Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for its approach to the Venezuela operation, saying “this president ran on getting us out of foreign conflicts and he’s doing the exact opposite of that.”
“I would like to understand from him, why the change?” Kelly said on “CBS Mornings.”
Kelly said among his questions for the administration include, “Are we now in the business of regime change, and what’s next?”
“When you consider when this started, this was about fentanyl coming in on boats from Venezuela, and then the administration suddenly figures out, ‘well, it’s actually not fentanyl, cocaine comes on these routes,’ and by the way, not to the United States — mostly to Europe,” Kelly said. “And then this became about regime change, and that was about oil and then it was back to regime change. I mean, they can’t even get their story straight on this.”
Kelly said the thing that “I really, really worry about” is what could come next.
“Now, Donald Trump is talking about maybe overthrowing the leadership of Colombia, who’s an ally of ours,” Kelly said. “That’s different than Venezuela. Or maybe Cuba, Greenland. I mean, is he going to bring up Canada again at this point?”
The Arizona Democrat said he “wasn’t really concerned about the Greenland thing again until this week, until he seems to be serious about going after a NATO ally of ours. That would blow up the entire NATO alliance.”
On Congress’ role, Kelly said “I think Republicans in Congress have ceded their constitutional power, their authority to this White House. Very few of them will stand up to this president.”
