Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) argued that President Donald Trump’s decision to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was the “absolute right move” in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News Saturday.
Speaking with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, the Oklahoma senator blasted Maduro for “allowing Venezuela to be used as a drug hub” for narcotics being transported to the United States.
“And, his oil was being used as a way for these drug cartels to truly launder their money through so they could just disappear,” Mullin explained.
While the statistics for 2025 are not yet out, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reveal an estimated 80,391 U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024. That figure represents a decrease of nearly 27 percent from the 110,037 deaths estimated in 2023.
To illustrate just how grave those numbers are, Mullin compared the figures to the U.S. death toll from the Vietnam War — about 58,000.
“We lost more individuals to drug overdoses than we did U.S. personnel in the entire Vietnam War, and that was just in 2024, so there was a major, major crisis going on,” the senator said.
He also shared his support for Trump’s “very heavy emphasis” on controlling Venezuelan oil sales, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright announcing that the U.S. will sell the country’s oil “indefinitely” going forward.
“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last week.
Calling out hypocrisy from the Democrat Party, Mullin said Trump had given Maduro “multiple opportunities to leave — even though Joe Biden himself put a $25 million bounty on Maduro.”
“… Keep in mind, during Trump’s first term, the Democrats were saying that he wasn’t taking security seriously [for] leaving Maduro in place,” he said.” I mean, those words were from Chuck Schumer himself, not to mention echoed by Hakeem Jeffries and by Chris Murphy and Tim Kaine. So, I mean, the Democrats even supported it back then. Of course, now it’s different, because Trump did it, not Biden.”
Maduro’s last public appearance the day before his capture was a meeting with top Chinese diplomats in the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Breitbart News reported.
“… One of the things they talked about was allowing China to have a foothold in America’s backyard,” Mullin told Boyle.
“So, with all that combined, the president made the decision months ago to go in and remove Maduro, which was an absolute right move,” he asserted.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.