Just days after printing news that is sure to get a lot of Venezuelans tortured and killed by their regime, the New York Times is now trying to justify its irresponsible coverage by piously lecturing President Trump on avoiding coup d'état, something he never got involved in.  Anyone here smell a guilty conscience?

Starting out with a scolding headline, the Times editorial begins with "Stay Out of Venezuela, Mr. Trump" and continues with this:

America shouldn't be in the coup business.  Period.

It's a relief, then, to learn that the Trump administration chose not to aid rebellious leaders in Venezuela seeking to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.  But it's worrisome to think that President Trump and his advisers made the right call for the wrong reason – lack of confidence in the plotters to succeed in a risky operation rather than principled concern about intervention.

It goes on to admit that Venezuela's Maduro regime is in office through fraud elections, and the country itself is in a "political, economic and societal meltdown."  It even mentions socialism in the 16th paragraph.

All of that merits a "yes, but," because against that "catastrophe," as they admit, coups are even worse.

Really?  Then the Times cites a long, dolorous chain of what it calls U.S.-involved coups d'état, some of which had U.S. involvement and some of which (example: Chile, 1973) did not, though the Castroite propaganda spread through the left likes to say it did.  Then, without naming anyone, it blithely tosses out, as if in an aside, that "[a] vanishing few of these interventions came to anything that could be considered a good end."

Are they trying to tell us Chile's 1973 shift from Venezuela-style communism, complete with hyperinflation, mob violence, chaos, loss of property rights, press censorship, and huge labor strikes, as well as Castro (and North Korea's military) running things, wasn't an improvement?  Even under Augusto Pinochet's military government, it was an improvement, particularly with its stunning and innovative free market reforms, such as the private pensions instituted by the great José Piñera, and beyond that military interval (which Pinochet stepped down willingly from to restore democracy), the country became first-world.

Is that the vanishing few?  Or which one do they think is the vanishing few?  Even Guatemala did better without a communist dictator, however freely elected he may have been.  Everyone does better without a communist dictator.  And you can bet Grenada is better off without a thug so thuggy that he horrified even his Castroite masters, such as Bernard Coard.

That brings us to Venezuela, which is one of the most horrifying regimes anyone has ever encountered, a regime so horrible that the country is starving; medical care is gone; gas is no longer available; torture, killings, and thievery are the norm; corruption is rock-bottom in the global rankings; and even the physically printed paper money along with all money is now utterly gone.

What the Times does is delve into the Castroite conventional wisdom that all coups d'état are bad, which is the Black Legend spread by the Cuban regime for 50 years.  Never mind the Declaration of Independence, or even Nelson Mandela's justification of taking up arms against an illegitimate regime intent on holding power forever.  Nope, coups are bad, because the Castro brothers said so, and never mind Cuba's own record of stirring up violence and coups in the region, all of which came to bad ends.

It also circles around to suggest President Trump, despite telling some Venezuelan coup-minded disgruntled military men to go away, still was all in for coups – as if President Trump had already signed on to a coup plot to overthrow the odious Maduro regime, which even the Times' own news-side coverage of the matter says he didn't.

Then the Times gets really gross, sanctimoniously lecturing Trump to carry on with the same utter bee ess that the U.S. has been doing for decades as the regime has grown ever more rotten:

Here's the right way to put pressure on Venezuela's regime: Mr. Trump and other leaders need to keep trying to encourage a transition deal by tightening targeted sanctions on Mr. Maduro and his cronies who undergird an autocratic, corrupt system.  Cuba, which is dependent on Venezuela for oil and has close relations with Mr. Maduro, should be encouraged to use its leverage.  Mr. Trump and other leaders also need to coordinate and expand assistance for Venezuela's suffering people.

Yep, Cuba's a good one to ask for help in getting rid of Maduro.  Anything but allow Venezuelans to do it on its own.  Talks, talks, dialogue, dialogue, same old crap that led to the current situation as it is.  They must love George Bush as well as Barack Obama, because that was the tack the two of them took, leading to the current disaster.

As if nothing new should be tried.

The Times also just slips in its own irresponsible coverage as rationale for its scolding editorial: "But holding multiple meetings with the plotters begins to look like collaboration. The news was bound to leak out, as it has."

Yes, it just leaked out, and the Times was the only one who printed it.  It likely leaked out because of Deep State undermining of Trump or, given the Times' history of collaboration with the Cuban agents, because of something the Cubans told the paper.

Now the Maduro regime has been strengthened, and the torture notices are going out to all dissidents, not because there was a coup attempt, but because the Times wanted that scoop to Get Trump and, who knows, let Maduro's regime to stay put for the sake of Cuba.  All the paper did was make life even more miserable for Venezuela's democrats, and it bears some responsibility for that.

Nope, the Times is blaming Trump and citing the same old tired pious arguments against coups.  Sorry, pals – your guilty conscience is showing.