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.

At face value, the claim was difficult to take seriously. The United States, for example, does not generally find it necessary to launch a deadly military assault in furtherance of law enforcement operations. The White House also tends not to consult with oil companies before launching law enforcement operations.

Indeed, The New York Times’ David French argued in a column, “This defense is laughable. Under that reasoning, a president could transform virtually any war into a law enforcement operation by indicting opposing leaders and claiming that the large military forces needed to secure the leader’s arrest were simply protecting law enforcement. That’s not an argument; it’s an excuse.”

That’s true, though it’s also an excuse that the administration itself no longer seems to take seriously.

Four days after the military offensive, Donald Trump told the Times that he expects the U.S. will be running Venezuela and taking advantage of its oil reserves for “much longer” than a year, which sure doesn’t sound like “a law enforcement operation.”

A day later, the Republican boasted to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in reference to Venezuela, “That was a perfect attack. We’ve taken over a whole country.” A day after that, Trump added that he’d held off on launching a second round of violence in Venezuela — which, again, wouldn’t have been necessary if this was little more than “a law enforcement operation.”

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.

“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.