By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Democrats were for deposing Venezuelan President Maduro before they were against it. According to CNN, President Trump’s popularity jumped after the capture of Maduro. February 5, 2020, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) dared Trump to take action with his Venezuela policy, hammering him because he hadn’t brought the Maduro regime to an end. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) on January 23, 2019 tweeted, “If Trump cared about consistency, he would make the realist case for intervention in Venezuela (getting rid of Maduro is good for the United States).” Now, both of those Democrats call Trump’s move against Venezuela’s communist regime “reckless,” “dangerous,” “illegal,” “fundamentally corrupt,” and “has nothing to do with American security.”
The Democrats hate Donald J. Trump so much that it doesn’t matter what he does, they will be against it. President Trump this morning said that if the Republicans don’t win the mid-term elections, the Democrats will spend his final two years in office impeaching him. The USA Today on Monday put out an opinion piece titled, “So now Democrats are mad that Trump ousted a dictator?” by Nicole Russell hammering the Democrats for “questioning Trump when he does something that garners applause from world leaders and the very people most affected – oppressed Venezuelans.” Russell’s sub-title to the piece read, “Kudos to President Donald Trump and our military. I hope the president can finish the job and reinstate democracy to the Venezuelan people.” Russell also wrote, “I am cheering along with Venezuelans both abroad and here in the United States. Democrats should be too, though many are not, despite acknowledging Maduro’s evil regime for years and even criticizing President Donald Trump for not removing Maduro. It’s yet another example of Democrats’ hypocrisy: They seem to hate Trump more than they want an oppressed country to be liberated. That’s pretty remarkable.”
During the first term of President Trump a financial reward was offered tied to Nicolas Maduro’s capture. The reward was later increased from $15 million to $25 million during the Biden presidency as part of continuing efforts to pressure Maduro and hold him accountable under criminal indictments. If President Biden had carried out the same operation that President Trump just carried out, and if it had been as successful as this latest action was, the Democrats would have been celebrating, and praising themselves for their operation.
Now, they call it dangerous and unconstitutional because Trump, they say, is waging war without congressional permission (which would be a declaration of war). As I’ve explained before (Democrats Rage Over Venezuela Strike, Calling it Unconstitutional), the President of the United States as Commander in Chief is not required to get permission from Congress before deploying the military for any kinetic action.
The action reminds me of President Thomas Jefferson’s use of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps during the First Barbary War. Jefferson, himself, resisted calling the Barbary conflict a “war” even while authorizing naval force precisely because it lacked a declaration and was aimed at ending unlawful depredations, not fighting a nation in the conventional sense. His move against the Barbary Coast Muslim caliphate, like President Trump’s move in Venezuela, was targeted, limited in scope, aimed at enforcing law and punishing unlawful conduct, and was not intended to be a sustained conflict between sovereigns.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
if Trump found a cure for 70% of the diseases in the world, the democrats would be saying the cures were a threat to society, a threat to democracy, unconstitutional and totally illegal. I wonder if they are even listening to themselves speak.