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When Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stepped foot in a Manhattan courtroom on January 5, he entered the proceedings of the highest-profile case in the “war on drugs” to date.

The indictment came after years of threats toward Maduro from the U.S., including a dramatic U.S. military buildup over the past five months and a string of extrajudicial killings by sinking dozens of small boats that the Trump administration claimed, without evidence, were ferrying drugs. Policy experts and Democrats condemned the strikes as illegal and ineffective, but the administration ignored Congress and continued blowing up speedboats, leaving at least 115 people dead so far.

Along with “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, who regularly shared violent memes defending the military attacks, the White House methodically posted videos of the boat strikes as viral propaganda for a sudden escalation of the deeply unpopular “war on drugs.” Donald Trump has fused that war together with the “war on terror” throughout the first year of his second term. He designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and directed the military to go after them, including through the boat strikes, and went so far as to declare fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.” Panned by public health experts, the move was reminiscent of former President George W. Bush’s justification for waging war on Iraq.

That fusion came to a head on January 3 when, on orders from Trump and without authorization from Congress, U.S. forces invaded Venezuela to abduct Maduro in a midnight raid that reportedly claimed up to 80 lives, including civilians. Indicted for alleged connections to cocaine smugglers, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism” charges at a federal courthouse in New York City on January 5. The indictment doesn’t mention fentanyl, the substance at the center of Trump’s drug war narratives, and includes counts of conspiracy to possess machine guns under U.S. laws.

“I was kidnapped,” Maduro told the court during the arraignment.

A successful military operation tends to have a nationalistic, rally-around-the-flag effect on public opinion, however brief. Previous polling suggests that Trump’s drug war propaganda appears to be effective ­on some level — but almost entirely among Republicans who already support him. Beyond the GOP and MAGA base, independents and Democrats are wary of both the boat strikes and military action in Venezuela, and voters across party lines want Trump focused on the economy and health care rather than foreign entanglements.

Trump’s massive naval deployment in the Caribbean already costs an estimated $18 million per day.

Trump said on Saturday that his administration........

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