President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the U.S. had conducted a strike against a vessel involved in the drug trade that was coming out of Venezuela.
‘You’ll see that we just, over the last few minutes literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat,’ Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon.
The president said he had just been briefed on the matter by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Daniel ‘Razin’ Caine.
‘We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time, and we just – these came out of Venezuela. And coming out very heavily from Venezuela, a lot of things are coming out of Venezuela, so we took it out,’ Trump added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio chimed in directly afterwards.
‘As @potus just announced moments ago, today the U.S. military conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization,’ Rubio said.
Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro has been fuming over the U.S.’s increased military presence in the region.
Maduro, who the U.S. does not recognize as the legitimate president of the country after an election last year, threatened to ‘declare a republic in arms’ if attacked by American forces.
President Donald Trump announced a U.S. military operation against a vessel departing from Venezuela involved in the drug trade
‘In the face of this maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela,’ Maduro also said.
The Pentagon has deployed at least seven warships to the southern Caribbean.
Maduro characterized the escalation as ‘an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat’.
Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro, saying he uses ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ to ‘bring deadly drugs and violence into our country’.
In the announcement, she said the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates and 7 tons of cocaine linked to the Venezuelan dictator personally.
She noted that cocaine is often laced with fentanyl, which has led to droves of American deaths.
‘Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,’ Bondi said.
Caracas has long denied Maduro’s ties to the drug cartels.
The USS Sampson was docked near the entrance of the Panama Canal over the weekend amid a large buildup of U.S. naval forces in the southern Caribbean
Trump campaigned on eradicating the drug trade.
Since taking office, the president has also surged resources to the southern border and threatened China with tariffs over fentanyl trafficking.
Last year, Maduro claimed victory in Venezuela’s presidential election over opponent Edmundo González in an election that international monitors said was neither free nor fair.
During his news conference on Monday, Maduro also continued to claim that he was the legitimate winner of the 2024 election.
