WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are “hid[ing] in a box somewhere” to avoid public accountability over their armed intervention in Venezuela and extraction of President Nicolás Maduro, a prominent Democratic senator charged, after a closed-door briefing Wednesday.
“The Trump administration chooses to post as many videos as they want publicly to make their point, but they don’t want to face the American people with an unclassified briefing,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told Raw Story at the Capitol.
“Why the hell is the Trump administration scared to face the American people in an open setting, before the Senate, before the House? I don’t understand that.
“They keep wanting to hide in a box somewhere. I don’t get it. We can’t talk about any of this because it’s all in a classified setting, but the Department of Justice is doing it all under a sealed, classified setting.
“Show the American people. What the hell are you hiding from?”
On Wednesday, Rubio, a former Florida U.S. senator, led briefings on Capitol Hill, accompanied by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“I don’t think that Secretary Rubio has been honest with the American people about a lot of things. Sadly, I think highly of Secretary Rubio, and it’s disappointing to see how he chooses to engage with the American people,” Luján said.
“There needs to be an unclassified hearing so that all these questions can be asked and answered.”
‘Very proud of our military’
After months of pressure on Venezuela, including lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats, U.S. forces swooped into Caracas Saturday, seizing President Maduro and his wife before transporting them to New York to face narcotics and weapons charges.
President Trump has hailed the operation as an unqualified success and repeatedly trumpeted favorable U.S. deals concerning Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.
Most Democrats and a handful of Republicans had already criticized the administration for bombing boats without congressional approval. Those critical voices have only gotten louder in recent days, because, once again, Congress was not notified before the Caracas operation.
The briefing from Rubio and Hegseth confirmed “everything that’s been out in the general sense,” said Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), also noting previous Democratic opposition to Maduro staying in power.
Asked about confusion over whether the U.S. is “running” Venezuela, as President Trump has said, or if the decapitated but standing Maduro regime is in charge, as seems the case, Fetterman said: “Plans are out, and now it’s an evolving situation.
“Of course, there are concerns. Obviously.”
Veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) voiced similar concerns.
“I think some of their justifications remain the same as the previous briefing,” she told Raw Story, referring to a session late last year about the strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
“They’re claiming that it was not about regime change.
“We have more questions. And then we requested that they tell us when we can have public briefings, and they wouldn’t answer that question.”
“Should that have been covered?” Raw Story asked.
“Yeah,” Duckworth said.
‘Totally America First’
A daring raid on a foreign capital to extract a president and his wife might seem contrary to the principles of “America First” — Trump’s tried and tested campaign slogan regarding avoiding foreign entanglements.
But Republicans emerging from Wednesday’s briefing backed the administration.
“It’s totally ‘America First,’” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) told Raw Story. “Stopping drugs flowing into our country and holding [Venezuela] accountable for it is totally America First.”
Democrats and other critics point out that Venezuela has no role in the international flow of fentanyl, the chief cause of drug deaths in the U.S., and a negligible part in the flow to American shores of cocaine and other drugs.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said Democrats were “always going to have their opinion about stuff because of their hatred towards President Trump.”
Asked if he was personally “behind this effort” and thought it would be “easily wrapped up down there, no boots on the ground,” Mullin said simply: “There’s no boots on the ground.”
Nor has there yet been a change of regime in Caracas. Nonetheless, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) seemed to welcome that prospect.
“There’ll be a new government one day, and there’ll be a lot of business activity between the United States and Venezuela that didn’t exist before this,” Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk, told Raw Story.
Asked if he was open to similar U.S. intervention in Colombia, about whose leftist government Trump has made ominous remarks, Graham did not answer, instead seeking the sanctuary of a senators-only elevator.
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