Small Wars Journal

A Frustrated Trump Questions His Administration’s Venezuela Strategy

Thu, 05/09/2019 - 1:53am

A Frustrated Trump Questions His Administration’s Venezuela Strategy by Anne Gearan, Josh Dawsey, John Hudson and Seung Min Kim – Washington Post

President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.

 

The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

 

Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him “into a war” — a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said…

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