The New York Times editorial board railed against President Donald Trump’s military strike on Venezuela Saturday, calling the strike and U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “illegal and unwise.”
“Mr. Trump has not yet offered a coherent explanation for his actions in Venezuela. He is pushing our country toward an international crisis without valid reasons,” the board wrote in an editorial published hours after Trump announced the strike had occurred. “If Mr. Trump wants to argue otherwise, the Constitution spells out what he must do: Go to Congress. Without congressional approval, his actions violate U.S. law.”
Pedro Mattey/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Maduro was captured alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, early Saturday morning at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation, the country’s ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told the Associated Press. Trump told followers on Truth Social that the operation was “done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro had been indicted in connection with a slew of crimes including narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy. Calling the couple “international narco traffickers,” Bondi said they would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
The New York Times editorial board slammed the Trump administration’s claim that it is destroying “narco-terrorists” as “particularly ludicrous.” The South America country is not “a meaningful producer” of drugs involved in the recent epidemic of overdoses in the U.S., it noted.
Calling Trump’s strategy “latter-day imperialism,” the editorial board wrote that “it represents a dangerous and illegal approach to America’s place in the world.”
The administration, the board continued, had operated “without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement.”
While the board said it would “hold out hope” that the “current crisis will end less badly” than expected, it concluded, “We know that Mr. Trump’s warmongering violates the law.”
Democrats in Congress also railed against the president’s attack Saturday, characterizing it as illegal and unjustified.
Meanwhile, the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post came out in favor of the military action, calling it a“major victory for American interests” in an editorial titled “Justice in Venezuela.”
However, though the Post referred to the capture of Maduro as “one of the boldest moves a president has made in years” and “an unquestionable tactical success,” it did add that there were “legitimate legal questions about the operation.”
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