See below for video and highlights, as Sen. Mark Warner speaks to The Bulweark, and :
“give[s] his take on the Trump administration’s dramatic actions in Venezuela, congressional oversight, and what comes next. Warner warns that extracting a foreign leader, sidelining Congress, and talking openly about “running” other countries reflects an imperial mindset that America has spent decades trying to move away from.”
According to Sen. Warner:
- “Secretary Rubio did try to call me, but it was after the strike had started…I was actually out west on a bit of vacation…but he did try to reach me after the strike had started and there was already on the news that Maduro had been extracted.”
- “Well, first I thought, you know, remarkable job by the military. I mean, the idea that we’d heard all these stories about, you know, the Venezuela military and then this almost praetorian guards that were Cubans surrounding Maduro. I’ve still got questions. How did this get carried out so flawlessly? And second…first to acknowledge Maduro is a bad guy and you know the Venezuelan people overwhelmingly voted him out in 2024…But all that being said, to extract a country’s ruler and based upon simply a criminal charge…he is a bad guy, but at the same time, a week earlier or so the president had pardoned the former Honduran president…for the exact same kind of crimes around drug… So was more than a little bit head scratching...even before we get to the claim that we’re going to run the country.”
- “I think the scariest thing…the precedents this sets, if we can go in and extract without talking to Congress or the American people a leader because we feel like they’ve broken our laws. You know, what right do we say to Vladimir Putin that you can’t do the same thing to Zelenskyy?…you can take this to absurd places, but if it all it means is a bigger country can say its laws have been violated and that gives you the right to go in and grab somebody as the leader of a smaller country around you. Boy oh boy, where does that [lead]?”
- “I don’t deny that Maduro is a bad guy. Not denying…but the notion that somehow – and the president would kind of conflate cocaine with fentanyl. And for example, in the indictment of Maduro, fentanyl is not even mentioned, right? So this whole notion that that we had this ironclad case…but it was be became more and more obvious from the president’s own words that this was much more about oil, right? And you know, yes, were American companies had their oil expropriated dozens last year dozens of years ago. Yes, I think it was Exxon still had a legal claim. Chevron has continued to operate there. But usually these things are settled in court or you try to make the case. And I just don’t believe that the American public or for that matter really the Trump supporters are going to want their sons and daughters in harm’s way, boots on the ground in Venezuela to try to get that country’s oil.”
- “That was kind of a 1950s view of the world – we’re going to have these spheres of influence. you know, we’ll have ours, Russians will have theirs, China’s… I think it’s been pretty much bipartisan policy for the last 70 years that we wanted to change our relationship with Central and South America and view them as partners, not as the imperialists. It felt like that 70-year bipartisan theory of the case got thrown out on Saturday. And I just don’t know how that is going to make America safer or frankly not just end up building up a lot more resentment in those countries against us.”
- “...if [Trump] starts talking about Colombia or Mexico, those leaders were democratically elected by their people. Cuba, not so much. But Colombia and Mexico and again Colombia in particular that was our shining example under President Bush…they did cut back on some of the drug trade. But the one thing about Donald Trump as we all know…no subtlety here….no nuance on anything. And again where does this all lead in terms of precedents?”
- “The one opposition figure who seemed to have the support of most of the Venezuelan people was Machado, who again Trump kind of dismissed and maybe he’s jealous that she won the Nobel Prize and he didn’t. But to kind of casually dismiss her. I mean what kind of message does that send to the Venezuelan people? On top of that, one of the questions we always had was we got briefed on Venezuela…what next? You get rid of Maduro, who’s next? Nobody had said in any briefs I’ve been in, well, this Vice President lady, Rodriguez, now she’s, you know, a secret capitalist or secret pro-America. But that seems to be the way that, again, I’m not saying Secretary Rubio, but at least President Trump has tried to represent her. And this whole notion as you mentioned earlier that we’re going to run the country from a armada offshore. I don’t have the foggiest idea how that that works. I mean this goes back to like the Colin Powell who said you know, you break it you own it. Well you kind of broke the government here but you own it now.”
- “I can’t think of a time where by simply outside influence…the Armada off the coast can make the kind of dramatic change in a nation that is at this point so kind of broken down and mismanaged as Venezuela…Venezuela used to…produce 4 million barrels of oil a day, it’s got the biggest set of oil reserves in the world, close to 20% of the known reserves. Everything I’ve read said to try to get that back operating where we could suddenly have America all our costs paid for and the Venezuelan people get what they deserve and need, would take two or three years to rebuild that infrastructure.”
- “That’s why our system was set up to say you got to have checks and balances. That’s why the power to declare war or take over a country is invested with Congress…this guy will take arbitrary actions. But two responses on that [Trump saying he wants to take over Greenland]. One is holy crap, what would that mean? Would NATO completely disintegrate? Would our kind of whole sense of Western alliance be destroyed? And on top of that, it kind of begs the other question, which we’re going to get a real view on this week. For all of the quiet conversations I’ve had with my Republican friends, and I’ve got a lot of Republican friends, are they going to actually speak up or keep rolling over? And again, kind of maybe the precedent setting and then the question whether our the norms will hold at all are the two biggest things that worry me.”
- “Denmark would rightfully have, you know, beyond the right to be pissed. And frankly, Denmark punches above its weight – the Danes and the Dutch are really good partners on a lot of issues. But, you know, what does France do? What does Germany do? It seems so baffling to me. But as you said, what was viewed as a joke for a few months to arbitrarily take that action would be crazy. But you can’t take it off the table. If the checks and balances that were set up don’t hold, then we’re in a very different kind of country. And I don’t, you know, you got that hypothetical, but the other hypothetical is, you know, if next week one of the Russian services go in and extract Zelenskyy from Kyiv, what are we going to say? Are we going to say, well, you know, we going to push back or we going to say, well, that’s Russian law, he broke.”
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