President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to imply that the ongoing series of lethal U.S. military strikes in Caribbean waters against alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela might not be entirely about the drugs.
Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy on Thursday asked Trump during an Oval Office press conference about the U.S.’s Wednesday seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker if the Caribbean campaign is really “still just about drugs” or now “also about oil.”
“Well, it’s about a lot of things,” the president replied Thursday. “But one of the things it’s about is the fact that they’ve allowed millions of people to come into our country from their prisons, from gangs, from drug dealers and from mental institutions.”
Trump has long used such rhetoric when discussing immigrants crossing into the U.S., but has been launching actual strikes against foreign nationals on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September.
The deadly campaign has killed more than 80 people without due process or evidence of their crimes. One operation in particular is suspected of being a war crime, as the U.S. on Sept. 2 engaged in a “double-tap” airstrike on an alleged drug boat, an operation that killed shipwrecked survivors. The strikes shocked even some Republicans: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has likened them to “summary execution.”
Trump on Thursday once again floated the idea of deploying U.S. troops to Venezuela for land operations.
“If you look at the drug traffic, drug traffic by sea is down 92% and nobody can figure out who the 8% is, because I have no idea,” he said. “Anybody getting involved in that right now is not doing well. And we’ll start that on land, too. It’s gonna be starting on land pretty soon.”
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Thursday on three nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose country has a history with U.S. sanctions that reaches back roughly two decades. Maduro has argued that Trump wants Venezuela’s oil, as the country holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
Trump recently pardoned ex-Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years in federal U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine into the country, leading some pundits to ponder whether Trump actually cares about drug trafficking at all.
In a display of American military power last month, Trump deployed the most advanced U.S. aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. The administration is now apparently preparing to seize even more Venezuelan oil tankers.
And as for what to do with the oil from this week’s tanker?
“We’ll keep it, I guess,” Trump said Wednesday.
