Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie has decided to spend the days following one of the most successful U.S. operations in decades acting as the Trump administration’s loudest internal critic. Instead of celebrating the arrest of Venezuelan socialist tyrant Nicolás Maduro, Massie has been unloading a stream of attacks that sound eerily similar to the talking points coming straight from the radical left and the corporate press.
Within hours of the strike and arrest, Massie took to social media accusing President Trump of deception, imperial ambition, and secretly plotting to seize Venezuela’s oil. He mocked the administration’s description of the operation as an arrest supported by the military, while claiming Trump had announced he was “taking over the country.” That characterization does not line up with reality, but it does line up perfectly with MSNBC panels and Democrat press releases.
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Massie then tried to portray the administration as internally inconsistent, citing Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Senator Mike Lee. The implication was that unless every official uses identical phrasing, the operation must be illegal. That is not constitutional analysis. That is nitpicking in search of a headline.
Predictably, Massie wrapped himself in selective constitutional outrage, insisting that only Congress can authorize such actions. He dusted off James Madison quotes and delivered a floor speech painting a doomsday scenario involving millions of refugees, billions of dollars wasted, and a “miniature Afghanistan” in the Western Hemisphere. This is the same slippery slope argument Americans have heard every time decisive action is taken, and it is almost always wrong.
He went further, dismissing the administration’s focus on narco terrorism by claiming that if drugs were the real issue, the U.S. would bomb Mexico, China, or Colombia. That argument ignores the fact that Maduro was indicted in a U.S. court and was actively running a narco state, not operating a cartel from outside the hemisphere. It is a distinction that matters, unless your goal is simply to oppose whatever President Trump does.
Massie also took aim at Vice President JD Vance, rejecting the idea that Venezuelan oil seized from a narco terrorist regime could be considered stolen property. Vance responded with a detailed explanation, pointing out that Venezuela expropriated American oil assets decades ago and used them to fund criminal networks. His conclusion was blunt and accurate. Great powers do not shrug when communists steal their property and poison their people.
As the weekend went on, Massie escalated further, alleging coordination with U.S. oil companies and even invoking an AI chatbot to claim that hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer stands to profit and has personally targeted him politically. At that point, the critique stopped resembling principled dissent and started looking personal.
There is nothing conservative about undermining a successful operation that removed a narco dictator, enforced U.S. law, and brought justice without losing a single American life. Massie may enjoy playing the contrarian, but in this case, he has positioned himself squarely alongside Democrats who would rather see President Trump fail than America succeed.
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