Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, on her final day as congresswoman, was the president’s strongest Republican critic on the Sunday show circuit this week in the wake of a stunning U.S. operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
The Republican firebrand was on NBC’s Meet the Press for the last time as a member of the House as she argued that President Donald Trump was once again turning away from the domestic agenda she has argued for months is a reason for the his decreasing popularity among his base.
Her comments come as MAGA Republicans online and on Capitol Hill have largely backed the president’s move, even with polls showing that most Americans do not support military intervention in Venezuela.
“I am not defending Maduro and of course I am happy for the people of Venezuela to be liberated,” Greene said. “[But] this is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of, that doesn't serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives.”
"My understanding of America first is strictly for the American people,” she said, adding: “We don’t consider Venezuela our neighborhood.”
“The Trump administration that campaigned on ‘Make America Great Again’ that we thought was putting America First...I want to see domestic policies that prioritize jobs and affordable housing for Americans,” she said.
Greene’s public break with the president began in the fall over the vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and has led to her taking more prominent stances against him in recent weeks. It extended to the issue of expiring Affordable Care Act health plan subsidies during the government shutdown.
She recently tore apart the president and the culture of Mar-a-Lago’s elite in a revealing profile for The New York Times, in which she said that she was “naive” to think that Trump truly cared about the lower- and middle-income voters he claimed to represent in his three runs for the presidency. Greene also told the paper of Trump’s cold response to a threat she received against her son’s life. The president responded that she supposedly had herself to blame for turning on him.
Her last day in Congress is Monday.
Many critics of the administration, including some conservatives like Greene, have likened the situation to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the mixed results that U.S. officials had in setting up stable governments during the War on Terror. Afghanistan’s government, after two decades of U.S. military and economic support, collapsed under a resurgent Taliban offensive in 2021.
Even Trump supporters, like War Room podcast host Steve Bannon and The American Conservative director Curt Mills, turned to ridiculing the evolving situation in Venezuela over the weekend and raised questions about the administration’s plans for the day after.
Reacting to snap YouGov poll on Sunday — which suggested 46 percent of Americans disapproved Trump’s handling of the situation in Venezuela — Mills wrote: “Catastrophic polling result for a frankly astonishingly effective tactical raid. From a pure amoral perspective, White House burnt political capital / public patience for literally nothing.”
“The president is getting very bad advice,” he added.
The White House and State Department have so far been unable or unwilling to enunciate what that vision for the immediate future of Venezuela will look like. Trump and his secretary of State have been on the same page regarding Venezuela’s requirement to do as the U.S. says and follow the administration’s demands but have been clear about little else, including who the U.S. recognizes currently as the leader of Venezuela with Maduro in custody and his vice president Delia Rodriguez reportedly in hiding in Russia, according to Reuters.
Speaking to news outlets on Sunday, Rubio could not say when the U.S. expects Venezuela to hold elections or who will be running the country’s day-to-day governmental affairs in the interim. He was also unable to explain the scope of the Trump administration’s role in those affairs, or whether they’d require a sustained U.S. presence on the ground for potentially months or longer.
The secretary additionally did not give a clear answer regarding the issue of control of Venezuela’s oil fields; Trump has said that U.S. forces and companies will “take back the oil”, while Rubio said Sunday that the U.S. doesn’t need control over Venezuela’s oil fields and was concerned with returning those proceeds to the country’s citizens.
Democrats have focused their fire on the legality of the operation taking place without the administration informing Congress or seeking approval through an authorization of military force. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer’s caucus is set to force a vote on a War Powers resolution this week aimed at curtailing the White House’s ability to wage war in the region, but it is not expected to pass as Republicans remain in control of the chamber, one member of Schumer’s caucus (John Fetterman) is publicly in support of the strike, and an insufficient number of Republicans in the Senate have signaled they’d vote for it.
On Sunday, Schumer attacked the White House for the way the strike was carried out, as well as the aftermath.
"Look, Maduro’s a horrible, horrible person. But you don't treat lawlessness with other lawlessness. And that's what happened here. The American people this morning, George (Stephanopoulos), are scratching their heads in wonderment and fear of what the president has proposed. The United States will run Venezuela,” Schumer told ABC’s This Week.
“We have learned through the years, when America tries to do regime change and nation building in this way, the American people pay the price in both blood and in dollars,” said Schumer. He flatly denied that the administration had legal authority to conduct the operation to abduct Maduro: “It’s a violation of the law.”
“No one knows” who now leads Venezuela, a country of about 30 million people, Schumer added.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, appeared on CNN the same day. He told State of the Union co-host Dana Bash that the president had poisoned the well for the effort to manage an orderly transition in Maduro’s wake by undermining Maria Corina Machado, the top opposition leader in the country, as well as with his statements insinuating that the motivation for the administration’s operation was to seize control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
“Donald Trump yesterday in his news conference basically set the stage for a disaster here,” Himes said.
Maduro landed Saturday night in New York where the detained Venezuelan leader is due to face drug trafficking charges, along with his wife, filed by the Justice Department in the Southern District of New York. An indictment against him was first issued in 2020.
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