President Donald Trump was big on boast and short on details when he committed the U.S. to running the whole nation of Venezuela on Saturday.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump told reporters in the hours following his administration’s invasion and seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
But Trump ran on an “America First” campaign of keeping the nation out of expensive international campaigns and foreign wars, and social media called him out for his dramatic about-face.
“I don't think there are many Trump supporters who voted to have the United States run Venezuela for an indefinite period of time,” said Attorney Aaron Parnas on X.
“I have a lot of questions,” posted Decatur Daily News Editor Franklin Harris on X.
“He can’t even run the U.S.: skyrocketing inflation, healthcare premiums doubling for millions, and the unemployment rate at a four-year high,” said U.S. Rep Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.). “Remember, running a country for oil was the same excuse that cost trillions and too many lives in Iraq. Congress must vote on a war powers resolution immediately.”
Retired general Mark Hertling blasted Trump’s Saturday presentation, which was punctuated by fawning praise from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On a Bulwark podcast, Hertling warned the Trump administration was failing to learn from the bad decisions of past Republican administrations.
“The tragedy wasn’t that Iraq was hard,” said Hertling, speaking of a commemorative box containing photos and cards of 253 soldiers lost under his command in Iraq. “The tragedy was that we acted as if it wouldn’t be, that it would be really easy. And that’s what I’m hearing with this group of two between Hegseth and Rubio. And those are the last two people I would want running a post conflict operation in a country that’s just been bombed.”
“This is Bushism with less of a plan. It’s the Iraq and Afghanistan thing with less of a plan,” said Bulwark Publisher Sarah Longwell, who added that Trump clearly is not doing well mentally even as he prepares to send the world’s most expensive military into a South American country.
“Trump was slurring,” Longwell said of the press conference. “He was going off on wild tangents at a critical moment of information … Trump gives this slurring, meandering thing — then you’ve got Hegseth doing an ass-kissing session on Trump, and then he points to Rubio — who wasn’t even prepared to speak, so basically he says ‘everybody put your big boy pants on because Donald Trump means what he says.”
