Joe Scarborough Details Shocking Phone Call With Trump After Venezuela Invasion

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough aired his concerns about U.S. involvement in Venezuela on Monday’s (January 5) show, and on Tuesday (January 6), he revealed he had received answers to those worries directly from Donald Trump himself.

As reported by RawStory, Scarborough opened Tuesday’s show by revealing he’d spoken to the President on the phone on Monday, where he asked him directly about the recent Delta Force operation, which resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

“I called to get the reaction and to see what I might be able to glean on what was coming next,” the MS NOW host said. “Just to set up the conversation, he was very excited and proud yesterday when I talked to him by phone to try to get those insights on his decision to launch a military attack on Venezuela.”

Scarborough claimed “most of the 20-minute call was filled with the President recounting the U.S. military’s flawless execution of the operation,” including his praise for the “courage” shown by the troops who “raided Maduro’s fortress.”

“The President concluded his summary of the attack by noting the message that this will surely send about America’s strength to Putin, Xi, and Iran,” Scarborough added.

But the biggest question Scarborough wanted to ask Trump was about comparisons to former President George W. Bush‘s occupation of Iraq, something Trump has been critical of in the past.

“When I pressed comparisons with America’s failed occupation of Iraq, the President’s response was very different,” Scarborough stated. ” I asked him, I said, ‘Mr. President, when you say, quote, ‘we’re going to run everything,’ that obviously causes deep concerns because of the disaster in Iraq.”

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“The President’s response: ‘Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil,’ and to underline his point, Trump said his comments were no longer on background and said, ‘In 2016, I said we should have kept the oil, it caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil.'”

Scarborough went on to say that Trump told him, “We’re going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we’re going to keep the oil.”

The host concluded, “Saying the United States is entering a new era of geopolitical engagement seems to be an understatement…. Donald Trump’s brazenness draws from 19th-century imperialism.”