STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now, President Trump acted in Venezuela without the approval of Congress, asserting that no such approval was needed. Lawmakers now decide how, if at all, to respond. And one of them is Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman, good morning.
JIM HIMES: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I was home in Indiana when this strike took place over the weekend, and people in my family said, well, obviously, they can't get permission of Congress in advance in a case like this. It would leak. And I said, well, there is this Gang of Eight, eight top lawmakers, and normally the administration would keep them informed. You're one of the Gang of Eight. Were you informed?
HIMES: No. No. In fact, you know, I was woken up by my wife who said, you won't believe what's happening. And to this moment, I have actually not received any outreach at all from the administration. So, look, the decision was taken here, and this whole leak thing is baloney. I don't think the Gang of Eight has ever leaked. But this, you know, obviously, very inconsistent with the idea that Congress has a role to play, when the - you know, probably the role to play when the United States military is engaged. And as a political matter, you know, a little unwise 'cause it's hard to imagine this adventure going, you know, horribly right in the coming months. And, you know, because he - the president did this without any input from anybody else, he owns this 100% now.
INSKEEP: Why do you think that there's not a good chance that this could go right?
HIMES: Well, point to me in the last generation one incident - one instance of the United States effecting regime change and having everything go well. You just can't, right? You can point to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. In some ways, the best, I think, the administration can hope for is a sort of a Grenada situation where, you know, no one sort of people lose track because, I mean, who remembers Grenada back in the early '80s, right? That's the best-case scenario, especially when it's completely evident at this point that the president has no plan. He says we're running Venezuela, but apparently, that means we've got a lot of firepower off the coast and are trying to get the vice president very much a Chavista leader, very much part of the old regime, to do what we want because we've got a lot of guns.
INSKEEP: Let me talk that through with you, though. You point out that nation building has not worked well at all for the United States, given the risks of trying to create some brand-new government or install the opposition leader as president, could the U.S. be wise to leave the current government in place and just give some orders?
HIMES: Well, that would probably be wise - well, it would certainly be wiser than putting the 50,000 armed forces on the ground that would be required to effect a full regime change. You know, and then, of course, you know, there's all sorts of questions of what happens with the Venezuelan military - a lot of guns there. Huge political risk for the president, right? I mean, President Biden's administration never recovered from the visual image of 12 Marines dying at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan. So huge risk. But, you know, you have to remember the Venezuelan regime has its politics, too. It can't be perceived as a puppet of the American administration, which quite explicitly says it wants their oil. So this is going to be, I think, a lot harder than Donald Trump thinks that it will be.
INSKEEP: What should the role be for the opposition, the president-elect, according to the United States, the man who won the election in 2024, or María Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner who is the opposition leader?
HIMES: Well, that was the fascinating thing to me about the news conference, right? The president said two things that I think probably fatally damaged this adventure. On the one hand, he did something that Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz at their neocon peak would never have done, which is to say this is about oil. I mean, you have to understand how that sounds to Venezuelans and to the rest of the world. This is not about our democracy or our prosperity. It's about the United States taking the oil. And secondly, the president delegitimized probably the single unifying force in Venezuela in the form of Mrs. Machado, who won a Nobel Peace Prize. The president cut the ground out from under her. So, you know, now Venezuelans are thinking, wait a minute, do I get to live with this appalling regime, but now United States gets the oil? You know, I mean, this is just - the president, I think, probably fatally wounded whatever chance this effort had in saying those two things in his news conference.
INSKEEP: Briefly, what will your approach be now that the president is also threatening the leader of Colombia and talking again about taking over Greenland, among other things?
HIMES: Well, you know, clearly, Congress needs to do something that it has not done because it's been under the control of the president's acolytes for the last, you know, year or so, which is to assert itself, to say we are the legitimate representatives of the people, and you're now talking about using those people on foreign adventures that would have made Teddy Roosevelt blush. So, you know, again, we're in the minority in the House and the Senate, but it is time for this Congress to stand up and say we have a role to play here.
INSKEEP: Jim Himes of Connecticut is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman, thanks so much.
HIMES: Thank you. Take care. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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