'You're Confused?': Rubio Slaps Down Margaret Brennan's 'Absurd' Venezuela Question
Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed Sunday with “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan after she questioned why the United States didn’t arrest other indicted members of the Venezuelan government.
President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post that American military forces, including the Army’s elite Delta Force, protected a law enforcement operation which arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas early Saturday morning. Brennan expressed confusion about why only Maduro and his wife had been arrested, prompting Rubio to react.
“You’re confused? You don’t know why that is confusing?” Rubio asked, before Brennan responded, “They’re still in power.”
Trump declared during a Saturday news conference on the operation which captured Maduro that the United States was “running” Venezuela. He then mentioned senior administration officials, including Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, would be in charge.
“You’re going to go in and suck up five people? They are already complaining about the one operation. Imagine the howls we would have from everybody else if we had to go and stay there for four days to capture four other people. We got the top priority,” Rubio said.
“The number one person on the list was the guy who claimed to be the president of the country that he was not, and he was arrested along with his wife who is also indicted and that was a sophisticated and, frankly, complicated operation,” Rubio continued. “It’s not easy to land helicopters in the middle of the largest military base in the country. He lived on a military base. Land in three minutes, kick down his door, arrest him, and read him his rights and leave without losing any American assets. You’re asking why didn’t we do that in five other places at the same time? That’s absurd!”
Trump noted American forces suffered no losses in the operation during both the news conference and in his Truth Social post announcing Maduro’s capture.
“I do think it’s one of the most, you know, daring, you know, complicated, sophisticated missions the country has carried out in a very long time. Tremendous credit to the U.S. military personnel who did it, it was unbelievable and a tremendous success,” Rubio said. “And today an indicted drug trafficker — not the legitimate president of Venezuela, who we don’t recognize, the Biden administration did not recognize, 60-something countries don’t recognize, the European Union doesn’t recognize, and many countries in Latin America don’t recognize — he’s an indicted– a drug trafficker. He was arrested, his wife was arrested–”
“The others also indicted are still– the others who were also indicted are still in place, so that is the point of my questioning there. You talked about not being the legitimate president–,” Brennan started, before Rubio bluntly concluded, “You wanted us to land in five other military bases!”
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