Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) tore into President Donald Trump’s declaration that he will “run” Venezuela in the aftermath of a military strike on the country and capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
“Is anyone going to just stop for a second and be honest? This is insane. What the hell are we doing?” Moulton, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday on CNN.
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Maduro was indicted on a slew of charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy, and will be tried in the U.S, said Attorney General Pam Bondi in an announcement. In it, she called Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, “alleged international narco traffickers.”
Trump told reporters Saturday that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until “a safe, proper, and judicious transition” can take place.
“So we don’t wanna be involved with somebody else getting in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” Trump told reporters. “We’re gonna run it, essentially.”
Earlier that day, he told Fox News the U.S will be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry.
Moulton told CNN anchor Erin Burnett, “We got a lot of problems in America today, and invading, occupying, running Venezuela does not solve any of them.”
“This is illegal. It’s unjustified. It is not in our national interest, and there seems to be no plan whatsoever for what happens next,” Moulton said.
Other Democrats have railed against the Venezuela attack, questioning the legality behind the operation. Moulton told Burnett that the president and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “lied to members of Congress about what’s going on here.”
“When we had briefings on Venezuela, we asked, ‘Are you going to invade the country?’ We were told ‘no.’ ‘Do you plan to put troops on the ground in Venezuela?’ We were told ‘no.’ ‘Do you intend regime change in Venezuela?’ We were told ‘no,’” Moulton said. “So in a sense, we have been briefed. We’ve just been completely lied to.”
Moulton said he believes the operation in Venezuela signals Trump “is willing to put a lot of troops, a lot of young Americans and a lot of taxpayer dollars — I suspect northward of a billion taxpayer dollars —into his little war of revenge here against Maduro.”
The congressman continued, “This is all money, by the way, that he’s not willing to spend to pay for your health care, that he’s not willing to spend to make things more affordable here in America, that he’s not willing to spend to actually pursue his America First agenda. This is a lot of resources that we’re putting into Venezuela that we’re not putting into the United States right now.”
