REP. Rand Paul TORCHES Marco Rubio over Trump’s Maduro Op

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Randall asked Rubio one question. If another country decided our president was illegitimate, bombed our air defenses, and extracted him in 4 hours, would that be an act of war?

[00:00:12]Rubio said yes.

[00:00:14]And with that honest answer, the entire legal framework justifying the Venezuela operation collapsed. You can't call it a drug bust when you do it and a war when it's done to you. That's not a principle, that's just power.

[00:00:28]Our founders debated extensively over which branch of government should have the power to declare or initiate war.

[00:00:35]Virtually unanimously, they decided and what was entered into the Constitution was that the declaration or initiation of war would be the power of Congress.

[00:00:43]Now, we have many advocates, many of whom are here today, uh who have been advocates for an expansive notion of presidential power.

[00:00:53]They often argued that wars are not really wars, that they're kinetic actions or drug busts.

[00:00:59]I think so, if you reverse the circumstances, it becomes very difficult for these arguments to hold up. So, I would ask you if a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war? Well, I think your question is about the and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career.

[00:01:23]So, um let me let me no matter who the who's in charge. So, I will point to two things. The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about 4 and 1/2 hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as a head of state, indicted in the United States, wanted with a $50 million bounty >> would be if it only took 4 hours to take our president. It's very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side. It's perfect. Would it be an act of war >> We we just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.

[00:01:54]>> But would Would be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies, few casualties, they're in and out. Boom, it's a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war. I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president.

[00:02:14]>> Especially then. So, I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument. One-way arguments that don't rebound, that you can't apply to yourselves, that cannot be universally applicable are bad arguments. So, my next question would be let's say it's not a war. We're just going to define it away and say it's not a war. That's one of the arguments.

[00:02:34]So, it's a drug bust.

[00:02:35]What if a foreign country indicts our president for violating a foreign law?

[00:02:42]Should we extradite our president?

[00:02:43]Should we be okay if they come in and get him by force?

[00:02:46]>> Look, I think ultimately we're always going to enact act in our national interest. And so, if somebody comes after our national interest, like the case you've described, which obviously um does not exist at this time, but the case you've described, the US always has the right to act in its national interest and to protect itself. I don't I don't I don't know about this equivalency war. Does this justify them doing it? We're always going to do what's best for the United States and America. We're always going to protect our system.

[00:03:08]>> But, the point isn't and you're exactly right. We will act in our national interest and we should. So, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. What I'm saying is that that our our our arguments are empty then. The drug bust isn't really an argument, it's a ruse.

[00:03:21]The war argument, not a war is a war is a ruse, it's not a real argument. And we do what we do because we are we have the force, we have the might, we do it because it's in our interest. So, we wouldn't let anybody come in, bomb us, blockade us, and take our president.

[00:03:37]Uh you know, we've had arguments about legitimate, illegitimate presidents, bad elections, rigged elections. So, there's all kinds of same arguments that we've had in our country, that they've had in Venezuela.

[00:03:49]But, we wouldn't argue for an indictment. And these things aren't idle speculation. I mean, Netanyahu's been indicted by the ICC. And one of the reasons I object to being part of the ICC, and I would say you you and the administration probably agree, is we're not going to let any international council indict our president and arrest him somewhere on foreign soil. We're not going to do that. We actually most of us probably object to indicting Netanyahu in that way as well. So, I think the arguments are invalid. So, we did get the legal opinion that Senator Kaine referred to, the OLC opinion. Office of Legal Counsel.

[00:04:22]And I think a lot of it's been released.

[00:04:23]Plus, they came to our caucus and talked to most of the open about everything they had classified. So, I will talk about at least one of the arguments.

[00:04:30]They say this war wasn't a constitutional war, therefore it doesn't rise to the constitutional notion of us declaring or having to initiate the war.

[00:04:39]It's it just doesn't rise. And one of their main arguments was not enough people died.

[00:04:44]And so, there is some number that they they aren't specific, but there is some number. I would assume, although I'm not positive, but the 50, 60,000 soldiers who died in Vietnam might be enough for them to call that a war.

[00:04:58]But here's the problem. It isn't the number, it's that it happens in retrospect. See, our founders gave us the power to initiate or declare war.

[00:05:06]They didn't give us other powers to execute the war. Those are left to the president. But if we have to wait to see how many people are killed, we have to wait as they describe it as the scope, nature, and extent, if we have to wait to see the scope, nature, and extent, the war has been going on for some time.

