Trump’s Venezuela playbook: Remove the dictator, guide the rebuild, avoid chaos

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Panel examines Democratic criticism following Maduro’s capture and past remarks

Former California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson and Fox News contributor Kaylee McGhee White discuss the capture of Maduro and the ongoing fight against narco-terrorism on ‘Fox News @ Night.’

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"We’re in charge of everything. We’re in charge of everything… We’re going to run it. We’re going to fix it…. Well, we're gonna run everything. We're gonna run it, fix it. We'll have elections at the right time. The main thing you have to fix, it's a broken country."

President Donald Trump, on Air Force One on Sunday night, had a remarkable back and forth with the traveling press corps about Operation Absolute Resolve, which captured and arrested dictator Nicholas Maduro and brought him to the United States, and which included his statements above about Venezuela.

Many people purport either not to understand what President Trump said on Sunday on his return flight, or during his Saturday morning statement and press conference or, as with the case of New York Times reporter Lulu Navarro, to assert that if the president and his administration "say they run the country, then whatever happens there now they own." 

TRUMP’S VENEZUELA STRIKE SPARKS CONSTITUTIONAL CLASH AS MADURO IS HAULED INTO US

Navarro continued in her online X exchange with me, "That is the consequence of saying they ‘run’ the country while repression continues." She added in another post "that the repression the regime is continuing to exert is now the responsibility of the US. They have toppled the leader but left the regime and its heinous actors in place to consolidate power."

While Ms. Navarro and I had a cordial exchange — she is simply wrong about how our legal system would assign responsibility for "heinous acts" done in Venezuela post-Madura, she is also wrong about what President Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio have repeatedly stated.