Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York suggested that all reporting surrounding Venezuela can’t be proven or disproven yet.
York offered his analysis on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday, three days after U.S. troops attacked Caracas, Venezuela, and captured former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Since the attack, conflicting reports have emerged about conditions in Venezuela following acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez’s takeover. York predicted that it will take time before a clearer picture emerges.
“I don’t know what’s happening on the streets of Venezuela right now,” York said. “We really don’t have a good feel of what’s going on on the streets of Venezuela right now. So, I’m not going to say that any report is false or overdone.”
“But I do know what American officials are saying their intentions are and what they plan to do, and I do know it can’t be done in the 48 hours we’ve been talking about it,” he added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reported that the United States has a quarantine on Venezuela’s oil while the Trump administration is “running policy.”
“It is running this policy, and the goal of the policy is to see changes in Venezuela that are beneficial to the United States, first and foremost, because that’s who we work for, but also we believe beneficial for the people of Venezuela who have suffered tremendously,” Rubio said on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
MADURO CAPTURE LEAVES MANY ‘NEXT-DAY’ QUESTIONS UNANSWERED BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
A senior Venezuelan official told the New York Times on Sunday that the death toll for Operation Absolute Resolve by the Army’s Delta Force had risen to 80 Venezuelans, including civilians.
However, that number does not include the members of Maduro’s security team who were also killed. According to Rubio, the unit was “entirely controlled by Cubans,” and Maduro “had Cuban bodyguards.”