Florida GOP lawmaker blasts Democrats' Venezuela response as 'Trump Derangement Syndrome'
A Florida Republican is arguing that Democrats’ largely negative response to the U.S. government’s operation in Venezuela is the "definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., represents a part of Florida that includes a significant chunk of the state’s central coastline.
"It doesn't take much research to find speech after speech of Democrat House members and Senate members who said that this guy is a bad guy, he should be taken out of power," Haridopolos told Fox News Digital.
"Sometimes in politics, you’ve just got to say to the other side, politically, ‘Hey, we're all Americans. This is in the best interest, clearly, of the United States.’ But they're in a position where they're so afraid of a Democrat primary that they will say anything to avoid having the extreme left attack them."
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He pointed out that it was the previous Democratic commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden, who raised the federal government’s bounty for Maduro’s capture to $25 million.
"What did they expect was then going to happen? You think this guy was just going to voluntarily give up? He clearly was not. He was getting into bed with the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, even Hezbollah, as I understand. I mean, this guy was trying to create a group of enemies in an oil-rich state at our footstep," Haridopolos said.
Democrats and Republicans have been largely divided in their responses to the strikes in Venezuela.
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Lawmakers on the left have mostly criticized the president and his officials, accusing them of illegal actions that ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Some progressives have even said Trump could be guilty of impeachable offenses.
The majority of GOP lawmakers praised Trump’s move as a necessary law enforcement action to get rid of a hostile actor threatening both the U.S. and the region writ large.
Haridopolos is no different, pointing out that the operation was carried out with no U.S. fatalities and relatively few among Maduro supporters in Venezuela.
He said his district is home to a number of Venezuelan refugees who were elated by President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Caracas and capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
"I have a large population of Venezuelans within my community, and they are absolutely overjoyed," the congressman said. "They were in essence kicked out of their own country or fled through fear…because they lost their ability to make a living, or they were being terrorized by the government because they were anti-Maduro."
Following the U.S. strikes, Maduro and his wife were both taken to New York City, where they will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
Maduro pleaded not guilty during his first court appearance on Monday.