by Jacob G. Hornberger

May 13, 2026

I have long pointed out the rank hypocrisy of conservatives and the conservative movement. Some examples:

• Conservatives have long railed against socialism, even while fiercely defending Social Security, Medicare, and most other welfare-state programs.
• They have long waxed eloquent about free markets, even while fiercely supporting America’s decades-old deadly and destructive system of immigration controls and the police state that comes with it.
• They complain about government regulation of the economy while fiercely defending minimum-wage laws, occupational-licensure laws, zoning laws, antitrust laws, and other destructive economic regulations.
• They support fiscal responsibility and continue supporting out-of-control federal spending and debt, even while controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress.
• They oppose tax increases but continue supporting income taxation, the IRS, and skyrocketing tariffs.
• They exclaim against inflation but continue supporting the Federal Reserve’s decades-long debasement of money.
• They favor “limited government” even while supporting the national-security state, along with its omnipotent powers of assassination, torture, and indefinite detention.
• They stand in favor of private property and free enterprise, while supporting Amtrak, the Postal Service, the Interstate Highway System, and other public-works boondoggles.
• They love individual freedom except when it comes to their failed and destructive war on drugs.

But perhaps the biggest example of conservative hypocrisy has now arrived in the form of President Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela. This consecrative hypocrisy is so profound that it truly is one of tremendous malignancy.

For decades, conservatives have condemned the socialist-communist regime in Venezuela. They have called it evil, immoral, deadly, and destructive. In fact, conservatives even came to describe the Venezuelan regime as a “narco-terrorist” regime. Why, they have even supported unsuccessful regime-change efforts within the country.

For decades, conservatives have enforced a ruthless and brutal system of economic sanctions against the Venezuelan people. The conservative goal has been to cause so much economic devastation among the Venezuelan people that they would have no choice but to rise up in a violent revolution, oust their socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime from power, and replace it with a pro-U.S. right-wing dictatorship, similar to that of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, who was — and still is — considered a conservative darling.

The U.S. government’s sanctions on Venezuela, in combination with Venezuela’s socialist economic system, succeeded in wreaking untold economic devastation on the Venezuelan people. Interestingly, whenever someone would point out the role that sanctions were playing in this process, some right-wingers would deny that such was the case. They would place the blame for the economic devastation solely on Venezuelan socialism and deny or ignore the role that the U.S. sanctions were playing in this process.

Given that Venezuela has strict gun control, millions of Venezuelans fled the country rather than engage in what was sure to be a futile revolt against a well-armed government. When many of these refugees arrived in the United States, conservatives treated them with disdain. Conservatives called them invaders. They accused them of being gang members. They fearfully pointed to tattoos on their bodies. They immediately embarked on a campaign of forced deportation. The idea was to send these people back to Venezuela to face death by starvation or death by revolution. As far as conservatives were concerned, these refugees had no right to try to save their lives by fleeing Venezuelan socialism and U.S. sanctions. When Venezuela refused to accept the deportees, Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment, to the glee of American conservatives, sent some of the refugees into a terrorist confinement center in El Salvador for indefinite incarceration and torture, notwithstanding the fact that they had never been convicted of any criminal offense.

What’s the situation today? It’s hard to believe. The U.S. government, led by President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA, is actively partnering with the very socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime that conservatives have long criticized and condemned.

Yes, you read that right. U.S officials are working with the officials in this Red, terrorist, drug-dealing regime. In the process, they are dissing the very Venezuelan dissidents they have been supporting for the past several decades.

A dark irony is all this is that Venezuela’s socialist system of central planning is still intact — yes, the central-planning socialism against which conservatives have long railed. In fact, Trump himself is now the master central planner of Venezuela’s socialist central-planning system!

And what’s really bizarre about all this is that it’s all considered perfectly normal by the conservative movement!

The way this socialist system is now working is that oil revenues, on which Venezuelan socialism is totally dependent, now come into the coffers of the U.S. government. That’s because the U.S. government has lifted its brutal blockade on the sale of Venezuelan oil. The interim president of the country, Delcy Rodriguez, then submits a list of items on which the government needs to spend money. Trump  then approves the list and sends her a quantity of money to cover the expenditures. That’s how the bureaucrats and the employees of this socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime get paid.

In other words, Rodriquez is like a child requesting an allowance, and Trump is her daddy who gives it to her. It is a perfect manifestation of the paternalistic socialist state, one now run by the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA have dissed the dissidents they have long supported, even though most everyone agrees that it was the dissidents who won the 2024 presidential election. It’s ironic — and yes, a bit hypocritical — that Trump and his fellow right-wingers continue to claim that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from them even while they now support the socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime that stole the 2024 presidential election in Venezuela!

What happens if a group of angry and disgruntled Venezuelan dissidents acquires some high-powered weapons and decides to violently revolt with an attack on their tyrannical regime? There is no question about it: Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Venezuelan socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime will immediately label the revolutionaries “terrorists” and go after them with all guns blazing.

Meanwhile, conservatives, led by Trump, continue crowing about how successful their intervention in Venezuela has been. In fact, it’s that “success” that unquestionably encouraged Trump to launch his illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression on Iran.

The Venezuelan intervention will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most malignant, deadly, and destructive hypocrisies in the history of the U.S. conservative movement.