Two things can be true at the same time.
It is true that Nicolás Maduro is a criminal and a thug and murderer and stole an election. It is also true that Donald Trump is a convicted felon whose actions have killed untold numbers of people internationally and he falsely claims he won an election he did not win.
It is true that Maduro must be held accountable for his atrocities. It also is true that the president of the United States has zero authority to kidnap and extradite the president of another sovereign nation — even if that leader has taken office deceptively.
Mark Wingfield
As every child has heard from a parent: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
What the Trump administration has done in Venezuela is a criminal action intended to hold another international criminal accountable. While we all should rejoice that Maduro has been removed from power, we all should be very worried about how this happened.
To quote another parental saying: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
If the United States believes it is legitimate to kidnap the leader of another country whom the U.S has declared to be a criminal, then what is to keep another country from kidnapping and putting on a trial a U.S. president they believe to be a criminal?
“While we all should rejoice that Maduro has been removed from power, we all should be very worried about how this happened.”
This is inconsistent logic. Unless you’re an American conservative who believes in American exceptionalism. That’s the erroneous belief that the United States was founded on divine mandate from God and holds a unique place in God’s eternal plan for all people of all nations. American exceptionalism allows you to throw logic to the wind because of a divine override.
The Trump administration — which is built on a house of outrageous lies — has no moral authority to hold any other nation accountable for much of anything.
Which brings me to my email inbox from the last week. A pastor wrote with kind intentions to offer this:
BNG does seem to be so obsessed with pointing out how evil Trump and company are that the lies and immorality of the Democrats go completely unchallenged. Neither party is without sin. In fact, both are wallowing in it. Are the Republicans worse? Perhaps. But it seems BNG would have more credibility with a broader readership with a more balanced approach. As a pastor myself, for over 40 years, this is the comment I hear most among my colleagues concerning BNG. Perhaps painting with a broader brush would gain you a wider readership?
Again, this comment was offered kindly, not in anger. And it was offered with a desire to help us expand our readership and influence. Much appreciated.
Here’s the problem: We are living in times my 1980s journalism school training could not have imagined. We were not trained in how to report that most everything the president of the United States says is an obvious lie. We were trained to present two sides to each issue based on the presumption there are always two legitimate views to most political situations. My 1980s journalism education made no allowance for what to do when a major political party operates almost entirely on conspiracy theories and disinformation. Yet here we are.
Politico reported last week on interviews conducted at the Turning Point USA AmeriFest in a breakout session for nonwhite former liberals who became Trump voters. One of those interviewed was Craig Long, “a Black former prisoner, one-time liberal and self-proclaimed provider of ‘mean tweet commentary.’” Long told Politico: “Have I lost family members and friends? Absolutely. I have relationships that probably will never be rebuilt, (even) with my own mother and father. … Truth is very inconvenient.”
Here is a man who has been deluded by the lies of Trump and the Republican Party so severely that he now thinks lies are truth.
“Here at BNG, we are not so much against Trump and Republicans as we are against lying liars who lie all the time.”
Here at BNG, we are not so much against Trump and Republicans as we are against lying liars who lie all the time. I am not aware of a similar wide-scale problem like this among Democrats or independents. And please save your breath if you’re going to cite abortion and transgender identity as lies told by Democrats. Those dogs won’t hunt.
Everything else Trump says is based on his lies — from rapists and criminals invading the U.S. through immigration to tariffs not being taxes paid by consumers.
When a lying liar of a president tells the American people what he has done that is clearly in violation of international law is not illegal, no one should believe him.
It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how the timing of all this played out. Trump and his party are drowning in bad polling numbers, bad news and Epstein scandals. Here, he has tapped into a historic playbook for presidents in trouble at home: Go start a fight with another country.
And this from a president who previously declared the U.S. cannot be a policeman to the world. What happened to “America First”? Apparently, the America First part of this action is to gain access to oil reserves.
I agree Maduro is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad person. But I also believe the United States must be an example of truth and righteous action. We cannot claim to be patriots while we are undertaking immoral and illegal international actions. These opposing ideals cancel each other out.
When the U.S. is willing to hold Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump accountable in the same way it now claims to hold Maduro accountable, I’ll be more ready to listen.
For now, two thugs do not make a Boy Scout just as surely as two wrongs don’t make a right.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves.