Senate Democrats Say Rubio Has Had a ‘Full MAGA-Lobotomy’

Senate Democrats unanimously backed Secretary of State Marco Rubio for confirmation last year. But in the wake of military action in Venezuela, they might be having buyer’s remorse.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen said Rubio has “had a full MAGA-lobotomy.”

“He essentially does what Donald Trump wants him to do,” Van Hollen said. “He has a little bit of the Dear Leader syndrome.”

“We’re in a constitutional crisis, in my opinion,” Sen. Cory Booker told NOTUS on Monday. “And it’s something that Marco, when he was in the Senate, wouldn’t have stood for.”

Rubio was the first Trump nominee confirmed in the new administration, and he garnered unanimous support from his then-Senate colleagues. Some now have regrets after seeing his prominent role in this past weekend’s efforts to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — an operation that occurred without congressional approval or much advanced notification.

Rubio was one of the main architects for the Trump administration’s Venezuela efforts and has long advocated for regime change in the country.

Sen. Tim Kaine, who’s leading a war powers resolution in the Senate, told NOTUS he thinks Rubio’s handling of the Venezuela mission has gone “poorly.”

“He’s doing what Trump’s telling him to do,” Kaine said. “We don’t have much illusion that Cabinet secretaries end up doing their own thing. They usually do what the boss wants, and he’s doing what the boss wants, and so that is not completely surprising.”

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Rubio repeatedly defended the decision to capture Maduro.

“This was not an action that required congressional approval,” Rubio said. “In fact, it couldn’t require congressional approval because this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation. This is a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action. It was a very delicate operation, too. It was one that required all these conditions to be in place at the right time, in the right place.”

Rubio is no stranger to the sensitivities of the Senate, having served in the upper chamber for more than a decade. He was a prominent figure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advocating for policy changes against China and regime changes in Cuba and Venezuela. He also served as vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Because of Rubio’s longtime place in the Senate and his strong bipartisan relationships, rank-and-file Democrats said they were disappointed they hadn’t heard from him in the aftermath of the Venezuela mission.

“I can only speak for myself. I haven’t heard from him, but they didn’t inform the people who they’re legally required to, they didn’t reach out to leadership,” Van Hollen said.

This is not the first time Democrats have expressed regrets over their initial enthusiastic support for Rubio. In May last year, many of them told him directly how disappointed they were in him during an appearance at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At the time they were focused on the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development.

Democrats have been cautious criticizing the Trump administration for its actions in Venezuela, after longtime criticism of Maduro. They’ve instead focused on the timeline of the decision to extract Maduro and the lack of transparency from the Trump administration throughout the process.

When asked whether a part of him celebrated Maduro’s ouster despite the process, the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner, quickly responded: “Yes.”

“Venezuela is in a better spot with Maduro gone,” Warner said, but shared skepticism at the Trump administration’s plan on how to move forward with the regime change.

“I’ve never heard the new interim president [Delcy Rodriguez] being viewed as that stabilizing force that we can work with. So lots of questions,” he added.

It’s not just Democrats critiquing the lack of transparency by the administration. Sen. Rand Paul also called for congressional authorization for military force, and is currently the only Republican publicly supporting a war powers resolution vote in the Senate that would limit Trump’s ability to attack Venezuela without approval.

When asked about Rubio’s performance on Monday, however, Paul dodged.

“I’m not for regime change wars. I think that war, according to the Constitution, should be initiated and declared by Congress, and I’ll be speaking out in favor of the war powers resolution on Thursday, saying exactly that,” Paul said.