This has been pretty amazing, watching the language develop over these interdictions (aka sinkings) of cartel mule boats running out of isolated, tiny villages on the Venezuelan coast.
You’ll remember, the first was just a couple of weeks ago.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.
The president said in a social media posting that 11 people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Americas, a dramatic escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to stem the flow of narcotics from Latin America. Trump also posted a short video clip of a small vessel appearing to explode in flames.
“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,” Trump said on Truth Social. “No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America.”
The latest was number three. It had happened on Monday and was announced by the president on Friday..
President Donald Trump said the U.S. military on Monday again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel, and hinted that the military targeting of cartels could be further expanded.
…Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later on Monday, Trump said he had been shown footage of the latest strike by Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Asked what proof the U.S. has that the vessel was carrying drugs, Trump replied, “We have proof. All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean — big bags of cocaine and and fentanyl all over the place.”
The ‘He just can’t go blowing boats up!‘ chorus went into overdrive. To the contrary, asserts the president.
The Constitution says I can.
…Several Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the strikes, arguing that the Trump administration hasn’t given a legal justification for using the military.
“President Trump’s actions are an outrageous violation of the law and a dangerous assault on our Constitution,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this week. “No president can secretly wage war or carry out unjustified killings – that is authoritarianism, not democracy.”
After the first boat was struck in early September, the White House sent a notification to Congress arguing the strikes fell under Mr. Trump’s legal authority.
“I directed these actions consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as commander in chief and chief executive to conduct United States foreign relations,” the notice said.
Hard as it is to believe, there was enough left after that badda boom to prove either side right or wrong. It turns out the Dominican Navy got out to the scene pretty quickly and did some evidence recovery.
Lo and behold, they were scraping bales of what turned out to be cocaine out of the water.
Who else would have a speedboat in international waters in the middle of the night? Its probably not Little Caesar delivery.
— Patrick Smith (@smi30966) September 22, 2025
So many bales survived, it was a cocaine-a-palooza.
…In a news conference, the Dominican Republic’s National Directorate for Drug Control (DNCD) said it recovered 377 packages of cocaine from the boat which was allegedly carrying 1,000 kilograms, or more than 2,200 pounds, of the drug. The drugs were recovered after “an aerial military strike by the United States against a speedboat of narcoterrorists,” the DNCD said in a statement.
At the news conference, a spokesperson for the U.S. embassy said the attack is the one President Donald Trump first announced Friday without saying where it had taken place, following several U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats off Venezuela. Mr. Trump at the time said three “male narcoterrorists” were killed.
Officials said the boat was destroyed about 80 nautical miles south of Isla Beata, a small island that belongs to the Dominican Republic. They said the Dominican’s Republic Navy worked in conjunction with U.S. authorities to locate the speedboat which was allegedly trying to dock in the Dominican Republic and use the nation as a “bridge” to transport cocaine to the United States.
Almost makes you wonder where there was any room for those poor fishmen to put the fish.
You know, that’s what they were really doing when brutally bombed by the U.S.
No idea whose dope that was. Just happened to be in the same water.
Now, I’m no expert on extrajudicial warfare – I don’t even play one here at HotAir. I’ll leave that to constitutional scholars to determine if Trump is within his rights to vaporize at will, or should they be making the effort to disable, immobilize, and apprehend every one of these crews as they are doing in other cases, where I’m sure it’s easier to snag them.
ASMR: @USCG captures, burns, and sinks a drug boat.
Over the weekend, as part of Operation Pacific Viper, the @USCG Cutter Stone conducted three interdictions in a single night—seizing nearly 13,000 pounds of cocaine and apprehending seven suspected drug smugglers. pic.twitter.com/wHRGUGYtTw
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) September 9, 2025
This is as hairy as the devil.
DHS seizes a drug boat and suspected narco-terr*rists as part of Operation Pacific Viper.pic.twitter.com/qC3FW3vzuW
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) September 18, 2025
In any event, Maduro is sending fishermen – the actual real ones – as civilian cover out with his fleet of Venezuelan Navy banditos in the hopes he can provoke a real-time international incident. He’s having those fellows talk tough while mugging for the cameras in their well-worn boats.
🚨 Venezuela’s “fast attack boats” — Maduro’s militias think they can challenge the U.S. Navy with fishing speedboats. 🚤⚓😹 pic.twitter.com/Wbhfeu2oAn
— Defence Index (@Defence_Index) August 31, 2025
Maduro didn’t get his enforcement thugs to the villages to tell the locals to keep their traps shut fast enough, though. Even as milquetoast mewlers like Bill Kristol were moaning about Trump splashing innocent working stiffs just out to catch some sustenance, the uncomfortable contrast between those impoverished men of the sea in their ramshackle tubs, and who was in the targeted boats became glaringly obvious.
