Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said that he sees the U.S. mission that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a success, openly criticizing fellow Democrats for attacking President Donald Trump over the operation.

Appearing on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Fetterman expressed frustration that Democrats who long demanded Maduro’s removal are now condemning the Trump administration after the goal was achieved.

“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, referencing recent remarks by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and earlier statements from Joe Biden when he was out of office.

“We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here,” Fetterman added.

Schumer, however, warned over the weekend that “launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.”

The criticism echoed earlier attacks from Biden, who in 2020 accused Trump of posturing on Venezuela while praising strongmen abroad. In a social media post that year, Biden charged that Trump talked “tough” on the country but admired “thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro.”

Those past remarks, Fetterman said, only highlight the inconsistency in the current Democratic response. He questioned why the party refuses to acknowledge what he views as a clear achievement.

“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?

Fetterman also said Maduro’s removal could mark a turning point for Venezuela itself.

“And now I’m open to the good opportunities, a better future for Venezuela after this happened,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced that argument during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, noting that the U.S. government itself had previously placed a multimillion-dollar bounty on Maduro’s capture.

“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 responded to complaints that Congress was not notified ahead of the mission. He said secrecy was essential because the operation depended on specific conditions and any leak could have put it at risk.

“We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” Rubio told reporters during a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida.

“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.

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{Matzav.com}

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