Welcome. I'm Justin Logan, the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies here at the Cato Institute, joined by my colleague, Brandon Buck, a research associate in the department.

Hello. So we're here talking about the whipsaw back and forth news cycle surrounding the Trump administration's

Venezuela policy. There was a vote in the Senate Thursday trying to constrain notionally

the administration's war powers when it comes to Venezuela, which failed narrowly.

Narrowly, yeah. There was a couple dissenters within the GOP, but nevertheless, it more or less fell along

party lines, despite, one might say, some press releases, you know.

Well, it was a very dispiriting thing to hear people release press releases, basically

endorsing the logic of the resolution and then voting against it.

It's not a real profile and courage, one could say.

So, yes, that was a sort of dispiriting thing.

But I think what may be most useful to the listeners today is to look at what it is the Trump administration is doing. And I think, you know, in semi-defense

of the Senate and the senators who voted, that's not entirely clear. It's not entirely clear

what is being voted for, what is being voted against. And furthermore, not to start off

with a sort of nihilistic note, but it's not at all clear that any of this would constrain, in fact, a motivated President Trump on this question.

So you and I wrote an article in the American conservative, I don't know, it seems like six years ago, but it was probably last week about the Trump administration's Venezuela policy.

And don't do it, Mr. President, I think was our title for this thing.

So we in that piece sort of grappled with what the heck the administration is after there.

And of course, there have been seven Venezuela news cycles since we published that piece last week.

But Brandon, why don't you talk a little bit about how we were sort of groping around at what the heck the administration is up to here?

You're right, because in part, it's, you know, whose motivations for this do you argue against, right? Because there is a collection of them.

I think in the news cycle and probably the one that we wrote against the most is this

impulse coming out of, you know, the kind of South Florida delegation of the party, particularly one, I wasn't calling the Secretary of State, Mark Rubio, but he has, what, five jobs?

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