Guatemalans are beginning to see through Arévalo’s facade as his failed leadership allows drug gangs to terrorize the streets.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo has purported to be an advocate for democracy and human rights during his time in office, criticizing corruption and playing lip service to U.S. objectives to stay off the radar of the Trump administration during a time when Latin America has become a top priority.

Arévalo has pledged to help the U.S. by cooperating with the deportation of migrants and also worked with the Trump administration on an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade. Arévalo’s maneuvering has kept him off the Trump administration’s enemies list thus far, in contrast to his bolder counterparts, Colombian President Gustavo Petro or Honduran outgoing President Xiomara Castro. But the indictment of deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro shows exactly how Guatemala has turned a blind eye to drug trafficking under Arévalo’s watch.

OPERATING MADURO’S DRUG SANCTUARY

In the federal indictment against Maduro, Guatemala is identified as a primary transshipment point for massive cocaine shipments en route to the U.S. The indictment provides evidence that Maduro’s regime conspired with narco-terrorist groups and cartels to ship processed cocaine from Venezuela to the U.S. specifically via Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

The indictment also details how the Maduro-aligned Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) partnered with groups like the Sinaloa Cartel and the FARC to utilize Central American routes, including those in Guatemala, due to their established expertise in smuggling across borders. U.S. data notes that thousands of metric tons of cocaine have passed through Guatemala to the U.S. while Arévalo has looked the other way, due to either cowardice, incompetence or complicity.

Attorney General Pam Bondi drew attention to the role of Arévalo’s government in facilitating the drug trade during an appearance on Fox Noticas last year.

“There is an air bridge where the Venezuelan regime where they pay to have free airspace access undetected to Honduras then Guatemala and to Mexico where they can traffic these drugs, transport these drugs. They are exchanging money for bribes. They are exchanging weapons for the ports of entry and airspace to get these drugs to all these other countries and into the United States,” AG Bondi said.

DRUG GANGS RUN WILD

Along with permitting illicit drug running through Guatemala, Arévalo has adopted soft-on-crime policies that have led to widespread unrest and put law enforcement in the crosshairs. Just this past weekend, three separate prisons were overrun by inmates who took 46 hostages in an attempt to gain freedom for Barrio 18 gang leader El Lobo. After El Lobo was subdued and the weekend’s prison revolt was put down, police officers were targeted in a murderous retribution campaign throughout the capital of Guatemala City.

At least seven police officers were slain in the aftermath with ten police officers injured, prompting Arévalo to declare a state of siege, essentially a temporary order of martial law. The homicide rate has risen under Arévalo from 16.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024 to 17.65, according to the Center for National Economic Research. This follows a prison break from last year in which members of the Arévalo administration were accused of freeing violent gang members as part of an illicit secretive agreement.

In Oct. 2025, twenty members of the Barrio 18 gang were discovered as having escaped from a prison in Guatemala right as the gang was designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration.

The prison break came as a result of a scheme hatched with alleged cooperation by corrupt authorities, including members of Arévalo’s cabinet. Arévalo’s Minister of the Interior Francisco Jiménez resigned in the fallout of the scandal with ex-vice minister Claudia del Rosario Palencia, Jiménez’s second in command, and former subdirector Víctor Arnoldo Alveño Barco being prosecuted for their alleged role in the jail break.

Former Public Prosecutor Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa accused Jiménez and Rosario Palencia of striking a deal with the Barrio 18 gang, under the ridiculous notion that making a deal with the narcoterrorists would lead to a reduction of violence in the country (which, as seen by the hostage crisis and subsequent murders of police, was an abysmal failure). These allegations would later be corroborated with testimony from apprehended Barrio 18 members during court proceedings.

“My version is that this occurred with full complicity from the top of the Interior Ministry, meaning the minister and the deputy minister, even with senior National Civil Police officials, who allowed these inmates to exit in police uniforms during one of the many inspections in August,” Solórzano said.

