Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid into the “experts” who’ve criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for forcibly removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, saying that they were “clowns” who had little knowledge of what was really going on in the South American nation.
Rubio explained the situation to NBC News anchor Kristen Welker during a Sunday morning appearance on “Meet the Press,” arguing that to leave Maduro in place would be to risk American interests and even national security.
WATCH:
.@SecRubio: The “experts” are clowns. Venezuela looks nothing like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Middle East — other than the Iranian agents running through there plotting against America. These are Western countries. People need to stop ascribing apples to oranges. pic.twitter.com/QeotP0YPwq
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 4, 2026
“Number one, most of the experts that people have on television — I watch these experts, and it’s clown hour,” Rubio said. “These are people that have focused their entire career on the Middle East, or some other part of the world because that’s where all the action was.”
“Very few of them know anything about Venezuela or the western hemisphere,” he continued, noting that the political dynamics in western cultures were very different than in the Middle East. “Venezuela looks nothing like Libya, it looks nothing like Iraq, it looks nothing like Afghanistan. It looks nothing like the Middle East — other than the Iranian agents running through there plotting against America. These are western countries with long traditions among their — at a people to people and cultural level, and ties to the United States, so it’s nothing like that.”
Rubio said that it was no different than comparing apples and oranges — and that it was foolish to think that experts who had focused on the Middle East would have much insight into the current situation. He went on to say that the moves the Trump administration had made — and was still making — with regard to Venezuela were in pursuit of protecting national interests.
“What I’m confident of is we are in a safer and better place because we’re taking it seriously,” he continued. “The alternative would have been to leave Maduro there as an indicted drug trafficker, an illegitimate president, running the country — an open invitation for all of our adversaries to do whatever they want against the United States from Venezuela. That was not going to continue.”
“Read the indictment,” he concluded. “This guy used the levers of their security apparatus not to arrest drug traffickers, but to cooperate and facilitate the trafficking of drugs for the purpose of getting them into the United States.”
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