Donald Trump has issued a warning regarding potential military action on Venezuelan soil, following his confirmation that the CIA is engaged in secret activities within the country.
When questioned about his future strategies against Venezuelan drug cartels, amid ongoing Pentagon operations targeting suspected traffickers in Caribbean waters, the president hinted at shifting focus to land.
“I won’t disclose specifics, but we’re now considering ground operations, as we’ve effectively secured the maritime front,” Trump stated.
He praised the success of drone strikes at sea, noting instances where not a single vessel was detected, and asserted that every destroyed boat potentially prevented the loss of 25,000 lives.
In response, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro labeled Trump’s strategy as a “CIA-backed coup d’état.”
Maduro, whose presidency is not acknowledged by the United States as legitimate, declared, “No to war in the Caribbean… No to regime change… No to CIA-orchestrated coups d’état.”
The leftist leader had a committee set up after Washington deployed warships in the Caribbean for what it said was an anti-drug operation.
Trump declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.
Donald Trump said his administration is looking into executing land strikes in Venezuela after confirming that the CIA is conducting covert operations in the country
Trump said that the drone strikes on the ocean, like the infamous one in September, had been so successful that there have been days ‘where there’s not a boat to be found’ and claimed every boat that they destroyed saved 25,000 lives
The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the US spy agency comes after the military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean.
American forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela.
Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move.
‘I authorized for two reasons, really,’ Trump replied. ‘No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,’ he said.
‘And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.’
Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after The New York Times published that the CIA had been authorized to carry out covert action in Venezuela.
Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States is now in an ‘armed conflict’ with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.
The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorization.
Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, called Trump’s plan a ‘coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA’
On Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supports cracking down on trafficking, the administration has gone too far.
‘The Trump administration´s authorization of covert CIA action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,’ Shaheen said.
‘The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the U.S. into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.’
The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the US military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two US officials familiar with the matter.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce ‘hard evidence’ that the vessels were carrying drugs.
Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the US is in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organizations it claims are ‘unlawful combatants.’
Even as the US military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the US Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs.
Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach hasn’t worked.
‘Because we´ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,’ he said. ‘They´re world-class speedboats, but they´re not faster than missiles.’
Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and are extrajudicial killings.
