Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Venezuela Logic Turned America Into a Villain

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Will Saletan takes on Donald Trump’s post-invasion claims about Venezuela and Maduro, putting Marco Rubio into a series of awkward Sunday show cleanups on war powers, oil, and pardons that exposes just how much of Trump’s story doesn’t add up. Read Will's written piece: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/which-countries-will-trump-invade-next-after-venezuela-maduro

Hey, everybody. It's Will Salatan from the Bullwork. By now, everybody knows we've invaded Venezuela, except we're not calling at that. We did manage to go in. The military went in, got the dictator, Nicholas Maduro, got out, didn't create the biggest mess in the world, although they did make one. But the guy who really made a mess was Donald Trump. So he did a press conference after the attack, and he said a bunch of crazy stuff. He said, we're going to run. The United States is going to run Venezuela. He said, we're going to bring in American oil companies to go and take the oil out and profit from it. He said, we're doing all this to bring Maduro to the United States to face drug charges. But then Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug charges, was serving his sense.

Trump let him off. So basically, Trump made this huge mess. And what happened on Sunday after the attack was that Marco Rubio, the same. Secretary of State had to go on TV and clean up the mess that Trump left him. Okay, so we're going to talk today about Rubio and how he did this. So let me start first with Trump at his press conference where he said that we, the United States, are going to run Venezuela. Watch who is standing behind Trump as he says this. What's the group you mentioned that would run Venezuela? Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind.

behind me. We're going to be running it. So you saw the guy who was standing behind Trump. That's Rubio. So then on Sunday, Rubio is on Meet the Press, and Kristen Welker asks him about what Trump said. President Trump said, we're going to run the country. So is it you? Is it Secretary Heggseth? Who are those people who will be running the country specifically? Well, it's not running. It's running policy. The policy with regards to this. We want Venezuela. to move in a certain direction. Wait. Okay, so we want Venezuela to move in the direction that we chose.

But, like, how is that running Venezuela, which is what Trump said, right? How do we get Venezuela to do what we want? So Rubio tries to explain. We go to court, we get a warrant, we seize the boats. And we think that this is tremendous leverage, incredible, crippling leverage, which we intend to continue to use until we see the changes that we need to see. Okay, so we go to court, we seize a couple of boats, but what if Venezuela doesn't do what we wanted them, what we wanted them to do? So on ABC, George Stephanopoulos asked Rubio about that scenario, and here's what Rubio said.

And what happens if they're not addressed? Well, as I said, we retain all the options we had before this raid and this capture and this arrest was made. We continue that quarantine is in place right now. If you are a sanctioned boat and you are headed towards Venezuela, you will be seized either on the way in or on the way out with a court order that we get from judges in the United States. We retain all the options we had before. We go to court, we seize a couple of ships, we're right back where we started. So it sounds like we're not running anything.

So when Trump said we're running Venezuela, he was just lying, which honestly is great because that would have been insane. So the answer is, Donald Trump was lying, and we know that because Rubio couldn't explain it. All right. So the next question for Rubio is, Congress has war powers. So how did the president, how did Trump go into Venezuela without consulting Congress? And here's the question, as it was asked by George Stephanopoulos. Several members of Congress and other legal experts have said this operation to take Maduro was illegal because you didn't see congressional authorization.

Why wasn't congressional authorization necessary? It wasn't necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn't occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation. He was arrested on the ground in Venezuela by FBI agents. Red is right and removed from the country. Not an invasion. We sent 150 aircraft into Venezuela. We blew up their air defenses. We killed 80 people, including a lot of civilians. Rubio caused that an arrest. Can you imagine if the cops did that? anywhere in the United States. They blew up everything. They killed civilians. It would be a huge scandal, right? So Rubio is just lying. This was an invasion, and they're calling it just an arrest so they can get around the War Powers Act. Okay, so the next problem is that pardon that Trump gave to the former president of Honduras, the guy who was running drugs. He was just starting a 45-year sentence. It was like 500 tons of cocaine. It was an insane. him out, Trump let him off. So at the press conference on Saturday, Trump was asked to explain

that pardon. And here's what he said. Again, watch who is standing behind him. I went to a lot of the people standing behind me and they felt that that man was persecuted and treated very badly. That's why I gave him a pardon. Okay, so there's Rubio standing behind Trump. And Trump says, the people behind me told me to give that pardon. But then on Sunday, Rubio got asked about the same pardon. And here's what he said. Well, the president has the pardon authority. He's the one that reviewed the file with the folks at the White House to make these pardon decisions. And I refer questions to them on it because I'm not involved in the pardon process. So I can't comment on that because I wasn't involved in that process. I don't know. I wasn't

involved. So one of those two guys is lying, right? Either Trump is lying about Rubio or Rubio's lying about Trump or just go with me here. Maybe both of them are lying. All right. So one more thing, the oil. Here's Rubio on Meet the Press, trying to clean up what Trump said about bringing American oil companies into Venezuela. Let me ask you about oil. The president says the U.S. is taking over the oil. The question is, I guess, if the purpose of the operation was to capture Maduro and bring him to justice, why does the United States need to take over the Venezuelan oil industry? Well, we don't need to.

First, let me go back up. We don't need Venezuela's oil. We have plenty of oil in the United States. What we're not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States. Oh, no, we're not here to take the oil from Venezuela, not for us. No, that would be wrong. We would never do that.

We're just here to protect the oil from our adversaries. See, those are the bad countries that go in. into places like Venezuela to take their oil. We are the good guys. Here's a little more from Rubio. We want to see the oil proceeds of that country benefit the people of Venezuela. Why have eight million people left Venezuela? Eight million, the single largest mass migration, probably in modern history, left Venezuela's

in 2014, because all the wealth of that country was stolen to the benefit of Maduro and his cronies in the regime. See, we don't want the oil to go to the dictator and his cronies. We want the money to go to the good people of Venezuela. So that's why we're going to bring in American companies to take the oil out of the ground. And then what are we going to do with that oil? Here's what Trump said. China, Russia, and Iran have interests in Venezuela.

How does this operation affect your relationships with them when it comes to the oil and Russia? Well, Russia, well, Russia, when we get things straight down, but in terms of other countries that want oil, we're in the oil business. We're going to sell it to them. We're not going to say we're not going to get into it. In other words, we'll be selling oil probably in much larger doses because they couldn't produce very much

because their infrastructure was so bad. So we'll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries. There you go. We are in the oil business. We're going to take Venezuela's oil to protect it from China and Russia. and then we're going to sell it to China and Russia. See, we're the good guys who go in to protect the oil from the bad guys, and then we sell it to the bad guys.

Which means maybe, just maybe, we are now one of the bad guys. See you next time.