[00:05:22]It's hard to vote to initiate a war that's been going on. And we can say this war is over, but we're still blockading it, and we may go back in, and but there are no clear answers. You know, we put 2,000 we leave 2,000 troops in. Are we going to call that war and initiate it? So, the definition of war is very important, and I think we have to acknowledge the problems with our argument. Calling things kinetic action is a disservice to our our soldiers. Oh, you weren't really wounded in war. You don't have a Medal of Honor for war. You have a Medal of Honor for a kinetic action. So, I think let's call it what it is. Let's and let's vote on these things. But, I think we're in violation of both the spirit and the law of the Constitution by bombing a capital, blockading a country, and removing uh elected officials. And we certainly wouldn't tolerate it, nor would I, if someone did it to us.

[00:06:12]>> Well, we we didn't remove an elected official.

[00:06:14]Um we removed someone who was not elected, and it was actually an indicted drug trafficker in the United States.

[00:06:21]And their system and our >> our laws. Look, Bolsonaro says that da Silva is not really the president of Brazil. Our president said Biden wasn't really the president. Hillary Clinton said in 2016 Trump wasn't the president.

[00:06:35]So, you have these arguments. And then I agree with you. Probably wasn't most likely was. Most assuredly was a a bad election. He wasn't really elected. But, at the same time if that's our predicate, and you have to come to us cuz then it's a drug bust, we're just removing somebody, you can see where it leads to. And it leads to uh chaos. And that's why we have rules like the Constitution so we don't get so far out there that presidents can do whatever they want. It is this check and balance.

[00:07:01]And I would argue for 70 years we've been going the wrong way. It isn't just this president, but it's a debate that I think is worth having.

[00:07:08]The confrontation between Rand Paul and Marco Rubio in this hearing is not a typical partisan clash. It is not a Democrat attacking a Republican policy or a Republican defending a Democratic mistake. It is something rarer and more philosophically significant. A Republican senator dismantling brick by brick the legal and constitutional arguments of a Republican Secretary of State defending a Republican president's military operation.

[00:07:36]And he does it not with anger, not with partisan fire, but with a single intellectual instrument that has been cutting through political hypocrisy since the Enlightenment, the principle of reciprocity. If you cannot apply your rule equally to yourself and to your adversary, your rule is not a rule. It is a rationalization.

[00:07:58]And by the end of this exchange, Rubio had admitted, with the words, "Of course, it would be an act of war." that the United States had done to Venezuela exactly what it would consider an act of war if done to itself. Everything else in this hearing flows from that admission. To fully understand what Paul was challenging, you need to understand the Venezuela operation as the administration described and defended it. The Trump administration conducted a military and law enforcement operation targeting Nicolás Maduro, the sitting leader of Venezuela, that involved bombing air defense infrastructure, establishing a naval blockade, and physically removing Maduro from power.

[00:08:41]The administration's legal and rhetorical defense of this operation rested on several interlocking arguments. First, Maduro was not a legitimate head of state. He had stolen an election. He was not really the president of Venezuela.

[00:08:57]Second, he was an indicted criminal under United States law, wanted on drug trafficking charges with a $50 million reward for his capture.

[00:09:06]Third, the operation was therefore not a war. It was a law enforcement action, a drug bust, a targeted capture of a criminal.

[00:09:16]It lasted 4 and 1/2 hours.

[00:09:19]Nobody died on either side. It was surgical, swift, and legally categorized in a way that conveniently bypassed the constitutional requirement that Congress authorize acts of war. Paul's assault on this framework was devastating in its simplicity and its philosophical rigor, and he announced his strategy from the very beginning, reverse the circumstances.

[00:09:42]Paul's reversal argument works because it applies the most basic test of any legal or moral principle. Can it be applied universally? He asked Rubio directly, "If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured our president, and blockaded our country, nobody dies, in and out in 4 hours, surgical and perfect, would that be an act of war?"

[00:10:07]Rubio tried to sidestep it. He questioned the premise. He said it was hard to conceive of such a scenario. He noted that the Venezuela operation targeted someone his government did not recognize as a legitimate head of state.

[00:10:21]But Paul was not going to be moved by analogies or caveats. He pressed the question again. "If it were done to us, nobody dying, perfect operation, would it be an act of war?" And Rubio, to his credit, answered honestly. "Of course it would be an act of war." And Paul's response to that admission was the central thesis of his entire argument.

[00:10:45]Then, this is a one-way argument.