However, these allegations were never properly investigated. Arévalo made sure to protect his former Interior Minister from being prosecuted – belying his public image as a nonpartisan reformer. Jiménez was set to turn himself in to authorities but opted against it after meeting with Arévalo’s team. After Jiménez reportedly fled from Guatemala in an attempt to escape justice, Arévalo played dumb as the scandal dwindled from the public consciousness.

In the weeks after the prison break, María Fernanda Bonilla emerged as a whistleblower exposing the systemic bribery operation within the Guatemalan prison system that allows gang members to exchange money for transfers and favors. Salvadoran gangs like Barrio 18 and MS-13 have thrived in Guatemala after fleeing their native country following El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s unprecedented crackdown with Arévalo’s weak, narco-friendly governance giving them a safe haven to rape, abduct, murder and sell drugs.

INSTALLED BY BIDEN-BACKED ELECTION FRAUD

Arévalo has shown an adeptness to play whatever role is needed to secure U.S. support and backing. Like Maduro, Arévalo has manipulated the electoral process to achieve and maintain power. Arévalo was installed through a color revolution coup of sorts plotted by the Biden State Department. Arévalo won election in 2023 amidst widespread claims of voter fraud. The Biden/Harris regime had sent foreign agents, admitted after the fact in a Washington Post article, to enable Arévalo’s rise, also threatening economic sanctions if the public resisted their hand-picked puppet.

“The countries of the European Union jumped all over us, the big bosses of the North [United States] jumped all over us,” said former Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, who “lost” to Biden-backed Arévalo in 2023.

“The [Biden] administration made quite a dramatic turn and saw they had a real opportunity, a golden opportunity… They pulled out as many of the big guns as they could,” said Eric Olson, who works for the Seattle International Foundation as a political analyst specializing in Central America.

To secure Arévalo’s victory, the Biden administration and Soros-allied NGOs engineered a nationwide protest exploiting Guatemala’s beleaguered indigenous population and coercing them to engage in ANTIFA-style tactics blocking roads and obstructing commerce. Around the same time, the Biden Treasury Department placed arbitrary sanctions over alleged public corruption against influential former government official Miguel Martínez, who was closely connected to then-President Giammattei.

A week later, the Biden State Department announced the cancellation of visas for 300 prominent Guatemalans, including two-thirds of the elected members of Congress and business leaders aligned with then-President Giammattei. The intervention from the Biden administration was eventually successful, and Arévalo was crowned the new President on the mandate to initiate a crackdown on corruption which never came.

“Your election has brought a sense of optimism to the people of America and around the world,” former Vice President Kamala Harris told Arévalo after Democrats installed him into office. “And despite the challenges that have been posed to Guatemala’s democratic process, the United States was proud to stand with you, Mr. President, following a free and fair election.”

Following Arévalo’s ascent into power Vice President Harris announced an additional $170 million in foreign aid, including $135 million from the now-defunct USAID bureaucracy, that would be sent to Guatemala to facilitate various “woke” directives in the country. In a since-deleted post by the U.S. Embassy to Guatemala, they announced the spending was in part to “protect human rights” and “promote social inclusion of women, youth, and indigenous people.”

Guatemalans are beginning to see through Arévalo’s facade as his failed leadership allows drug gangs to terrorize the streets. Opinion polls show Arévalo with a dismal favorability rating of 23 percent, and those numbers are not likely to rebound before the country’s next round of national elections set to take place in 2027. Guatemala may be ripe for a national renaissance, throwing off the shackles of narco-socialism by embracing prosperity and law and order. The ouster of Maduro further puts the writing on the wall for Arévalo that his days are numbered, and it will be only a matter of time before Guatemala joins nations like Honduras, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, El Salvador, Argentina, and of course Venezuela that have joined President Trump’s vanguard of hemispherical liberation.

