(The Hill) – Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) faulted fellow Democrats early Monday for their relentless criticism of President Trump’s mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, calling the operation “a good thing.”
Fetterman, in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” said Democrats wanted to oust Maduro from power as much as Republicans did, but now that the Venezuelan strongman is in U.S. custody, Democrats are lashing out at the Trump administration.
“I don’t know why we can’t just acknowledge it’s been a good thing what’s happened. I’ve seen the speeches from, whether it’s Leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden,” he said, referring to recent criticism of the military operation by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and former President Biden’s tough talk about Maduro in the past.
“We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here,” Fetterman said.
Schumer said Saturday that “launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.”
Biden criticized Trump in the past for not being tough enough on Maduro’s regime. In 2020, he accused Trump in a social media post of talking “tough” on Venezuela but then admiring “thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro.”
Those comments left Fetterman shaking his head and asking why Democrats won’t give credit when he believes credit is due.
“I salute our military, what they’ve done,” he said on Fox News. “That was really surgical and precise and very efficient — so why we can’t celebrate these kinds of things?
The Pennsylvania senator said Maduro’s ouster opens up the possibility of a more prosperous future for Venezuelans.
“And now I’m open to the good opportunities, a better future for Venezuela after this happened,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Biden imposed a $25 million reward for Maduro’s capture and asked why the United States would not enforce its own bounty on the dictator.
“In the Biden administration, they had a $25 million reward for [Maduro’s] capture,” Rubio told NBC host Kristen Welker.
“So, we have a reward for his capture, but we’re not going to enforce it?” he asked.
Rubio also addressed Democratic criticism of the administration’s decision not to inform Congress of the mission before it happened. He said giving advanced notice to Congress would have been impractical because military leaders were waiting for the right weather conditions and didn’t want to jeopardize the mission by risking a leak of sensitive information.
“We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” he told reporters Saturday at a press conference in Palm Beach, Fla.
“It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met. Night after night, we watched and monitored that for a number of days. So it’s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, ‘Hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days,’” he said.