Donald Trump did not rule out expanding US military operations beyond Venezuela to Mexico and Colombia.
The president said in a interview taped this week that he would consider using military force on two US allies in Latin America.
Trump cited Mexico and Colombia’s drug trade into the US as he continues threatening to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Mexico is the primary country for trafficking a variety of narcotics, including heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, into the US. Colombia is the largest producer of the latter substance.
Since early September, the Trump administration has launched 22 strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels in both the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in at least 87 deaths.
‘Sure, I would,’ Trump said when asked by Politico if he would consider using force against targets in other Latin American countries with highly active drug trades.
A substantial US military force consisting of naval warships and special ground forces has been deployed to the Caribbean to pressure Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.
‘I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,’ Trump said when asked about deploying troops to Venezuela. ‘I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.’
Trump recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted on multiple counts involving drug trafficking.
The former Latin American leader was serving a decades-long sentence in an American jail before Trump freed him earlier this month.
The president said he knew ‘very little’ regarding Hernández’s case but that he’d been told by ‘very good people’ that Hernández was targeted unfairly.
‘They asked me to do it and I said, “I’ll do it,”‘ Trump said about the pardon.
The key link from Hernandez to Trump: the infamous Republican operative Roger Stone who goes back decades with the president from their time in New York City.
While the pardon was seen as contradictory for a president ostensibly fighting the drug trade, Stone ran an aggressive campaign for Hernandez, framing him as a casualty of politically motivated legal attacks by the Honduran left and the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, there’s no sign the Trump administration is pulling back its military campaign.
The USS Gerald R Ford and accompanying warships arrived in the Caribbean last month, just as the US military announced its latest in a series of strikes against vessels suspected of transporting drugs.
The administration says its actions are a counterdrug operation meant to stop narcotics from flowing to American cities, but some analysts, Venezuelans and the country’s political opposition see them as an escalating pressure tactic against Maduro.
Critics have claimed that the Trump administration’s targeted strikes on drug smugglers represent extrajudicial killings.
The Pentagon has yet to release concrete evidence to the public that the vessels were carrying narcotics or posed a threat to the US. And Congress is now threatening to withhold Pentagon funds until it sees unedited videos of the strikes.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is facing a barrage of criticism for approving strikes on Venezuelan drug ships – and especially regarding the now-infamous second strike on the first attack in September that neutralized two survivors.
The controversy all stems from the strike against a vessel in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration claimed was carrying cocaine en route to the US.
A US missile strike disabled the speedboat and killed most on board. But two survivors were observed clinging to the wreckage and were thought to be attempting to radio for help.
Pentagon officials have justified the administration’s action by arguing the decision to authorize the second strike on September 2 was based on a perceived ongoing threat.
