Sen. Chris Murphy made an appearance on this Sunday’s State of the Union on CNN, and was asked about an op-ed he wrote back in 2019 calling for democratic elections in Venezuela by host Dana Bash, and Murphy proceeded to take apart her concern trolling both siderism along with any pretense that what the Trump administration just did with destabilizing the country by removing Maduro by force remotely resembled what he was writing about in that article.
Murphy also took a whack at his fellow member of the US Senate, Tom Cotton, who couldn’t even explain who’s running Venezuela right now while telling Bash over and over again how wonderful it was that they ousted him.
BASH: You know, there are — there’s no question that Maduro was a destabilizing force, not just in Venezuela and the region. And there are people celebrating in the streets all over South America and Venezuelan expats abroad.
So is it fair to say that there is some benefit in Maduro not being in power?
MURPHY: But what changes? I mean, you just heard Senator Cotton effectively not be able to explain who’s running the country now.
Delcy Rodriguez is a very powerful figure in her own right, handpicked by Maduro. Russia and China still provide enormous support to that country. What changes? Why would Venezuela stop its export of drugs, its harassment of U.S. interests in the region?
There’s really no explanation for how American interests are changed at all with a Rodriguez administration that right now seems to be intent on carrying through and carrying forward the policies of Nicolas Maduro.
BASH: In 2019, you wrote an op-ed and you called for Maduro to be gone. You said: “Let’s get one thing straight, there should no longer be any debate about Maduro’s lack of democratic legitimacy. The Trump administration is right to put restoring Venezuelan democracy at the center of our approach to this crisis. A return to a stable democracy is in the interest of the Venezuelan people and the United States and the hemisphere.”
We don’t know what’s going to happen with regard to the civilian leadership there. Tom Cotton was just here saying that he hopes that there are democratic elections. Isn’t that what you want?
MURPHY: Well, the rest of that article, right, was a criticism of President Trump’s early moves to saber-rattle around regime change.
Listen, there are evil, brutal dictators all over the world. That does not give the American president the right to invade those countries, in large part because we have seen how this script plays out. I watched your interview with Senator Cotton. You asked him what the difference was between Iraq and Venezuela.
He didn’t say the difference was, we aren’t going to invade Venezuela like we invaded Iraq. He said that, if we invade Venezuela, which may be part of the president’s plan, it’s going to go really well. Over and over again, we have seen these warmongering neocons, many of which have influence in this White House, cheerlead us into war under the guise of removing a very bad man.
That ends up getting a lot of Americans killed. And if this is really just about the oil, if this is really just about the natural resources, if this is just about getting a bunch of Donald Trump’s friends on Wall Street even richer, I don’t think there’s a single American family who would support having their son or daughter put into harm’s way to defend the interests of Wall Street.
This is once again American oil interests, American financial interests coming before the actual national security interests of the United States.
Murphy wrapped things up by going after the administration for lying to them during their briefing last month, and pointed out the obvious. You can’t trust a word that comes out of any of their lying mouths.
BASH: I do want to ask about a briefing that the secretary of state and defense held with senators — you were there last month — about Venezuela.
MURPHY: Yes.
BASH: Can you talk about what they said and whether or not that actually came — bore out?
MURPHY: Well, I can certainly tell you the message that they sent was that this wasn’t about regime change. They came to Congress and they literally lied to our face. They said, this is just a counternarcotics operation. This is about trying to interrupt the drug flow to the United States.
Right around that same time, the White House chief of staff said publicly, if we ever had boots on the ground in Venezuela, of course we would have to come to Congress.
Listen, there’s no way to trust this administration. They aren’t being straight with the American people. There isn’t even a briefing scheduled for Congress next week to explain, A, what happened and, B, what the plan is moving forward.
But, yes, I think everybody in that briefing heard the administration say this is just a targeted counternarcotics operation, this has nothing to do with regime change. They knew they weren’t telling the truth in that room.
And they’ll continue to spit in the members of Congress’ faces as long as Republicans allow it.
