🪖 Maduro’s ousting is not like Noriega’s

Comparisons between the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and that of Panama’s military strongman Manuel Noriega are inevitable, and not just because both took place on January 3 — one in 1990 and the other in 2026.

In both cases, Maduro and Noriega were holding on to power after stolen presidential elections, faced drug trafficking charges in the US, and were taken into custody by American troops after a controversial military attack on foreign soil that defied international law.

But one key difference separates the two examples…

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