MTG Bluntly Calls Out Trump's Hypocrisy After He Announces The U.S. Will 'Run' Venezuela

For months now, Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been calling out Donald Trump for his hypocrisy and betrayal of MAGA and the movement's so-called "America First" principles.

That criticism ramped up In the wake of Trump's invasion of Venezuela and his assertion that the U.S. is going to "run" Venezuela.

During a press conference on Saturday, Trump claimed the U.S. will take a day-to-day role governing Venezuela after ousting the country's dictator Nicolás Maduro, an act of regime change that has been widely viewed as an act of war that came without congressional approval and violated international law.

Trump said:

"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. We don't want to be involved with having somebody get in and we have the same situation that we had for the same long period of years."

"So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition and we have to be judicious because that's what we're all about. We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela."

You can hear what Trump said in the video below.

In a brief post on X, Greene used the facepalm emoji to express her disdain over the fact that "we're 'running' Venezuela now" before sarcastically adding:

"America First!"

You can see her post below.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio later tempered Trump’s assertion, saying the U.S. would maintain an oil quarantine already imposed on sanctioned tankers before Maduro was removed from power, and would continue using that pressure to push for policy changes in Venezuela.

In remarks to Face the Nation, Rubio said:

“And so that’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that. We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

The blockade on sanctioned oil tankers, according to Rubio, “remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela."

Rubio also claimed Trump was misunderstood by a “foreign policy establishment” critical of nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding:

“The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.”

These arguments don't hold water, per Greene, who in a follow-up post on X said she is "100% for strong safe secure borders and stopping narco terrorists and cartels from trafficking deadly drugs and human trafficking into America" but does not buy this narrative, which is a violation of "America First" principles MAGA supporters voted to end.

Greene argued that fentanyl accounts for more than 70% of U.S. drug overdose deaths and said the drug is produced by Mexican cartels using chemical precursors from China and trafficked across the U.S.–Mexico border.

She said the cartels are overwhelmingly responsible for the deaths of Americans and questioned why, if U.S. military action and regime change in Venezuela were truly about saving lives from drugs, the Trump administration has not taken comparable action against Mexican cartels.

Greene also questioned the administration’s stated priority of prosecuting narco-terrorists, pointing to Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted and sentenced to 45 years for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. She noted the irony that cocaine is the same drug Venezuela primarily trafficks into the U.S.

Moreover, Greene said that removing Maduro appeared to be a move aimed at securing control over Venezuelan oil supplies, arguing it would help ensure stability ahead of a likely future regime-change war with Iran.

She also described a double standard, asking why it is acceptable for the United States to invade, bomb, and arrest foreign leaders while condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggression toward Taiwan, adding that she was not endorsing either Russia or China.

She added:

"Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged."

"Especially the younger generations. Boomers and half of Gen X will cheer on neocon wars and talking points, but the other half of Gen X and majority on down see through it and hate it."

"Americans disgust with our own government’s never ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going.

"This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong. As the baby boomers slip away both in votes and power, the electoral future will be decided for candidates that focus on American economic populism and promising prosperity for Americans only. As of right now, neither party is offering the solution."

You can see her post below.

Greene's remarks struck a chord.

Trump said he had not spoken with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado and claimed she lacked the domestic support and respect needed to govern Venezuela.

Specifically, he said that while Machado was a “very nice woman,” she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to lead Venezuela.

Machado, who was barred from running in the 2024 presidential election but helped mobilize support behind opposition candidate Edmundo González, responded by urging Venezuelans to prepare for demonstrations.

She called on the military to respect the results of the July 2024 election—despite Maduro’s declared victory, ballot machine data showed González won by a 2-to-1 margin—and demanded that González be allowed to take office and safely return from exile in Spain.