By Gloria Ogbonna
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said President Donald Trump made the “absolute right move” by ordering the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, arguing that the action strikes at the heart of drug trafficking, money laundering, and growing foreign influence in the Western Hemisphere.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Saturday, Mullin spoke with Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle and laid out why he believes the operation against Maduro was not only justified, but long overdue.
According to the Oklahoma senator, Maduro had effectively turned Venezuela into a central hub for narcotics destined for the United States.
“Maduros’s regime allowed Venezuela to be used as a drug highway,” Mullin said, accusing the dictator of enabling cartels to move massive quantities of drugs northward.
He added that Venezuelan oil revenues played a key role in laundering cartel money, allowing criminal organizations to funnel illicit profits through energy sales and then “just disappear.”
Mullin framed the issue as a national security and public health crisis, pointing to sobering overdose statistics in the United States. While final figures for 2025 are not yet available, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics estimate that 80,391 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2024.
Though that number represents a nearly 27 percent drop from the estimated 110,037 deaths in 2023, Mullin stressed that the toll remains catastrophic.
To put the scale into perspective, Mullin compared overdose deaths to U.S. military losses in the Vietnam War, which totaled roughly 58,000.
“We lost more individuals to drug overdoses in just one year than we lost U.S. personnel during the entire Vietnam War,” Mullin said. “That alone tells you we are dealing with a massive, ongoing crisis.”
The senator also voiced strong support for Trump’s aggressive stance on Venezuelan oil, describing it as a critical component of the broader strategy.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently announced that the United States will sell Venezuelan oil indefinitely under U.S. control, ensuring that profits are not funneled back into corruption or criminal networks.
President Trump emphasized that point in a Truth Social post last week, stating that Venezuelan oil would be sold at market price, with proceeds controlled by the United States to ensure the funds benefit both the Venezuelan people and American interests.
Mullin accused Democrats of hypocrisy for criticizing Trump’s actions now, noting that many of the same figures previously faulted Trump for not acting forcefully enough against Maduro during his first term. He pointed out that even President Joe Biden had placed a $25 million bounty on Maduro.
“Democrats were saying back then that Trump wasn’t taking security seriously by leaving Maduro in place,” Mullin said. “Those words came straight from Chuck Schumer and were echoed by Hakeem Jeffries, Chris Murphy, and Tim Kaine.
They supported removing Maduro then. Now it’s suddenly a problem because Trump did it, not Biden.”
Mullin also highlighted geopolitical concerns, noting that Maduro’s final public appearance before his capture was a meeting with senior Chinese diplomats at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.
According to Mullin, discussions included expanding China’s influence in Venezuela what he described as “America’s backyard.”
“That meeting alone should have set off alarm bells,” Mullin told Boyle. “They were talking about giving China a stronger foothold right here in the Western Hemisphere.”
Taking all of those factors together drug trafficking, money laundering, oil corruption, and foreign encroachment Mullin said Trump’s decision had been carefully considered well in advance.
“With all of that combined, the president made the call months ago to go in and remove Maduro,” Mullin said. “It was decisive, it was strategic, and it was absolutely the right move.”
Source Breitbart
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