Ex-national security officials fear Trump is 'sinking deeper into a dementia'

Former U.S. national security officials were unsparing in the criticism of Donald Trump's military operation, per a Wednesday report from HuffPost, shredding him for "ineptitude and recklessness," with one reiterating concerns that he is "sinking deeper into a dementia of some sort."

Over the weekend, U.S. forces launched a strike on the capital city of Caracas, Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro for transport to New York City, where he is now standing trial on "narcoterrorism" charges brought by the US government. The military suffered no casualties in the raid, but reports of civilian deaths in Caracas range from 40 to as many as 100.

Despite accusing Maduro of involvement in drug trafficking and his history of authoritarian rule over the country, Trump has made it clear that his removal from power in Venezuela has more to do with gaining control of the country's vast oil reserves, which the U.S. government now claims it will oversee and manage the profits from. Emboldened by the effort, Trump and other administration officials have threatened similar strikes in Mexico, Cuba, Colombia and Greenland.

Speaking with various "veteran former CIA and foreign policy officials," HuffPost found that the experts "struggled to convey the level of ineptitude and recklessness" on display in Trump's attack on Venezuela, and some expressed grave concerns about where this sort of conduct on the international stage is taking the country.

“There’s no process in our foreign policy anymore,” Luis Moreno, a former ambassador to Jamaica and former foreign policy official specializing in the Caribbean, told the outlet. “We’re doing foreign policy, and defense policy to a certain extent, via tweet at 3 o’clock in the morning, and everyone has to respond to that.”

Brian Naranjo, a former senior foreign service officer with over 30 years of experience in roles based largely in the Western Hemisphere, worried that Trump's renewed threats towards other countries are destroying decades of hard diplomatic work establishing stable relationships with them.

“This is an effort, quite frankly, that looks very neo-imperialist to me, and neo-colonial,” Naranjo said. “This jackassery that is being inflicted by the White House is being taken quite seriously downrange in the hemisphere. For all intents and purposes, the United States is going alone on this, but for the absence of a plan, resources and manpower.”

Bill Piekney, a former CIA executive with a 30-year tenure at the agency, ripped Trump's "erratic and impulsive" behaviors of late, echoing the concerns of many that his mental state is in decline.

“The worry that we all have … is the president, the man himself, who is sinking deeper into a dementia of some sort,” Piekney said. “He can’t speak. He can’t think. The absence of any Kissingerian-like figure who can sit down and do long-term, strategic planning is absolutely staggering.”

Steven Cash, a former CIA official and intelligence operations expert, stressed the need for Congress to step up and reclaim its authority, decrying the complete lack of oversight and authorization under which the Venezuela raid was conducted.

“The lack of any briefing of Congress, the lack of any authorization or even discussion of this, and in fact, multiple reports of affirmative misinformation put into Congress by, among others, Secretary [Marco] Rubio, I do think is certainly, in the 20th and 21st century, unprecedented,” Cash said. “Are you really giving up the foreign affairs power that is entrusted to Congress under the Constitution? Are you giving up your appropriation powers entrusted in the Constitution? Are you concerned that you have a leader now who seems to be acting much more in the mold of authoritarians … than any previous president?”