Things got tense on Sunday morning’s (January 4) edition of ABC’s This Week as George Stephanopoulos questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio over who is currently running Venezuela.
The question came following the U.S.-ordered military attack in Venezuela and the capture of the country’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Maduro is set to be taken to New York to face drug and weapons charges.
Stephanopoulos wanted to know what legal authority President Donald Trump has over the United States governing Venezuela. Rubio dodged the question, instead focusing on what the U.S.’s involvement will mean for the economy in both the U.S. and Venezuela.
“Well, first of all, what’s going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil,” Rubio said, per Mediaite. “That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met. And that’s what we intend to do. So, that leverage remains.”
Rubio said the hope is that moving forward “we no longer have in our hemisphere a Venezuela that’s the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world… is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narco-trafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia to go through into the Caribbean and towards the United States.”
The Secretary of State stated “we want a better future for the people of Venezuela. We want them to have an oil industry where the wealth goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals and stolen by pirates all over the world. That’s what we’re working towards, and we intend to use the leverage we have to help achieve that.”
Stephanopoulos wasn’t satisfied by this answer, responding, “Let me ask the question again. What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?”
Rubio, growing agitated, replied, “Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we’re going to use the leverage to make it happen. As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, very simple. We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions.”
Aiming to get clarification, Stephanopoulos asked, “So is the United States running Venezuela right now?”
“Well, I’ve explained once again, I’ll do it one more time,” Rubio retorted, reiterating his earlier points about the U.S. having leverage and confirming the government has “court orders” to “seize any sanctioned boats coming into or out of Venezuela loaded with oil or on its way in to pick up oil.”
Stephanopoulos continued to drill down on the specifics, saying, “When the President was asked yesterday who will be running Venezuela, he said it was you. He said it was the defense secretary. He said it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Are you running Venezuela right now?”
A frustrated Rubio responded, “George, I’ve explained again that the leverage that we have here is the leverage of the quarantine… I’m obviously very intricately involved in these policies. And by the way, very intricately involved in moving forward and what we hope to see some of these changes being addressed.”
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