In the past few days, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has been busy doctoring the spin for the Trump administration’s weekend strike on Venezuela, in which it captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Understandable, given Cornyn’s unflagging attempts to buddy up to Trump ahead of the 2026 midterms. But there’s just one problem: the senator’s really, really bad at it.
In a series of social media posts, Cornyn used a fictional cartel and made-up claims that Maduro ruined Texas with fentanyl as justifications for the intervention.
Watch out George R.R. Martin, we have a new fantasy writer on the scene.
On Saturday, Cornyn echoed claims that Maduro is the leader of a narco outfit called Cartel de los Soles.
“Maduro was not only an illegitimate President of Venezuela, he was the head of the Cartel de los Soles, a major drug trafficking network involving high-ranking Venezuelan military officers and government officials,” Cornyn tweeted Saturday morning.
However, as the New York Times reports, the Department of Justice has since admitted the cartel doesn’t exist.
Claims about the cartel’s existence trace back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, secretary of state and national security adviser Marco Rubio ordered the State Department to follow suit.
However, experts on narco activity in Latin America insist something crucial has been lost in translation.
“Cartel de los Soles” is not an actual organization but a figure of speech invented by Venezuelan media in the 1990s. The slang term refers to any corrupt politician suspected of accepting drug money, not an actual organization. The “soles” part of its name refers to a sun insignia worn on the uniforms of Venezuelan officials.
In a rewritten indictment following Maduro’s arrest on Saturday, the Department of Justice tacitly admitted its huge mistake.
The White House had either interpreted the term to mean an actual cartel through its poor intel and ignorance, or perhaps the name just proved a convenient excuse to go after the largest oil reserves in the world.
Not content to be proven wrong once, Cornyn decided he was up for another swing and a miss on Monday.
In a Monday Facebook post, the senator claimed that Maduro had “flooded Texas with fentanyl.”
Fentanyl was a major talking point for Republicans in the lead up to Maduro’s interdiction and the intervention in Venezuela. However, U.S. officials have provided no proof of claims that large quantities of the deadly drug are being produced in that country, much less with Maduro’s involvement.
What’s more, the U.S. indictment doesn’t even mention fentanyl in its charges against Maduro, which center on weapons possession and trafficking cocaine.
Since the United States has been destroying ships allegedly trafficking drugs to the United States — and also violating international law by double-tapping to eliminate witnesses — claims of drug trafficking ships bound for U.S. soil are hard to prove. It’s also, conveniently, hard to prove U.S. officials are making this whole thing up. For now, we apparently just have to take their word for it.
In both cases of internet embarrassment, Cornyn would have benefited from being less specific in his justification of the attack. Perhaps he could have remained content to call Maduro a “narcoterrorist” — albeit without proof.
But, nay, Cornyn must make a fool of himself. In fact, history shows it may be the only thing he’s good at.
His latest embarrassments join a litany of similar moments spewing rabid MAGA rhetoric as he runs for reelection, trying to match primary rival and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s zealotry.
Yeah, Cornyn’s spouting made up bullshit, but maybe this time his obsequious overtures will ingratiate him to Trump. Maybe the most extreme factions of his base will stop calling him a “RINO.”
Or maybe he’ll just look like an idiot.
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