A persistent rumor that has been circulating on social media in recent weeks is that former South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy will be taking over for Attorney General Pam Bondi. Many Trump supporters are understandably frustrated at the lack of progress made by the Department of Justice to indict deep state spooks for the crimes committed in Russia-gate, the Jan. 6 fed-surrection, the 2020 stolen election and other treasonous acts that have occurred.

I have maintained my support for Bondi wholeheartedly. I have known her for decades and understand her to be a diligent patriot. I, too, am frustrated by the DOJ’s inactivity regarding crucial prosecutions. There is a tremendous amount of institutional rot that is keeping these well-protected men and women from being brought to justice. That is being churned out under Bondi, and it must be done faster. But one thing is clear: Trey Gowdy is NOT the man for this crucial job.

Gowdy is most well-known for giving strongly worded speeches while leading an investigative committee for the Benghazi scandal as a Congressman. In the age of mega outrages such as Russia-gate and 2020 presidential election fraud, Benghazi seems like it might have occurred generations ago. But the incident happened on Sept. 11, 2012 when Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were brutally murdered in a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that was woefully underprotected and undersecured. The Obama administration failed to anticipate the attack and then deliberately misled the public by blaming the terrorist assault on a YouTube video.

Unimpressed with the lies from the Obama administration, the ball was in Gowdy’s court to get answers and results. He frequently pounded the podium and threw red meat at the angry Tea Party base. Gowdy amassed quite the following as a result of his theatrics, but then no accountability ever occurred. No prosecutions or real answers came as a result of the Benghazi hearings. Gowdy refused to assign blame to Clinton or any other Obama official in the aftermath of the lengthy, expensive public investigation. It was classic GOP establishment theatre – with political hacks playing beat the clock until the issue could be swept under the rug. Afterwards, Gowdy called himself “an utter, unmitigated failure,” a rare instance in which we find ourselves in total agreement.

When President Trump came down the golden escalator and changed the face of politics forever, Gowdy’s tough-guy facade cracked almost immediately. He joined the chorus of the anti-Trumpers hoping to keep President Trump on the outs. When their gatekeeping attempts failed, they attempted to subvert him while he was in office. In 2018, then-Congressman Gowdy, along with former House Speaker Paul Ryan, were the loudest defenders of Russia-gate spying on President Trump, arguing that the FBI was correct to use informants to infiltrate President Trump’s inner circle as part of their expansive fishing expedition based on faulty intelligence.

“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do,” Gowdy said in a Fox News interview regarding Russia-gate. “It has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”

Gowdy incredulously stated that the FBI was actually working to clear President Trump’s name during their Russia-gate farce – a laughable notion at the time that has been proven abjectly false as more documents have come out exposing the depths of the conspiracy.

“It was President Trump himself who said, No. 1, ‘I didn’t collude with Russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want the FBI to find that out,’” Gowdy said. “It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said I want you to do — find it out.”

This, alone, is disqualifying as it shows how Gowdy is imbecilic and naive at best, but more likely was running cover for the deep state the whole time – as indicated by his desire to suppress the Mueller Report that cleared President Trump of any Russian collusion claims. Gowdy’s comments about CIA Director John Brennan years later further expose his true colors, calling Brennan a liar but stating that he should be “shamed” rather than locked up for his capital offenses shows how Gowdy uses weasel tactics to protect federal crooks.

“Handcuffs are not the only way we meed out accountability. There’s shame, there’s history. It’s not just prison. There is other ways we meed out accountability. And the fact that somebody’s not wearing handcuffs does not, to me, think that what they did is okay because it wasn’t,” Gowdy said during a FOX News panel.

After bailing from Congress amidst an exodus of RINOs in 2019, Gowdy took a nice well-paying job on Fox News, reinventing himself as a moderate pundit and adopting a similar look and style to Rachel Maddow. Gowdy’s “transition” did not serve him well in terms of rebuilding his waning credibility, to put it mildly. When Gowdy was hocking his book, Doesn’t Hurt to Ask, he did an anti-Trump media tour, even appearing on the show of reviled Trump hater and vaxx pusher Stephen Colbert to trash President Trump’s impact on the Republican Party.

