President Donald Trump is dialing up the saber-rattling in the wake of the United States’ attack on Venezuela last weekend.
In comments aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump targeted Colombia, arguing that it was “very sick, too,” and “run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
When asked about a potential military operation in Colombia, he said: “It sounds good to me.”
Additionally, Trump suggested that Mexico had to “get their act together.”
“We’re going to have to do something,” Trump said, then added that he hoped Mexico would take action first.
He noted that Cuba could “fall” without any U.S. military intervention.
“I don’t think we need any action; it looks like it’s going down,” Trump said.
Trump reiterated that “we need Greenland,” despite leaders in the region having vocally pushed back against any American annexation of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Trump also hasn’t discounted further military action in Venezuela.
“If they don’t behave, we will do a second strike,” Trump said, adding the decision to deploy troops on the ground “depends” on how the new administration acts.
JIM WATSON via Getty Images
Trump made his incendiary remarks even as his first attack on Venezuela, and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, faces massive backlash from lawmakers over questions of legality.
Early Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the rounds on the morning talk shows and tried to downplay comments Trump made about the U.S. running Venezuela. He said that the U.S. would be focused on enforcing an oil quarantine in Venezuela and less involved in other day-to-day governance.
“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
However, on Sunday night, Trump again pushed his claim that the U.S. was running things in Venezuela.
“Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial,” Trump said during the Air Force One gaggle. “It means we’re in charge.”
