Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t buying President Trump’s explanation for why the U.S. moved to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Ms. Greene, who is leaving Congress on Monday after a very public split with Mr. Trump, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if the Trump administration were genuinely focused on stopping the flow of deadly drugs into the United States, its attention would be on Mexico, not Venezuela.
“The majority of American fentanyl overdoses and death come from Mexico. Those are the Mexican cartels that are killing Americans,” the Georgia Republican said. “So my pushback here is if this was really about narco-terrorists and about protecting Americans from cartels and drugs being brought into America, the Trump administration would be attacking the Mexican cartels.”
For years, Ms. Greene was arguably Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporter in Congress.
But the relationship soured after she joined efforts to release the government files related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and started raising concerns that the Republican Party was drifting away from Mr. Trump’s “America First” message that energized voters.
She has repeatedly warned that the shift is fueling frustration among Americans squeezed by the costs of groceries, housing and health care, and that it could cost Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump insists that Ms. Greene has lost her way, dubbing her a “traitor.”
He also said the move against Mr. Maduro fits squarely within his “America First” agenda.
“We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourselves with stability,” the president said this weekend. “We want to surround ourselves with energy.”
“It’s very important that we protect it,” Mr. Trump said. “We need that for ourselves, we need that for the world.”
Ms. Greene made clear she doesn’t see it that way.
“We don’t consider Venezuela our neighborhood,” she said. “Our neighborhood is right here in the 50 United States, not in the Southern Hemisphere.”
She did say that she’s glad Mr. Maduro is gone.
Still, she argued the military operation that removed him is “the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks and the oil executives.”
“My pushback here is on the Trump administration that campaigned on Make America Great Again, that we thought was putting America first,” Ms. Greene said. “I want to see domestic policy be the priority that helps Americans afford life after four disastrous years of the Biden administration.”
