Conservative slams Trump's 'seat-of-the-pants plan' to run Venezuela

06 January

U.S. President Donald Trump, in front of a painting of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, smiles during an event to announce that the Space Force Command will move from Colorado to Alabama, in the Oval Office

National Review Institute senior fellow Andrew McCarthy is lambasting President Donald Trump’s "lawless aggression" in the Caribbean and demanding the administration reveal its plan for the freshly beheaded nation of Venezuela.

“What authority does a president have to order a military attack on a foreign country that has not threatened us — and kill at least 80 people in the process — when the United States has made solemn treaty commitments not to attack foreign countries except in self-defense?” demanded McCarthy, while also pillorying Trump for bypassing Congress to invade another oil-rich nation roughly double the size of Iraq.

Most of the administration’s indictments against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took place prior to 2018 when the first Trump administration recognized him as Venezuela’s leader, had formal diplomatic relations with his regime, “and was well aware of his facilitation of international narcotics trafficking,” McCarthy observed.

He similarly swatted the administration for questioning Maduro’s legitimacy while declining to install Edmundo González, the opposition leader who is regarded as the true winner of Venezuela’s 2024 election. Instead, the administration “paved the way” for the elevation of Maduro’s vice president, the aforementioned Delcy Rodríguez, which McCarthy called “a Maduro ally in the same Marxist regime — and an especially committed and ruthless apparatchik.”

Worse, McCarthy said it is emerging that the administration’s long-term plan is not at all clear.

“Was this regime change … except Trump doesn’t want to say ‘regime change’ because, having campaigned against wars of choice to achieve regime change, his endorsement of the concept would cause mutiny in the MAGA base?” McCarthy asked. “Did the president invade because of his untenable insistence that ‘our’ land and oil were stolen by the Venezuelan regime (which sounds eerily like the way Vladimir Putin talks about Ukraine and Xi Jinping about Taiwan). Are we ‘running’ Venezuela, as Trump says, or — as Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggests — just trying to squeeze reform and concessions out of Delcy Rodríguez (the next official up in the same Marxist regime) … the same way we tried (and failed) to squeeze Maduro?”

“… [H]ow is the inchoate, seat-of-the-pants plan to be implemented?” McCarthy said, pointing out that Congress never authorized neither U.S. attacks on suspected drug boats, the invasion of Venezuela, the ongoing partial blockade, or whatever else the administration wants.

“Nothing in the Constitution empowers a president to run a foreign country with which we are not at war. By what authority is this happening, and who is paying for it?” McCarthy said. “What’s the president’s plan? It’s not obvious that he has one.”

Read the National Review report at this link.

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