Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway.

He is an illegitimate dictator.

We stand with the people of Venezuela and their diaspora throughout the world in calling for an end to his murderous regime.

It is sad but true that a nation can…

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 29, 2024

Game recognizes game. What’s especially effective about his technique is how the first two sentences were extremely likely to have been directly mad-libbed from some Democrat’s tweet in late 2020/early 2021. You don’t need to actually like Matt Gaetz – we sure as shit don’t, even before he was credibly suspected of statutory rape and (technically) sex trafficking – but we can separate the art from the artist here: The utter void of irony or shame is a particularly vibrant texture of this tweet, as is the fact that it’s an objectively true statement about Maduro, who’s also a piece of shit.

As is the circumspection, because that would ruin the framing. Lesser trolls would have tried to tie it to the “Biden regime,” but Gaetz sets his own boundaries and colors so precisely within them.

Save for the fact that we’re analyzing it and heaping the appropriate plaudits rather than reacting as intended and spewing impotent vitriol in a reflexive rage, it’s a work approaching masterful. There are no masters of trolling, there is only masterful trolling. This tweet is almost worthy of such accord.