What Does It Mean to ‘Run’ Venezuela? Some Republicans Have No Idea.

As political questions emerge after the U.S. strike on Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro, Republican senators were hung up on a semantic one: What is the definition of “run”?

As in: What did President Donald Trump mean when he said the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” — and did he mean it at all?

“I think that’s a matter of interpretation,” Sen. Jim Risch, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told NOTUS.

“The people of Venezuela are the people who are going to run this country,” Risch added. “What we’re doing now is a very short-term thing.” (When pressed what “short term” meant, he said, “There is no definition. It’s going to depend upon events on the ground.”)

Republicans senators returning to Capitol Hill for the first time since the Saturday strike disagreed on how long the U.S. should operate in Venezuela during the U.S.-imposed interregnum.

They also split on whether “running the country” means military boots on the ground, nation-building, installing a new government, repairing Venezuela’s broken oil infrastructure or overseeing democratic elections — or all of the above.

And they disagreed on whether Trump was serious about the U.S. running the country in the first place.

Sen. Thom Tillis, who asserted that the “U.S. doesn’t have control of Venezuela,” said that “a part of this is problematic because the president said we’ll be running the country until the transition, but that’s factually incorrect.”

“Those are the president’s words as a businessman, so not in a legal sense,” Tillis continued. “What I hope he was saying is we’re going to try and affect an orderly transition, but ‘running the country’ is a bit of a strong word.”

Whether Republicans agree with Trump’s word choice or not, the president has been consistent that he intends to “run” Venezuela. Trump first used the word during a Saturday morning press conference. He reiterated the sentiment Sunday evening, when he told reporters “we’re in charge” of Venezuela.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, on Monday evening affirmed the president on CNN. “The United States of America is running Venezuela by definition,” he said, citing U.S. forces positioned just outside of the country as leverage to control the government.

Republican senators’ apparent confusion over the word nearly 72 hours after the U.S. ousted Maduro speaks to Trump’s unilateral approach to the situation. Not only did the president not feel the need to notify Congress of the strike — or seek their authorization — but as of Monday evening, the president had not brought senators up to speed.

“I don’t know exactly what he means by that,” Sen. Bill Cassidy told NOTUS of the word “run.” “Let me just put it that way.”

Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune was puzzled.

“Well, we’re gonna try and get more information about that,” Thune told CNN of Trump “running” Venezuela. “I’m hoping to find out more.”

The Trump administration has begun briefing lawmakers about the operation. Officials briefed a bipartisan group of lawmakers — the so-called “Gang of Eight” of top House and Senate leaders and the top Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence committees, and the top members on the Committees of House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, House Armed Services and Senate Armed Services — about the Saturday strike, and Trump is expected to speak to House Republicans on Tuesday at the Kennedy Center.

Following Monday’s briefing, Thune said he was “satisfied” with the administration’s answers.

“We had a, I think, a very robust discussion about the operation, and I think about the path forward,” he told reporters, but did not elaborate.

Perhaps those meetings will create more clarity, but as of Monday evening Republican senators repeatedly said they had “no idea” what Trump was up to.

Asked whether he knew what “run” meant, Sen. Ron Johnson said “not really.” When a reporter followed up to ask whether he was concerned that he didn’t have an answer, Johnson replied, “I really don’t. It’s all unknowable. I have no idea.”

Sen. Mike Rounds offered one idea — that running Venezuela would mean securing the nation’s vast oil resources and blocking it from supplying energy to foreign adversaries.

“I think his goal is literally to use the economics of the area to basically control and direct so that other forces outside of the Western Hemisphere are not allowed to be a part of their economy in the future,” Rounds told NOTUS.

Speaker Mike Johnson defended the Trump administration following the briefing Monday, arguing that the president was ultimately not trying to run the country.

“This is not a regime change. This is demand for change of behavior by a regime,” he said. “The interim government is stood up now and we are hopeful that they will be able to correct their actions.”

“We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government to get that going,” he added.

A few senators said facilitating “free-and-fair” elections should be the end game in Venezuela, though administration officials have failed to clarify when elections could take place.

“What he’s saying is, we’re gonna transition to a democracy,” Sen. Rick Scott, a key ally to the Venezuelan opposition, told NOTUS of Trump running Venezuela.

But if Scott’s definition is true, Trump and the GOP will face new questions about how long the U.S. should take to carry out that process.

To that, Scott had an answer.

“However long it takes.”