More Democrats are criticizing the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Maduro’s removal without a next-day plan \u201cdangerous and irresponsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Himes is a member of the Gang of Eight, the term describing the Congressional leaders who are traditionally notified before major U.S. military operations. But he said he and other Democrats were not told in advance about the raid in Venezuela, something administration have confirmed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the operation didn’t require congressional approval.<\/p>\n
But Democrats appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows pushed back at that assertion. “There’s been no evidence that the administration has presented to justify the actions that were taken in terms of there being an imminent threat” to American national security, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told NBC’s Meet the Press. “This was not simply a counter narcotics operation. It was an act of war.”<\/p>\n
Himes told CNN’s State of the Union that the president’s comments during a press conference on Saturday also complicated matters. He focused much of his comments on Venezuela’s oil resources, for example. “What do Venezuelans hear when they hear Donald Trump talking about oil? What they hear is, \u2018The Americans are here for our resources,\u2019\u201d Himes told CNN.<\/p>\n
Himes also called out Trump for criticizing Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. “He not only made this about oil, but he delegitimized probably the most unifying force in Venezuela right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Machado, who left Venezuela last month to travel to Oslo to receive her Nobel Prize, told her countrymen on Saturday that “the HOUR OF FREEDOM has arrived!\u201d She said opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, whom the opposition says won the 2024 vote, \u201cmust immediately assume his constitutional mandate\u201d as president and commander in chief of the national armed forces.<\/p>\n
President Trump said of Machado on Saturday that it would be tough for her to be the leader. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect\u201d to be a potential interim leader, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More Democrats are criticizing the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-388079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}