Immediately after Americans learned that Donald Trump had deployed U.S. forces to bomb Venezuela and capture Nicolás Maduro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied heavily on a specific phrase in response to a variety of questions, calling the incursion “a law enforcement operation.” He added, as part of a description of the administration’s foreign policy, “We didn’t occupy a country.”

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, used an identical line, telling representatives of the Security Council, “This was a law enforcement operation.”

That is, because Maduro was facing federal criminal charges in the United States, the administration was within its rights simply to enforce the indictment, take the Venezuelan leader into custody and bring him to court like any other criminal defendant.

The military, according to the argument, was simply there to protect the officers conducting the arrest.....

All of this helped set the stage for Sunday, when Trump used his social media platform to promote an image that described him as the “acting president of Venezuela,” which came on the heels of the Republican saying that his administration is “in charge” of the South American country.

Trump posts that he’s “Acting President of Venezuela”

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-12T01:25:18.958Z

“This was a law enforcement operation” was a nice little talking point for the White House, but as it turns out, it had a shelf life of a single day.