Trump and Venezuela: More congressional oversight needed, top Democrats say

WASHINGTON — The top two congressional Democrats — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries — both doubled-down Sunday on their calls for more congressional oversight of President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela, a day after the United States removed the country’s leader Nicolás Maduro.

Trump meanwhile, warned Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, a Maduro ally, that she awaits a similar fate to the ousted president unless she complies with the Trump administration's demands.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine in a Sunday interview.

More intervention?

Trump also alluded to continued foreign intervention in his second term, repeating his  long-standing threat for the United States to take over Greenland, telling the outlet: "We do need Greenland, absolutely."

Schumer (D-N.Y.), appearing on ABC’s "This Week" on Sunday, reiterated that Senate Democrats will seek to force a vote this week on a bill to block further military action against Venezuela without congressional approval.

"The problem here is that there are so many unanswered questions," Schumer said, noting the Trump administration has not yet detailed how many troops will be needed, or how long the United States will maintain a presence in the country, as Trump on Saturday announced the U.S. government and a coalition of corporations will jointly "run" Venezuela.

With the Senate set to return on Monday, and the House on Tuesday after the holiday break, House Minority Leader Jeffries (D-Brooklyn), appearing on NBC’s "Meet the Press," said lawmakers have to see "that legislative action is taken to ensure that no further military steps occur absent explicit congressional approval."

Jeffries roundly dismissed Trump's assertions this was simply a crime-fighting or counternarcotics operation.

'An act of war'

"It was an act of war," Jeffries said, adding, "this was a military action involving Delta Force, involving the Army, apparently involving thousands of troops, involving at least 150 military aircraft, perhaps involving dozens of ships off the coast of Venezuela and South America."

As recently as Dec. 17, Long Island’s members of the House split along party lines on two Democratic-sponsored War Powers Resolutions that were defeated. Those resolutions would have forced Trump to go to Congress for approval before attacking Venezuela and would have halted his campaign of striking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

Republican Reps. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) voted in line with most House Republicans in rejecting the efforts to rein in Trump’s actions. Democratic Reps. Laura Gillen (D-Rockport Centre) and Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) supported the resolutions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on the Sunday talk show circuit, did not discount the possibility of a long-term U.S. military presence inside Venezuela a day after Maduro was shuttled by U.S. authorities to New York to face a host of criminal charges.

"I think first of all, the president always retains optionality on anything, and on all these matters he certainly has the ability and the right under the Constitution of the United States to act against imminent and urgent threats against the country," Rubio told CBS’ "Face the Nation" when asked about the prospect of placing U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela.

A large-scale presence

Rubio said for now, the United States will maintain a large-scale naval presence in the region to ensure oil is not exported. He argued Maduro and his government allies enriched themselves off oil sales, while Venezuela’s people continued to spiral further into poverty.

"I think what you see as a force posture is one of the largest naval deployments in modern history, certainly in the Western Hemisphere," Rubio told CBS.

Democrats accused Trump of a power-grab in Venezuela motivated by control of the country's vast oil supply, but Republicans countered Maduro's government posed a national security threat to the United States.

“It’s primarily about a communist dictatorship that was trafficking drugs into the United States that was in league with Islamic radicals and Iran and Cuba and Russia that was given many opportunities to step aside,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on CNN. 

Cotton said worries by some Democrats that the United States will repeat mistakes in Venezuela that led to the drawn-out Iraq War were off base, because the South American country, unlike Iraq, "is an ethnically, religiously, culturally homogenous country." He noted, before the leadership of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, the country had "a long history of stability and prosperity and working with America for decades."