“Fishing Boats” equipped with 4, 100hp outboard, lean-burn engines to go fishing?
Sure, every “fishing boat” out of Venezuela spends $28,000 on Suzuki engines just for cruising to the fishing grounds.
If Kristol thinks we’ll believe his BS, he’s absolutely crazy https://t.co/CCAaDrhY6m
— Hank Miiller (@miiller) September 20, 2025
The Associated Press went straight to the source for the truth on how flexing American military might on simple, innocent seafaring communities was destroying the fabric of life.
US Military Strike Off the Coast of Venezuela Disrupts Life in Impoverished Fishing Communities
Too bad for them, the article doesn’t match the headline very well, as residents are unhappy and sad that a way of life that once provided a living for so many has fallen away, and now so many are in need. That drugs became a way of supplementing income and then replaced fishing entirely, and now, suddenly, because of the strikes, those same people can’t buy meat, get their hair or nails done, or go out to eat.
On Venezuela’s Paria Peninsula, an idyllic stretch of Caribbean coast, it is an open secret that boats departing from its ports transport both drugs and fish.
Residents claim not to know who owns the illegal cargo, but they can tell when business is doing well because people eat out, get their hair and nails done and buy expensive meat. They also admit that none of this has happened since the U.S. military struck on one of those boats earlier this month.
…Walking through the Güiria neighborhood of one of the strike’s victims, Díaz lamented the decline of the local fishing industry, which once offered jobs with living wages and a way for people “to be happy.”
Is the AP mad that the U.S. has upset a drug-trafficking-fueled good life for a chosen few in these little villages? Is that it?
Because, as you read more of what the true locals say, it is only a few.
For one thing, they don’t seem to know who any of the people in the destroyed boats were, but being lifelong fishermen, they can tell you all about the vessel that was blown to smithereens.
Real fishermen, they point out, don’t have the money for one of those boat motors, let alone four of them for a single boat.
No way.
…Speculation over the strike is still going around Venezuela, with people wondering who died and whether their deaths are part of a plan to topple President Nicolás Maduro. Some have questioned their government’s assertions that a video of the strike released by U.S. President Donald Trump was created with artificial intelligence and that a boat of that size cannot venture into the high seas.
But fishermen in the peninsula, who know their craft, immediately recognized some characteristics of the boat from the video. They said it was a 12-meter-long fishing boat known in Venezuela as “peñero” with four powerful and expensive motors. They estimated the engines were at least 200 horsepower each, a force five times more powerful than that typically used on local peñeros.
“Fishing doesn’t pay enough to buy a motor like that,” said fisherman Junior González, taking a break from repairing a boat along the shore of Guaca. Only a handful of roughly two dozen sardine processing plants still operate in this community following years of overfishing, failed restoration and the country’s overarching crisis.
González explained that the motors he uses run between $4,000 and $5,000 each, while one of those needed to reach Trinidad and Tobago — the suspected destination of the targeted boat — sell for $15,000 to $20,000.
That’s a lot of sardines in motors for one boat.
It’s not fishermen buying them, though it might be some impoverished Venezuelan fishermen dying in them. The villagers the AP talked to didn’t know anyone who’d been lost yet.
For all the posturing, Maduro must be sweating the stepped-up US presence and the continuing threat of at-sea action disrupting the lucre that helps fuel his dictatorship.
Word has emerged that he’d written a ‘Dear Mr President’ letter to Trump earlier this month.
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wrote directly to Donald Trump this month to call for talks with the US to defuse tensions.
In the letter dated Sept. 6, the socialist leader said that his government “has consistently sought direct communication to address and resolve any issue that arises between our two governments.”
“I respectfully invite you, President, to promote peace through constructive dialogue and mutual understanding throughout the hemisphere,” Maduro said, in a copy of the letter seen Sunday by Bloomberg.
Maduro spent much of the letter denying that his country is a major source of illegal drugs reaching the US, saying that most of Colombia’s cocaine production leaves through the Pacific.
Maduro wants Ric Grenell as the intermediary for talks, and downplays any talk of Venezuela’s part in the North American drug trade.
…”President, I hope that together we can defeat the falsehoods that have sullied our relationship, which must be historic and peaceful,” Maduro wrote in the letter. “These and other issues will always be open for a direct and frank conversation with your special envoy (Richard Grenell) to overcome media noise and fake news.”
He noted that Grenell had helped quickly resolve earlier allegations that Venezuela was refusing to take back migrants, adding, “To date, this channel has functioned flawlessly.”
Maduro makes no mention or statement of outrage concerning innocent dead Venezuelan fisherfolk, either, even though Reuters, in this very article, says Trump claimed the casualties of the 4 September strike were Tren de Aragua without evidence.
Hmmm.
Sometimes it’s not an advantage having the TDS-infected American press working overtime in your corner when you’re desperately trying to get the Big Bad Orange wolf off your back.
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