“It’s not the Republican Party I grew up with… Conservatism tells people what they ought to hear. Populism tells people what they want to hear… I’m a conservative, and you know, sometimes it gets difficult to see what the party platform is,” Gowdy said during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in Aug. 2020.

In that same interview with Colbert, Gowdy also criticized President Trump for not forcing face diapers onto the faces of Americans when COVID hysteria reached a fever pitch.

“I do wear a mask… I would have liked for [President Trump] to have embraced the goodness, the propriety of wearing masks sooner,” Gowdy told Colbert.

Just last year, Gowdy came out forcefully against the 2nd Amendment, claiming that jettisoning fundamental rights was necessary for “protecting children” following a mass shooting of kids by a transgender maniac in a Catholic church in Minnesota.

“The only way to stop it is to identify the shooter ahead of time or keep the weapons out of their hands,” he said. “And so we’re going to have to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children. I mean how many school shootings does it take before we’re going to have a conversation about keeping firearms out,” Gowdy said, adding that “it’s always a young, white male” to add some revolting wokeness to his anti-constitutional rant.

The rumor mill pushing Gowdy as an AG candidate is likely an op to reroute the DOJ and erase the good work that is currently being done behind the scenes to enact serious structural reform. The notion of Gowdy as AG is inspiring intense rage by MAGA partisans on the X platform right now, and for good reason. Gowdy is a Paul Ryan Republican who was rightfully swept out of the Party in the age of Trump to the betterment of mankind. He must stay relegated to his FOX News echo chamber, far away from any role in the Trump administration or within Republican politics.

The trench coat stands as one of fashion’s most enduring icons, a timeless blend of refined elegance, sophisticated precision, and rugged practicality.

The trench coat stands as one of fashion’s most enduring icons, a timeless blend of refined elegance, sophisticated precision, and rugged practicality. Its enduring appeal lies in its seductive harmony—functional yet effortlessly stylish, versatile enough for rain-slicked city streets or candlelit evenings, instantly recognizable, and always whispering of hidden depths and quiet intrigue the world over. As actors Humphry Bogard, David Nivid, and Micheal York proved, no man does not look dashing in this military inspired all weather coat.

The cinched waist teases hidden curves, the wide lapels frame a knowing gaze, and the long hem sways with the promise of secrets concealed beneath perfectly tailored lines. Its origins are deeply rooted in 19th-century advancements in waterproof fabrics, which revolutionized outerwear by providing reliable protection against the elements without the bulk, weight, or discomfort of earlier garments.

The invention of the trench coat is often debated between two British luxury brands, Burberry and Aquascutum. Aquascutum claims its roots go back to the 1850s, when founder John Emary patented a waterproof wool fabric called Aquascutum, Latin for “water shield.” The company supplied raincoats to British officers during the Crimean War (1853–1856), helping establish an early claim to the style. This long-standing rivalry illustrates how the trench coat developed from several parallel advances in fabric technology.

The story of the trench coat begins in the early 19th century, when Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh patented his groundbreaking waterproof rubberized fabric in 1823. By dissolving natural rubber in naphtha (derived from coal tar) and sandwiching it between layers of cloth (initially wool, later cotton), he created the first truly effective, lightweight waterproof material—known as the “mackintosh” or “mac.”

These early raincoats quickly found use in civilian life and among military officers for activities like riding, hunting, and campaigning, setting the stage for more refined weatherproof clothing. They marked a major leap forward from traditional heavy oiled or waxed fabrics, though they had drawbacks like stiffness in cold, stickiness in heat, and a persistent odor.

By the mid-19th century, British clothiers built on these innovations to meet growing military demands for functional, lighter alternatives to the cumbersome wool greatcoats of the Napoleonic and Crimean eras. In the 1850s, Aquascutum patented and popularized breathable waterproof wool fabrics, supplying officers during conflicts like the Crimean War with more practical raincoats, early precursors to the trench style.

