However, there is also consternation about the U.S. taking this action at all, with questions about the constitutionality, role, and authority of the president, the role of Congress, and the actual threat posed by Maduro. These are legitimate debates we should and will have.
Let’s take them in reverse order. Maduro has been an increasingly deadly threat to Americans since taking over for Hugo Chavez in 2013. He brought in a rogue’s gallery of the world’s worst people to prop him up, including Iranian and Hezbollah operatives. He invited the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian navies to train his navy for an invasion of next-door Guyana, where he planned to capture American oil fields.
But worse, Maduro funded and profited from an enormous global narco-trafficking operation that was a direct part of hundreds of thousands of American drug deaths over recent years. He made Venezuela a transit hub for death shipped into the U.S.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Maduro with narcoterrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, and weapons offenses he conducted from his perch as head of state.
His removal, combined with the closed border, deportation of illegals and drug cartel members in the U.S., covert operations against the drug cartels, and more cinches the noose tighter around the neck of drug trafficking into our nation.
The are quintessential America First actions.
Next, the role of Congress is pretty well defined in covert operations. No debate or prior approval is needed. Under the National Security Act of 1947, congressional notification of covert actions is required to be submitted to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence before a clandestine operation on foreign soil.
In highly sensitive covert operations, the administration may choose to inform only the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate majority and minority leaders, and the leaders of the HPSCI and SSCI.
The same statute vests the power to make these decisions entirely in the duly elected President, acting as Commander-in-Chief, and has never been successfully challenged on constitutional grounds.
Trump’s authority and the ancillary role of Congress are well established in U.S. law and actions over the past 80 years.
And note that the military escorted American law enforcement from the DOJ to arrest Maduro, and it was the DOJ that took him into custody and brought him to America. This appears to be well-planned legally as well.
At the same time, Congress, the media, and Americans in general can and most certainly will debate the merits of every one of these operations.
But they are in America’s interest in every conceivable way. We rid our hemisphere of one of the worst actors, remove an element of Chinese and Russian influence in our backyard, and continue strangling the drug trade in the U.S.
And a relevant side benefit is that if a stable Venezuelan leadership friendly to the U.S. takes control, it will likely be willing to take hundreds of thousands of its citizens back, helping our deportation challenges. This action could also create the necessary legal grounds for using the Alien Enemies Act to round up Tren de Aragua members here in America.
And finally, that sweet, sweet heavy petroleum will begin flowing freely into Texas and Louisiana refineries that were built just for it. That will help everyone at the fuel pump in 2026.
The Maduro arrest is an America First action.
Many potential pitfalls lie ahead, the biggest of which will be over-involvement in their internal affairs in the long term. A brief stabilization period may be required. We don’t want to repeat Obama’s Libya and Iraq and Biden’s Afghanistan, and spiral Venezuela into a civil war.
The key will be to resist the temptation to have American forces there long-term to maintain the “right” regime. Let the Venezuelans handle it. They’ve wanted to for a long time, and Americans most definitely do not want one American boot on the ground there.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children,seven grandchildren, and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