[00:10:48]One-way arguments that cannot be applied to the people making them, that rebound and collapse the moment you flip the circumstances, are not legal arguments.

[00:10:57]They are not constitutional standards.

[00:11:00]They are justifications that exist solely to protect the actions of the powerful. And Paul named exactly what was left when you stripped away the legal justifications, force, might, national interest. We do what we do because we have the power to do it, and it serves our purposes.

[00:11:20]That is a real and honest answer, Paul acknowledged. But it is not a constitutional argument, and it is not a rule of law. It is the law of the jungle dressed in legal language and calling it a drug bust does not change what it fundamentally is.

[00:11:37]The second prong of Paul's argument, the drug bust analogy, is equally devastating.

[00:11:43]The administration leaned heavily on the framing that Maduro was a criminal indicted under American law and therefore his removal was a law enforcement action rather than an act of war against a sovereign nation.

[00:11:56]Paul tested this framing with a parallel hypothetical. What if a foreign government indicted the American president for violating one of their laws, decided he was a criminal under their legal system, and then came into the United States to take him by force?

[00:12:11]Should America extradite its president?

[00:12:13]Should it sit quietly while a foreign special operations team extracts the sitting commander-in-chief from American soil?

[00:12:21]Rubio's answer, that America would always act in its national interest and protect itself, was the only honest answer available.

[00:12:30]But Paul caught it immediately.

[00:12:33]"You're agreeing with me," Paul said.

[00:12:35]"We would act in our national interest.

[00:12:38]We would not extradite our president. We would resist by any means necessary.

[00:12:43]And that means the drug bust argument is empty because the very fact that we would not accept it done to us proves that it is not a neutral legal principle applicable to all nations. It is a privilege claimed by the powerful and denied to the weak. And Paul's examples made this concrete and impossible to dismiss."

[00:13:03]Netanyahu has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. The United States and Israel both reject that indictment. They refuse to extradite.

[00:13:13]They refuse to recognize the ICC's authority. And they are correct to do so in Paul's view.

[00:13:20]But that is precisely his point. You cannot invoke international indictments as justification for military action against a foreign leader while simultaneously rejecting international indictments when they target your own allies.

[00:13:34]The argument only works in one direction.

[00:13:37]And arguments that only work in one direction are not arguments. They are power. The section of this hearing dealing with the Office of Legal Counsel opinion and the definition of war is where Paul gets into the most technically precise and constitutionally important territory. The OLC, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice, provides legal opinions that guide executive branch action and critically are often used to justify presidential authority to take military action without congressional authorization.

[00:14:10]In this case, one of the OLC's arguments was reportedly that the Venezuela operation did not rise to the constitutional definition of war because not enough people died.

[00:14:21]Paul's dismantling of this argument is both logical and deeply serious.

[00:14:26]The Constitution gives Congress the power to initiate or declare war, not the power to retroactively validate a war after its scope and casualties become clear.

[00:14:37]If the constitutional threshold for what constitutes war requiring congressional authorization is determined by how many people eventually die, then Congress can never exercise its war powers in advance. It can only look backward at a conflict already underway and decide, based on the body count, whether it was a real war. That is not a check on executive military power. That is a rubber stamp applied after the fact.

[00:15:06]Paul illustrated the absurdity with Vietnam. 60,000 American dead, and presumably everyone would agree that rose to the definition of war.

[00:15:17]But the decision to send American troops to Vietnam was not made when the 60,000 soldier died. It was made at the beginning. And if Congress cannot vote to initiate a conflict until it has already established its scope, nature, and extent, the OLC's own language, then the constitutional war power of Congress is meaningless.

[00:15:39]It is a veto over a war that has already been fought.

[00:15:43]Paul closed with a point that was equal parts political and moral.

[00:15:48]Calling military engagements kinetic actions is a direct insult to the service members who fight in them.

[00:15:55]A soldier wounded in a kinetic action is not wounded in war.

[00:15:59]A Medal of Honor earned in a kinetic action is not a Medal of Honor for war.

[00:16:05]The language used to strip constitutional authority from Congress strips dignity from the men and women in uniform at the same time.

[00:16:14]And Paul's final demand, let's call it what it is and vote on it, is not radical. It is precisely what the Constitution requires.

[00:16:23]For 70 years, Paul argued, both parties have been going the wrong way on this question.

[00:16:30]And on that point, looking honestly at the history of American military action since World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and now Venezuela, it is very difficult to say that he is wrong.