Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer has accused US President Donald Trump of dragging the country into a war with Venezuela without congressional consent, following the military deployment ordered by the president near the Latin American country, along with additional pressure measures such as the one he declared yesterday, when he proclaimed a blanket ban on international entry into Venezuelan airspace.
“President Trump’s reckless actions toward Venezuela are bringing the United States ever closer to another costly foreign war,” said Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the US Senate, the upper house of Congress.
“According to our Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power to declare war—not the president—and Congress has not authorized the use of military force against Venezuela,” Schumer added, criticizing Trump’s strategy, who defends the need for intervention to curb drug trafficking that, he claims, originates in Venezuela and flows into the US.
Schumer criticized the fact that “Americans are tired of the endless wars abroad that cost the lives of countless American service members and deplete valuable resources,” and called for a bipartisan initiative in Congress to prevent Trump from following through on his threat to set foot on Venezuelan soil.
“We need Republicans and Democrats in Congress to come together to give the people back the power to declare war,” Schumer concluded on his Twitter account.
