by Jonathan Turley at Res ipsa loquitor — The thing itself speaks
It can fairly be said that the most precarious jobs in the world are those of a golf ball collector at a driving range, a mascot at a Chuck E. Cheese, and a Trump Administration lawyer.
That was evident at the press conference yesterday as President Donald Trump blew apart the carefully constructed narrative presented earlier for the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Some of us had written that Trump had a winning legal argument by focusing on the operation as the seizure of two indicted individuals in reliance on past judicial rulings, including the decisions in the case of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Dan Caine stayed on script and reinforced this narrative. Both repeatedly noted that this was an operation intended to bring two individuals to justice and that law enforcement personnel were part of the extraction team to place them into legal custody. Rubio was, again, particularly effective in emphasizing that Maduro was not the head of state but a criminal dictator who took control after losing democratic elections.
However, while noting the purpose of the capture, President Trump proceeded to declare that the United States would engage in nation-building to achieve lasting regime change. He stated that they would be running Venezuela to ensure a friendly government and the repayment of seized U.S. property dating back to the government of Hugo Chávez.
This city is full of self-proclaimed Trump whisperers who rarely score above random selection in their predictions. However, there are certain pronounced elements in Trump’s approach to such matters. First, he is the most transparent president in my lifetime with prolonged (at times excruciatingly long) press conferences and a brutal frankness about his motivations. Second, he is unabashedly and undeniably transactional in most of his dealings. He is not ashamed to state what he wants the country to get out of the deal.
In Venezuela, he wants a stable partner, and he wants oil.
Chávez and Maduro had implemented moronic socialist policies that reduced…
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