NBC Host Gives Marco Rubio The Third Degree On Trump Not Getting Congressional Approval For Venezuela Strike

NBC’s Kristen Welker challenged Secretary of State Marco Rubio over President Donald Trump launching a strike against Venezuela and capturing its president Nicolás Maduro without the approval of congress.

The move sparked backlash from Democratic lawmakers who argued the action was “illegal.”

“White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that an attack on Venezuela’s mainland would require approval from Congress,” Welker told Rubio on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” “Why didn’t that happen? And will it happen with any future action the administration plans to take in Venezuela or elsewhere?”

Welker was referencing a Dec. 16 interview, in which Wiles told the outlet that military action in Venezuela would require congressional approval.

Rubio pushed back on Welker’s question, telling her that Trump’s strike on the South American country was “not an action that required congressional approval” because it was “not an extended military operation.”

“This is a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action,” he said. “It was a very delicate operation, too. It was one that required all these conditions to be in place at the right time in the right place.”

The former Florida senator went on to argue the mission “couldn’t afford leaks” that “would have endangered the mission and gotten people killed, or killed off the mission in the optionality.”

“We didn’t even know if the mission was going to happen. How can you notify something you’re not even sure if it can happen?” Rubio claimed. “Because in order for it to happen, you needed to have weather conditions in place … there were a lot of factors in place. It was a trigger-based operation.”

He then declared: “This was not an attack on Venezuela. This was a law enforcement function to capture an indicted drug trafficker.”

Welker didn’t let Rubio off the hook. She then grilled him over whether the Trump administration will “seek congressional approval for any further action in Venezuela or the region.”

“Well, we will seek congressional approval for actions that require congressional approval, but otherwise they will get congressional notification,” Rubio responded.

Reiterating his claim the operation did not require congressional approval, he alleged the operation is “akin to what virtually every single president for the last 40 years has conducted.”

Rubio added: “The difference is that when it’s Donald Trump, you know, all these Democrats go bonkers.”

The secretary of state doubled down on his claims that congressional authorization wasn’t necessary for Trump’s strike on Venezuela while speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” Sunday.

“It wasn’t necessary because this was not an invasion,” he told Stephanopoulos. “We didn’t occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation.”

Rubio also urged Americans to read the indictment to see “what [Maduro] did for the last 15 years of his life against the United States.”

Watch Rubio’s appearance on “Meet the Press” below.