MORNING GLORY: The United States is now 'running' Venezuela after Maduro ouster
"We’re in charge of everything. We’re in charge of everything… We’re going to run it. We’re going to fix it…. Well, we're gonna run everything. We're gonna run it, fix it. We'll have elections at the right time. The main thing you have to fix, it's a broken country."
President Donald Trump, on Air Force One on Sunday night, had a remarkable back and forth with the traveling press corps about Operation Absolute Resolve, which captured and arrested dictator Nicholas Maduro and brought him to the United States, and which included his statements above about Venezuela.
Many people purport either not to understand what President Trump said on Sunday on his return flight, or during his Saturday morning statement and press conference or, as with the case of New York Times reporter Lulu Navarro, to assert that if the president and his administration "say they run the country, then whatever happens there now they own."
TRUMP’S VENEZUELA STRIKE SPARKS CONSTITUTIONAL CLASH AS MADURO IS HAULED INTO US
Navarro continued in her online X exchange with me, "That is the consequence of saying they ‘run’ the country while repression continues." She added in another post "that the repression the regime is continuing to exert is now the responsibility of the US. They have toppled the leader but left the regime and its heinous actors in place to consolidate power."
While Ms. Navarro and I had a cordial exchange — she is simply wrong about how our legal system would assign responsibility for "heinous acts" done in Venezuela post-Madura, she is also wrong about what President Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio have repeatedly stated.
The president’s many statements about "running" Venezuela or being "in charge" are a very clear assertion of general, non-specific power, like a parent might say to a child about his or her plans or to a school board when it comes to curriculum or like a coach might say to journalists covering a particular team. It is difficult to believe that anyone doesn’t actually understand what a generalized statement of authority means. We encounter them daily and we routinely understand them.
So those who are saying they don’t understand what President Trump and Secretary Rubio are saying can be classified as (1) ignorant; (2) stupid or (3) deceitful.
Similarly, those who want to lay at the president’s feet every bad or evil act done in Venezuela post-Maduro are subject to the same classification.
It is difficult, but not impossible for people to be unable to understand direct versus indirect authority. They may be ignorant, for example, of bankruptcy proceedings where a bankruptcy judge has general authority over the reorganization of a company that has filed for "BK," but who doesn’t figure out the plan to emerge from that status or liquidate the assets but rather only passes on plans that emerge after objections have been heard from creditors. The judge is "running" the bankrupt company, but at one remove.
Others might lack the basic understanding of causation. Bad things are still happening in Venezuela. Dissidents are still in prison and no doubt more are being sent there. As Navarro notes in her first post which began our exchange, gangs of "chavistas" are roaming about menacing people. She says she has talked to "people I know inside Venezuela" and that "arrests of journalists are taking place," which may be true. But the United States is not responsible for these repressive acts.
The secret police are still there, as are the "chavistas," as is a corrupt and compromised military. It is hardly likely that every Iranian, Russian or Chinese operative has left the country in the days since Maduro was spirited away in the remarkable display of military might by the U.S.
It is very much a broken country, just as was the Soviet Union was in 1989. Communism never works except to spread suffering far and wide and enrich the very few atop the system. "The warm embrace of collectivism" has always meant a massive vise-like grip on every person not inside the regime atop the various "peoples paradises." Totalitarians are always evil. They always abuse people.
The United States put a quarantine on Venezuela’s oil exports, but it controls that quarantine. As Secretary Rubio noted repeatedly on Sunday, the country’s ability to store its own oil has nearly reached its capacity. On Tuesday, President Trump announced that Venezuela may export $2 billion worth of crude oil to the U.S. "The agreement is a strong sign that the Venezuelan government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to U.S. oil companies or risk more military intervention," according to Reuters. The U.S. did not operate the well, load the tankers or send them on their way to U.S. refineries, but it surely is "running" this redirection of Venezuelan oil exports under the embargo, but permitted as an exception to the blockade.
This is not hard. Step-by-step, the U.S. is guiding the reconfiguration of the regime’s operations. The U.S. is "running" the country, but has not occupied it. No doubt other important steps are taking place beyond the view of the public. After the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Libya’s dictator at the time, Moammar Gadhafi — who feared a similar invasion — invited the U.S. into his country to take possession and remove his vast quantities of WMD, which happened and did so in secret. As with Libya then, so with Venezuela now: The U.S. is running the country at a very high level. It is not, however, responsible for governing the country as we were in Iraq when our military invaded and occupied Saddam’s nightmare of a country-turned-vast-prison-camp.
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So pundits, reporters, talking heads: See what is right in front of you. President Trump ordered, and the U.S. military and law enforcement carried out, a stunning operation with lightning speed after positioning an armada off the coast of Venezuela. The armada remains in place. A long process of the rehabilitation of a broken country has begun. Nobody knows when elections will occur. Recall the United States insisted on elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006 and Hamas ended up running a fanatical terrorist state there. Elections may have to wait, but hopefully not for long, as Venezuela has an opposition and long experience with conducting elections.
The U.S. does not want chaos. However, while the regime is still in place, it has begun to comply with American direction. Again, let those with eyes see and those with ears hear. Venezuela has begun a new era, but it’s a long way from returning to pre-Communist Venezuela, which was a stable and democratic country friendly to the United States. We all hope it gets there soon and that its vast wealth is no longer siphoned off to a sinister group of insiders or that our enemies are given the run off the place.
It should be a country that boots out its Cuban secret police and which does not allow Hezbollah or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to operate there. It should be our ally, not China’s. There should be no political prisoners and there should be a free press. Elections should be free, fair and frequent according to its Constitution. The "rule of law" should return.
President Trump and the U.S. are indeed "running" the process to bring all this about, but it will take time. Some good faith from legacy media would help, but the widespread "Trump Derangement Syndrome" within legacy media will have to recede before we can all get real news from the emerging new Venezuela.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.