardon happened less than a month ago while he was actively involved in planning the Venezuela operation that was explicitly justified using drug trafficking charges.
ANYWAY - back to the American Prospect article.
The reporting on the historical stuff is dense - Tkacik walks through Operation Condor, Iran-Contra, the whole sordid machinery of how anti-communist crusades got funded through cocaine in the 1970s and 80s. Manuel Artimeâs MRR group running guns and drugs out of Nicaragua. Barry Sealâs CIA-camera-equipped plane going down with weapons for the Contras. Ramon Milian-Rodriguez laundering MedellĂn cartel cash and - according to his own testimony - sending just under $10 million directly to FĂ©lix RodrĂguez for the anti-Sandinista cause.
But hereâs what matters now: that machinery never stopped. It just got a rebrand.
The same logic - back right-wing strongmen regardless of their criminal enterprises because theyâre âanti-communistâ or âtough on migrationâ or whatever the current justification is - is playing out in real time. Tkacikâs piece documents how Rubio is running the updated version.
Backing Nayib Bukele in El Salvador despite his documented MS-13 alliances. Cheerleading Javier Milei in Argentina despite the cocaine trafficking scandals in his libertarian party. Supporting José Antonio Kast in Chile - a guy whose whole political brand is rehabilitating Pinochet, who - according to reporting Tkacik cites - personally ordered the Chilean army to build a cocaine lab.
And then thereâs Venezuela.
Rubio has been pushing to overthrow NicolĂĄs Maduro for years under the banner of fighting the âCartel of the Sunsâ - which the American Prospect notes is based on a 2020 indictment that the author seems to think is flimsy - while simultaneously defending and enabling actual convicted traffickers as long as theyâre on âour side.â
The cognitive dissonance would be stunning if it werenât so familiar. This is the same game. Protect assets - call them partners. Prosecute enemies - call them narco-terrorists. The drugs donât matter. The violence doesnât matter. What matters is: are you useful to American interests as currently defined by whoeverâs in power?
What Tkacikâs reporting suggests is that Rubio learned young that the right connections make criminal enterprises invisible. That the same government that wages war on street-level dealers protects kingpins when itâs convenient. That you can build your career around âlaw and orderâ while your family members deal weight - as long as youâre on the correct team.
In 2002 - as a Florida state rep - Rubio wrote a letter recommending Cicilia for a real estate license. The American Prospect notes he called him upstanding without disclosing their family relationship or the decade in federal prison. Cicilia got the license two weeks later.
Thatâs the tell. Not that Rubio had a criminal in-law - plenty of politicians do - but that he leveraged his position to help him while hiding their connection. The ethics arenât complicated. You either think drug trafficking is disqualifying or you donât.
Rubio has made his choice abundantly clear. He thinks itâs fine - as long as youâre laundering it through the right political relationships.
The American Prospect piece is worth reading in full. The sourcing is meticulous - court documents, DEA records, congressional testimony, investigative journalism from OCCRP and Revista Raya. This isnât dot-connecting conspiracy theorizing. This is documented evidence of systematic corruption presented with receipts.
What Tkacik has done is trace a direct line from Rubioâs teenage years working in a CIA-connected drug operation to his current role legitimizing drug trafficking when it serves U.S. foreign policy goals. The line isnât even that complicated to follow. Itâs just that most people donât bother to look.
The machinery hasnât changed. The players have. And one of them - thanks to this investigation - we can now see clearly: Marco Rubio, from the Tabraue familyâs animal cages to Secretary of State.â
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Convenient that the microphone hides what his mouth is actually saying -
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You have a way of always finding the most unreliable, debunked and far right wing sources to âproveâ your point:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/04/1051873608/a-doctor-spread-covid-misinformation-and-renewed-her-license-with-a-mouse-click
Book carrying member of:
As I always say, not far right, just right so far.
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Is that the MV Legitimacy of the Seas?
Or âfar out on a limbâ:
Reaching for that delicious apple called Greenland maybe?
Now, @ombugge, what were you saying after quoting Wikipedia as an authoritative source?
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Yea, this is what is wrong with politics today. One guy claims Biden, a president who didnât even know what month it was, (probably not the year either) was a drug smuggling kingpin mastermind head of Central Americaâs most ruthless & notorious Latino gang. Then the other extreme chimes in to say pencil up the butt Rubio, a guy whose only been Secretary of State for 10 months & whose every step & financial statement for 15 years been investigated by the Democrats & leftists media is the drug smuggling kingpin mastermind gang leader? Then of course the out of touch ancient chimes down from Asgard to pick his traditional side in the age long battle. Funny stuff to read here. This whole time I thought it was Jar-Jar Binks.
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[quote=âSand_Pebble, post:71, topic:73952â]
I had some conversations with Rubio in his early senate days and I canât see him masterminding a Chuck E. Cheese outing so I laughed out loud at him being a kingpin of drug operation. Useful idiot? Maybe but mastermind? Never.
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ââŠdrug smuggling kingpin mastermind gang leader?â
Nobody said that.
ââŠthe other extremeâŠâ
Iâve stated it here before - Iâm a pretty conservative man. Itâs just that Iâm aware that my dislikes are not conducive to the betterment of mankind.
US Oil-bosses have spoken too:
Trump Presses Big Oil to Pour $100 Billion Into VenezuelaâExecutives Signal Caution
PS: Who do you thrust to give good business advice?
Good for Venezuela and the oil companies to get local product production going again.
One big step in converting away from socialist failing economy.
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Speaking of recent events thereâs also the Teapot Dome Scandal
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Maybe those other countries choose not to do anything because they respect other nationâs sovereignty.
The U.S. may not make idle threats but the current POTUS sure does. Remember when Mexico was going to pay for a wall and the Russia-Ukraine war was going to end once 47 took office? Pepperidge Farm remembersâŠ