Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth touts the strength of the U.S. military during the Venezuela intervention while swearing in new recruits in Virginia.
“You’re about to go through some tough basic training that’s got, we hope, a little bit tougher under this administration to prepare you, to forge you to be the Warriors that our nation requires, to do the kind of things that happened over downtown Caracas, Venezuela, in the middle of the night just a couple of nights ago,” said Hegseth.
“Extending the long arm of American power and justice in a way that only the United States of America can do. Only we can do what was done two nights ago. Only the United States military.”
Hegseth’s comments came before he administered the oath of enlistment to new recruits at a recruiting station in Newport News.
The U.S. seized Nicolas Maduro and his wife early Saturday from their home on a military base and put them aboard a U.S. warship to face prosecution in New York in a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Maduro made his first appearance in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday.
His stunning removal came after months of the U.S. amassing a military presence off Venezuela’s coast and blowing up alleged drug trafficking boats.
Trump has insisted that the U.S. would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, says the U.S. would enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers and use that leverage to press policy changes in Venezuela.
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