Thomas Burberry followed in 1856, founding his company and inventing gabardine in 1879: a tightly woven, breathable twill (typically cotton or worsted wool) proofed strand by strand for superior water resistance without sacrificing ventilation.

Burberry submitted officer raincoat designs to the War Office as early as 1901, incorporating features like double-breasted fronts and adjustable belts. Beneath its khaki veil and rigid shoulders lies a quiet temptation, forged in the demands of war, yet refined into an instrument of seduction, each loosened button a subtle confession.

The true peak culmination of the modern trench coat came during World War I (1914–1918). In the muddy, rain-soaked trenches of the Western Front, traditional greatcoats proved disastrously heavy, sodden, and restrictive—soldiers sometimes hacked off excess fabric with bayonets for mobility. British officers, who purchased their own kit privately (as these were not regulation issue for enlisted men), turned to Aquascutum and Burberry for tailored solutions.

These coats evolved into the recognizable form: khaki gabardine construction, double-breasted with 10 buttons, wide lapels, raglan sleeves, epaulettes (for rank insignia), storm flaps (to channel rain away from shoulders), gun flaps, D-rings on the belt (for maps, binoculars, or gear), cuff straps, and deep pockets. The lighter weight, better breathability, and weather resistance made them ideal for trench conditions, earning the nickname “trench coat” from widespread frontline use.

Popularity for these classic garments exploded in the interwar years and beyond, this military necessity laid the firm foundation for its postwar transformation into an iconic civilian fashion piece. Returning officers continued wearing their trench coats, introducing the style to everyday life.

Amplified by Hollywood glamour: Humphrey Bogart’s brooding, rain-drenched silhouette in Casablanca (1942), exuding dangerous charisma beneath the collar’s shadow; Audrey Hepburn’s gamine grace in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), transforming military utility into feminine mystique; and countless spies, detectives, and femme fatales who wielded the coat as both armor and invitation. The storm flap drapes across the chest like a whispered confidence, protecting what lies beneath while subtly accentuating every breath and shift of posture.

The trench coat was never standard issue for enlisted men. British officers, favored the fashion, and primarily drawn from the upper classes—purchased these premium garments privately from elite outfitters like Burberry and Aquascutum, who supplied them without formal mass contracts but through longstanding ties to the military establishment.

What began as an upper-class privilege, reserved for officers who could afford the private purchase, transformed postwar into a national emblem of intrigue. As the war demanded promotions from lower ranks, those fleeting “temporary gentlemen,” the allure of owning one only grew, cementing its status as a symbol of quiet authority and hidden elegance.

Tracing its wide lapels and storm flap, the coat exhales a veiled seduction: forged in the brutal anvil of war, yet chiseled for the ceremony of allure, where every fold and fastener invites a calculated peek into hidden realms. No self-respecting spy would be caught without a trench coat.

Today, the trench coat endures as a tantalizing wardrobe essential, exuding an aura of understated sophistication, effortless adaptability through the sultry whispers of changing seasons, and an intoxicating bond to its raw, heroic origins forged in the heat of battle. From the muddy trenches to the dimly lit streets of desire, it has morphed into a seductive canvas for self-expression, adored by those who crave its chameleon-like prowess, draping over rain-slicked pavements by day, then teasing the curves of twilight soirées by night.

In its deepest essence, it surpasses mere legacy: it is a provocative promise of impenetrable protection laced with dangerous allure, of hushed power that veils secrets while slowly, deliberately, baring the soul. Slide into its embrace, draw the belt tight against your form like a lover’s grasp, and surrender to its hypnotic allure; the world may gaze upon you, but the passions it ignites beneath remain a private inferno.

The true well-dressed gentleman understands the added panache of loosely tying the trench coat belt, as opposed to buckling it as one normally would with a belt.