Chairman Mast Leads GOP Opposition Against Democratic Push to Shield Maduro's Venezuelan Cartel Regime
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast led Republicans in opposing a Democrat-led effort to preemptively disarm the president from defending the U.S. from Nicolás Maduro's terrorist regime.
-Remarks-
This resolution is weak, unnecessary, and dangerous.
It is not about oversight.
It is not about the Constitution.
It is about tying the President’s hands, specifically in Venezuela.
It’s about telling President Trump he does not have the authority to defend America.
This resolution is a preemptive surrender.
As written, it limits the president’s ability to respond to future threats posed by Venezuela.
Russia delivers nukes there; the president can’t respond. Iran delivers a dirty bomb there; the president can’t respond. China delivers anthrax or some other biological weapon, like they did with COVID-19, but far more deadly; the president can’t respond. No matter what the threat, President Trump cannot respond.
Additionally, this resolution doesn’t make sense because we are not in hostilities inside Venezuela.
The authorized use of military force process exists in Congress. Democrats are not writing a scope of action for the President to defend the United States of America. This resolution is a blanket statement to say the President cannot defend the United States of America.
No matter what the threat emanating from Venezuela, he cannot defend you, cannot defend me, cannot defend our country against it.
This resolution is not stopping war, it’s not stopping invasion, it’s not stopping drug-running. It’s not stopping terrorism. It’s stopping the president from acting decisively before Americans die.
Let’s be clear about who we are dealing with. Venezuela is the largest and best-funded cartel in the world.
Nicolás Maduro is not a legitimate head of state. He is a designated narco-terrorist who is poisoning Americans.
All the stuff we were just talking about in the last debate, that’s Maduro. He’s the head of a cartel that will abduct somebody, behead somebody, and torture someone to support his political ends.
Both Republican and Democrat administrations agree: Maduro is an illegitimate dictator who rules through repression, fraud, and violence.
He literally uses the Venezuelan military to move cocaine into the United States.
This is not a theory. This is a state-run criminal enterprise.
Venezuela is not a gang. It’s a cartel state. It rakes in billions, moving more than 250 metric tons of Colombian cocaine through their country every year.
The United States already has bipartisan sanctions on Venezuelan oil. President Trump supported them. President Biden kept them.
Maduro is violating those sanctions — and we just caught him doing it again.
A ghost ship was intercepted smuggling Venezuelan oil. Maduro admitted the oil was his.
So here is the simple question: how do you enforce sanctions if you are not allowed to stop the shipments?
The answer is you can’t. Interdicting Venezuelan oil shipments is not war. It is sanctions enforcement. It’s law and order.
Given that it’s the Venezuelan government that is the cartel, the trafficker, the one moving these ships. That’s why it requires a military to do so.
This resolution reads as if Maduro wrote it himself.
It gives a narco-terrorist dictator a free pass to keep trafficking drugs, funding criminal networks, and killing Americans — because Democrats hate President Trump more than they love America.
President Trump has the authority — and the obligation — to take limited, targeted action to protect the United States of America wherever those threats emanate from.
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