BORIS JOHNSON: Intergalactic Lefty bedwetters like Rory Stewart are so deranged by hatred of Trump they're blind to the fact that, from Venezuela to Iran, he's on the side of the good guys - and making the world a safer place | Retrui News | Retrui
BORIS JOHNSON: Intergalactic Lefty bedwetters like Rory Stewart are so deranged by hatred of Trump they're blind to the fact that, from Venezuela to Iran, he's on the side of the good guys - and making the world a safer place
SOURCE:Daily Mail
This time, they say, he has torn it, writes BORIS JOHNSON. In all his outrageous provocation, Donald Trump has never sent liberal politicos into such fits of pearl-clutching indignation.
This time, they say, he has torn it. In all his decades of calculated and outrageous provocation, Donald Trump has never sent the world's liberal politicos into such exquisite fits of pearl-clutching indignation.
He's a rogue elephant, they say.
In abducting Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the US President is pulverising the very concept of international law like fine porcelain beneath his clodhopping golf shoes.
BBC airwaves are jammed with gloomy vapourings about a new dark might-is-right epoch in which a rampaging America actually turns its guns on Nato itself – strafing the igloos of Greenland and humiliating Denmark and all her allies, including the UK.
What's the difference, they wail, between Trump and Putin? How can we complain about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Trump sends Delta Force into Venezuela?
How can we object to a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, when Trump has gone so completely Caracas?
Someone sent me a clip of former Tory MP Rory Stewart, who is now the colonel-in-chief of the legion of intergalactic Lefty bedwetters. Rory was so scandalised about Trump that he was genuinely claiming that the United States was just as much of a threat to British interests as – wait for it – communist China.
The elfin podcaster argued that modern America no longer shared our values or interests, and should no longer be seen as our partner. It is incredible to think that this guy was once some kind of junior Foreign Office minister.
Has he seen what the Chinese are doing to freedom in Hong Kong? Has he looked at the fate of the Uighurs? You would have thought he was aware of the overwhelming opinion of the humanitarian NGOs that the human rights of the Chinese people are being shredded daily like so much Peking duck. But Rory wants us to chuck Trump – and treat him the same as Xi Jinping!
He is not alone in his madness. My old friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, has issued a stiff rebuke to the White House. America's behaviour, he says, is turning the old rules based order into a 'den of robbers'.
In all his decades of calculated and outrageous provocation, Donald Trump has never sent the world's liberal politicos into such exquisite fits of pearl-clutching indignation, writes Boris Johnson
The Spanish, the French, the Dutch – they have all denounced with varying intensity the snaffling of Maduro.
Well, it is time for everyone to calm down. Take whatever medication you have been prescribed, mes amis, for your Trump Derangement Syndrome.
For a man who is regularly denounced by the European media as an isolationist, a knuckle-dragging America Firster, Trump seems to be spending an awful lot of time and effort in the great cause of making the world a safer and better place.
He happens to be picking off the autocrats, one by one – the very people who pose the biggest threat to this country and to Western values in general.
So what if he has abducted Maduro? That doesn't make him Putin, or anything like Putin. There is no comparison between Trump's actions in Venezuela and Putin's continuing and brutal war of conquest in Ukraine.
Any attempt to analogise between the two is ignorant and offensive to the heroism of the Ukrainian people.
But why can't our Labour rulers just say so? Did you see Starmer's stammering performance after the US action in Caracas? As a military operation, the capture of Maduro was astonishing. As a piece of political theatre, it was breathtaking.
What did it mean? What was the view in London? We needed to know.
Over to Keir in Downing Street and what did we get? Glottal gobbledygook.
Sorry, er, I can't say anything, he blinked, not until I know the, er, details.
He needed to know the facts, said the leader of the United Kingdom – hitherto regarded as the closest and most important ally of the US – before he could offer an opinion. In all his craven career of Lefty invertebracy, I don't think Starmer has ever said anything quite so gormless and pathetic.
Here are the facts, Keir.
Maduro is not only an indicted criminal under US law, who has plainly been trying to weaponise narco-trafficking against the American people. He is – or was – a tyrant, with no democratic mandate.
He and his Chavista regime have engaged in such systematic and brutal abuse of the Venezuelans that 8million have fled the country – 20 per cent of the population.
The crazed 'Bolivarian socialists' have engaged in widespread and continuous repression of free speech, extrajudicial killings, torture and enforced 'disappearances'. They have caused complete economic ruin of what is, or should be, one of the most blessed and beautiful countries on Earth.
In trying to rescue the country, it is not as if the US has acted precipitately, or without warning. Maduro has been given every opportunity to change, and to accept that his tyranny must end.
He was repeatedly urged to bow to basic democratic principles and allow Maria Corina Machado to stand against him in the July 2024 presidential elections.
He refused and then rigged the election, so that he continued in office, even though impartial observers believe Machado's stand-in beat him two to one.
He was an incorrigible dictator. Those are the facts. Trump was completely right to remove him. To cap it all – as Keir should know very well – the UK Government does not even recognise Maduro or the legitimacy of his regime.
Why allow people to make absurd comparisons between Trump's operation in Venezuela and Putin's continuing slaughter of Ukrainians? I shouldn't have to spell it out, but I will.
The difference between Trump and Putin is that Trump has humanely removed a tyrant who was blighting the lives of his people, and has rightly brought him to justice, while Putin is trying to destroy a free and independent European country, and has tried repeatedly, by the way, to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a campaign of indiscriminate slaughter.
If Starmer can't instantly detect that difference, then he needs to get Lord Alli to buy him yet another pair of glasses. All those deranged Lefties who make this absurd comparison forget the key point: Maduro was an ally of Putin. Maduro was a client of Putin.
