‘Let Me Ask the Question Again’: Stephanopoulos Pushes Rubio for Answers On Venezuela in Tense Battle

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos battled Secretary of State Marco Rubio Sunday morning — questioning him repeatedly on the legality of the U.S. running Venezuela.

In a tense standoff on ABC’s This Week, Stephanopoulos tried to get clarity on why President Donald Trump believes it is allowed to govern Venezuela following the capture of its president, Nicolas Maduro.

“President Trump was pretty clear yesterday,” Stephanopoulos said. “He said the United States was going to run Venezuela. Under what legal authority?”

“Well, first of all, what’s going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil,” Rubio said. “That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met. And that’s what we intend to do. So, that leverage remains. That leverage is ongoing. And we expect that it’s going to lead to results here.

He added, “We will no longer have, hopefully, as we move forward here, we’ll set the condition so that we no longer have in our hemisphere a Venezuela that’s the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah … is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narco-trafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia to go through into the Caribbean and towards the United States. That, and obviously, we want a better future for the people of Venezuela. We want them to have an oil industry where the wealth is — goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals and stolen by pirates all over the world. That’s what we’re working towards, and we intend to use the leverage we have to help achieve that.”

Stephanopoulos quickly noted that Rubio dodged his query.

“Let me ask the question again,” Stephanopoulos said. “What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?”

Rubio grew tense in reply.

“Well, I explained to you what our goals are and how we’re going to use the leverage to make it happen,” Rubio said. “As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, vry simple. We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions. So…I don’t know, is a court not a legal authority?”

“So is the United States running Venezuela right now?” Stephanopoulos said.

The secretary then got snippy with the ABC host.

“Well, I’ve explained once again, I’ll do it one more time,” Rubio said. “What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. And that is we have leverage. This leverage we are using and we intend to use. We started using already. You can see where they are running out of storage capacity. In a few weeks, they’re going to have to start pumping oil unless they make changes. And that leverage that we have with the armada of boats that are currently positioned allow us to seize any sanctioned boats coming into or out of Venezuela loaded with oil or on its way in to pick up oil. And we can pick and choose which ones we go after. We have court orders for each one. That will continue to be in place until the people who have control over the levers of power in that country make changes that are not just in the interest of the people of Venezuela but are in the interest of the United States and the things that we care about. That’s what we intend to do. The legal authority is the court orders that we have.”

Stephanopoulos then pressed Rubio on who, exactly, is currently in charge.

“When the president was asked yesterday who will be running Venezuela, he said it was you,” Stephanopoulos said. “He said it was the defense secretary. He said it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Are you running Venezuela right now?”

Rubio responded, “George, I’ve explained again that the leverage that we have here is the leverage of the quarantine. So, that is a Department of War operation, conducting in some cases law enforcement functions with the Coast Guard on the seizure of these boats. I’m obviously very intricately involved in these policies. And by the way, very intricately involved in moving forward and what we hope to see some of these changes being addressed. Unfortunately, the person that was there before who was not the legitimate president of the country was someone we could not work with, was someone that we could not — he had already suckered the Biden administration a couple years ago on a deal he didn’t keep. And this is someone we simply couldn’t work with. We are hopeful that there are people in place now. We’re going to find out. The proof will be in what they do or fail to do that will start making some of these changes that will ultimately lead to a Venezuela that looks substantially and dramatically different from what’s been in place for 15 years.”

Watch above, via ABC.