White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ranted profusely during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper about President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela and his capture of President Nicolás Maduro, insisting that "we [the United States] are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower."
Miller spoke as Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, entered not guilty pleas in their first court appearance in New York after being abducted. Maduro faces counts of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Tapper questioned Miller about Trump's abrupt dismissal of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as a credible leader for the country. After Trump said Machado lacked the “respect” of Venezuelans, concerns emerged that his remarks were driven by personal resentment, particularly after Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize instead of him.
Miller responded with vague claims, citing unnamed “Venezuela experts” who he said viewed installing Machado as “absurd and preposterous.” When Tapper pressed him on whether Venezuela should hold an election, Miller avoided a direct answer and instead launched into a heated rant about the United States, as a superpower, not tolerating drug trafficking in its region.
He wholeheartedly defended the invasion and said that “what we are doing here” is using the U.S. military “to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere."
He said, in part, his voice increasing in volume all the while:
"For years, we sent our soldiers to die in deserts in the Middle East to try to build them parliaments, to try to build them democracies, to try to give them more oil, to try to give them more resources. The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology."
“This whole period that happened after World War II where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging and engaging in these vast reparation schemes—”
Tapper interjected, saying:
"I don't even know what you're talking about now."
Miller accused Tapper of “doing that smarmy thing” and insisted Tapper knew what he meant. When Tapper again pressed him on whether Venezuela should hold an election, Miller sidestepped the question, pivoting instead to broad claims about maintaining “security and stability."
Tapper countered that the person currently running the country was part of the Maduro regime, as Trump declined to back Machado and instead signaled he would recognize Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s representative.
Miller replied:
“The reason why I was giving you that speech, which I know you didn’t want to hear, is because you’re approaching this from the wrong frame. This neoliberal frame that the United States’ job is to go around the world and demanding immediate elections be held everywhere, all the time, right away—”
When Tapper interjected again by pointing out that "you invaded the country—went into the country and we seized the leader of Venezuela," Miller proceeded to yell on camera:
“Damn straight we did! Because we’re not gonna let—and the point Jake, is we’re not gonna let tin-pot Communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country, and we’re not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversaries!”
You can hear what Miller said in the video below.
Miller was swiftly criticized after footage of his unhinged rant went viral.
The Trump administration has already made clear that the invasion of Venezuela is about oil and conquest.
In fact, Trump himself told reporters aboard Air Force One that he alerted not Congress but the oil companies before invading the country.
Trump said he spoke with oil executives “before and after” the attack, and described these communications as crucial to “fix the infrastructure” in Venezuela after decades of corruption and mismanagement.
The Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, accused Washington of an "illegitimate armed attack devoid of any legal justification," adding that Venezuela’s "natural wealth, oil, energy, strategic resources, and geopolitical position" is a "central element of the aggression."
