Secretary of State Marco Rubio on U.S. striking Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro’s arrest
(CBS, KYMA) - Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the strike against Venezuela and President Nicolas Maduro's arrest.
President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, landed in New York Saturday evening after being indicted in the state, according to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The arrest comes after the U.S. launched a strike against Venezuela, reportedly approved by President Donald Trump.
During a press conference Saturday, President Trump said the U.S. will run Venezuela, with Secretary Rubio and other Cabinet members being named to run the country.
This prompted Brennan to ask Rubio how he plans to run Venezuela, to which the secretary said:
"First of all, I think the important thing to point out is that the key to what that regime relies on and is the economy fueled by oil. And right now, it is an oil industry that is backwards and really needs a lot of help and work in terms of, not only that, but it doesn't help the people. None of the money from the oil gets to the people. It's all stolen by the people that are on the top there, and so that's why we have a quarantine. There's a quarantine right now in which sanctioned oil shipments, there's a boat, and that boat is under US sanctions, we go get a court order, we will seize it. That remains in place, and that's a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela. And so that's the sort of control the President is pointing to when he says that. We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking, so that we no longer have these gang problems, so that they kick the FARC and the ELN out, and that they no longer cozy up to Hezbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere."
Brennan followed up by asking Rubio if there was no plans for U.S. occupation in the country, and Rubio said:
"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. That said, and all of that said as right now, I think what you see as a force posture is one of the largest naval deployments in modern history, certainly in the Western Hemisphere, and it is capable of stopping not just drug boats, but stopping any of these sanctioned boats that come in and out, and really paralyzing that portion of how the regime, you know, generates revenue, so that will continue to be in place. What the President has said, obviously, is, you know, and I think what he's pointing to is that this obsession people have about boots and this or that. He does not feel like he is going to publicly, you know, rule out options that are available for the United States, even though that's not what you're seeing right now. What you're seeing right now is an oil quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next."
During the interview, Brennan and Rubio talked about who will replace President Maduro as Venezuela's leader.
According to Brennan, Rubio said Edmundo Gonzalez is the right person to be Venezuela's president, leading her to ask if that was still the U.S. policy, and if he is working on a transition to have both Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado to run the country, and Rubio said:
"I have tremendous admiration for MarÃa Corina Machado. I have admiration for Edmundo. We have all those views about what the election that happened the last time, and not only us, but many other countries around the world, there's that. And there's the mission we are on right now. We have been very clear from the beginning, because I still think that a lot of people analyze everything that happens in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 through you know 2015 or 16. The whole, you know, foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere. Within the Western Hemisphere, we have a country, potentially a very rich country, that has cozied itself up under the control of this regime. Has cozied up to Iran. Has cozied up to Hezbollah. Has allowed narco-trafficking gangs to operate with impunity from their own territory, allows boats with drugs to traffic from their territory. And we are addressing that. And by the way, for eight, nine million people and the largest mass migration event in modern history have left that country since 2014...also having an impact on us, that is what we are addressing now...but we're not just addressing the regime. We are addressing the factors that are a threat to the national interest of the United States."
Brennan also said Rubio spoke with Delcy Rodriguez who, according to President Trump, was sworn-in as Venezuela's president.
This led her to ask the secretary if Rodriguez promised him that she was going to expel all the American adversaries from Venezuelan territory, as well as what else did she agree to when she spoke with him, and Rubio said:
"Our objectives when it comes to how Venezuela impacts the national interest of the United States have not changed, and we want those addressed. We want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don't want to see the Iranian and, by the way, Cuban presence in the past. We want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States, but for the benefit of the people. We want to see all of that happen. We insist on seeing that happen...and we are going to work to continue to see that happen...we are going to see what happens moving forward, let me just say that. I'm not obviously going to have these conversations in the media. These are delicate and complicated things that require mature statesmanship, and that's what we intend to do. But our goals remain the same. The difference is that the person who was in charge, even though not legitimately in the past was someone you could not work with. We just could not work with him. He is not a person that had ever kept any of the deals he made, broke every deal he ever made, made a fool out of the Biden administration on the deal they made with him, and we offered him, on multiple occasions, an opportunity to remove himself from the scene in a positive way."
Later in the interview, Brennan and Rubio talked about Venezuela's oil assets, with Elliott Abrams, Trump's previous envoy to Venezuela saying, "Venezuelan plutocrats, or US oil executives seem to be coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone."
When asked if that is what happened, Rubio said:
"No, that's not what happened here. What happened here is that we arrested a narco trafficker who's now going to stand trial in the United States for the crimes he's committed against our people for 15 years, and the person who helped him, of course, his wife, who was co-located with him, so she was arrested as well. That's what happened here. As far as oil, look, oil is critical, not just to fueling economies all over the world. It's critical to Venezuela's future. Their oil industry is completely destroyed. It's destroyed, all those oil fields that used to produce a lot and wealth for their country and their people. Those things are decrepit. They're bankrupt. They need to be reinvested in. It's obvious, you, they do not have the capability to bring up that industry again. They need investment from private companies who are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions. That has to go to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Right now, all of that wealth is stolen. It's stolen, and it goes into the hands of oligarchs around the world and the oligarchs inside of Venezuela. A handful of people benefit from it. The people don't benefit from it. On top of that, it's very simple, okay, in the 21st Century, under the Trump administration, we are not going to have a country like Venezuela in our own hemisphere, in the sphere of control and the crossroads for Hezbollah, for Iran and for every other malign influence in the country, in the world. That's just not going to exist."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with Rubio, click here.
