(NewsNation) — U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Tuesday he thinks President Trump administration’s decision to send a carrier strike group to Venezuela is for “shock and awe” purposes.
“I think maybe the president is sending a message that, look, we’re serious about it,” Rounds told “On Balance.”
The Trump administration recently ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to Venezuela to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.
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On Tuesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also announced four more boats were obliterated in the Pacific Ocean by the U.S. military, resulting in 14 men being killed and one survivor clinging to wreckage.
“There’s about 6,000 individuals that are off the shore there right now. There are, I believe, eight separate military ships in the area, including the Ford coming through.
“So we are making a real show of force. The president does have the authority to do that. There’s no question about that.”
Congress must act in unison on decision about war with Venezuela: Senator
While Rounds believes the U.S. won’t declare war on Venezuela, he was adamant that Congress must work together if it somehow escalated to that point.
“Congress does have to act in unison,” he said. “The executive officer does not. He is a unitary body by himself.
“The courts can respond. But remember, the courts also gave us back a lot of authority just recently with regard to the Chevron case, which now says that the executive branch of government cannot take a law that Congress has issued and then interpret it the way they want to and have the benefit of the doubt anymore,” Rounds added.
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Senators from both parties have expressed concerns about Trump’s unilateral approach to conducting military strikes against the alleged drug cartel boats in the Caribbean.
But Rounds said Congress needs to do a better job of writing laws in the first place so that there’s not much gray area over decisions being made.
