Democratic Senators on the Armed Services Committee Condemn Trump’s Capture of Venezuela’s President |
President Donald Trump, followed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arrives to speak at Mar-a-Lago after announcing that US military forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.Alex Brandon/AP
Democratic members of the Committee on Armed Services, which helps oversee the nation’s military, denounced President Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday that United States military forces struck Venezuela and captured the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Trump did not seek congressional authority for the attack and said at a press conference that the US is “going to run the country.” Trump’s decision to move ahead without congressional approval may be a violation of the US constitution and amount to a criminal act, according to legal experts.
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona and a veteran who served as a combat pilot and flew dozens of missions in the Gulf War with Iraq, said in a statement that Trump “doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.” Maduro, he added, “is a brutal, illegitimate dictator who deserves to face justice.”
“I want the people of Venezuela to be free to choose their own future,” Kelly continued, “but if we learned anything from the Iraq war, it’s that dropping bombs or toppling a leader doesn’t guarantee democracy, stability, or make Americans safer.”
In the early hours of Saturday, according to Trump, US military forces “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader” in an operation “done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” The operation included a strike on........