Maduro boasted that Putin's air defences would keep him safe – and his humiliation is Putin's humiliation, too.
Far from abandoning the Ukrainians, Trump is actually beginning to stand up to Putin in a way that his Democrat predecessors would never have dared.
Just look at this astonishing American operation off Iceland, to seize the rusting oil tanker Marinera (formerly Bella 1) – part of the 'shadow fleet' that has been helping Russia, Iran and Venezuela to evade sanctions.
So what if Trump has abducted Maduro? That doesn't make him Putin, or anything like Putin
Maduro boasted that Putin's air defences would keep him safe – and his humiliation is Putin's humiliation, too
In a bid to save the ship, the Russians actually announced that it was theirs. The vessel was legally re-flagged, in mid-Atlantic. The crew painted a large Russian flag on the side. They thought that Donald Trump would never dare attack a Russian-flagged vessel – not with his vaunted friendship with Putin.
Well, it turned out that Trump was no more intimidated by Putin's protection of the oil tanker than he was intimidated by Russia's protection of Maduro.
The UK helped seize that vessel, and we should be proud of our forces and their historic partnership with the US. Let's hope this is just the beginning of a concerted Western attempt to round up all the ships being used by the dictators to trade in contraband oil.
If the Lefties really care about Ukraine, why aren't they celebrating this moment – instead of moaning and muttering behind their hands?
Or look at Trump's decision just in the last 24 hours to greenlight Senator Lindsey Graham's Bill, allowing the President to place tariffs of 500 per cent on countries buying Russian hydrocarbons.
That is a huge stick with which to beat Putin. Biden & Co never did anything like it, and nor, frankly, have the Europeans. It was a great shame that the Europeans – including us – failed last month to unfreeze Putin's $140billion-plus assets, in Belgium, London, Paris and elsewhere.
It was a golden moment, and we all fluffed it. We should have the guts to hand that cash to the Ukrainians, as an advance against the reparations that the Russians owe Ukraine.
Until we do so, it is very hard for us to complain about any alleged failings on the part of Trump.
We need to look at what is really happening and what the US is really doing – and not disappear down rabbit-holes, such as this nonsense about Greenland. Ever since the days of President Harry S Truman, the Americans have tried to acquire Greenland. If you look at the map, and consider the potential flight path of Russian inter-continental ballistic missiles, you can see their point.
There is certainly room for a sensible discussion with Denmark and the Greenlanders – who do not have large defence budgets – about how to better fortify the island against Chinese and Russian influence or aggression. But is America going to invade another Nato country? Is Delta Force going to kidnap the polar bears? Not on your nelly. The whole thing is an excuse for yet more bloviating Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Greenland is a distraction. I say again, look at what has actually happened under Donald Trump, just in one year, to the cruellest and most bloodthirsty regimes in the world.
Hamas has finally been forced to hand back the Israeli hostages. The crisis is not over; the problem is not solved. But things are better – not least because Trump was willing to put pressure on Netanyahu as well as Hamas.
Syria's Bashar al-Assad has at last been obliged to scarper to Moscow, after decades in which previous presidents and previous UK governments had mouthed the empty slogan that 'Assad must go'. When Assad did finally go, it was under Donald Trump.
The Chavista regime in Venezuela has been decapitated, and – above all – look at Iran!
For decades Iran has been the spider at the centre of the web, conspiring against Western interests, promoting terror and subversion in the Middle East and around the world. Today the country is in tumult, with thousands on the street and a real possibility that the long and dreadful reign of the Ayatollahs is coming to an end.
Why is this happening?
It's partly the economy, partly the cruelty of the regime, and partly that Trump had the cojones – after decades in which we have all talked vaguely about the subject – to blitz Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Trump humiliated the mullahs. To this day they do not have command of their own skies.
In case you have some kind of weird sympathy for them, these are people whose police kill young women for not wearing the right head coverings.
All this is fundamentally good news. It has been a very bad year for the autocrats. It has been a bad year for the Axis of Evil – and whether you like it or not, that is largely thanks to the US and the US President.
So what, finally, about Putin himself? He made a serious mistake the other day. He rang Trump and pretended that the Ukrainians had launched an attack on his private residence. He lied.
I think Trump is finally realising that Putin does not want peace. Trump knows that if he wants peace in Ukraine – and he does, devoutly – then he has to increase the pressure on the Kremlin.
He ALSO knows that Putin's position – economically and militarily – is bad, probably far worse than Putin himself realises. It has taken him two years
and hundreds of thousands of dead to advance 18 miles to Pokrovsk. The average snail makes much faster progress than Putin's troops.
With the Lindsey Graham bill, Trump has the power to inflict huge economic pain on Putin. He can also give the Ukrainians all kinds of invaluable military assistance, such as Tomahawks.
If he allows the Ukrainians to buy these long-range cruise missiles, they will finally be able to defend themselves against the appalling attacks by Russian-made, Iranian-designed drones. The factory that makes them is in Kazakhstan, out of range of the UK Storm Shadows, for instance. But the Tomahawks could get there.
Ukrainian use of Tomahawks against that factory, and other sites, would not be aggressive. It would be purely defensive. It would be about saving the lives of innocent Ukrainian citizens. It could also be a game-changer, forcing Putin to do the deal that Trump and Zelensky have essentially agreed, and bring the war to an end.
Putin thinks Trump won't do it. He thinks he has got Trump where he wants him. But then Nicolas Maduro thought that.
The Lefties are so lost in their frenzy of priggish irritation about Trump's great orange inflatable personality that they are missing the essential point: that the world is still divided clearly into good guys and bad guys. We, and the US, are still manifestly on the side of the good guys.
Thanks to Trump's boldness, our side was successful last year. If Trump is strong now in standing up to Putin – as only he can be – the good guys can be successful again in 2026.