Trump Says U.S. “Land Strikes” Ahead “Soon” for Venezuela

For the second time this month, and a day after U.S. authorities seized a Venezuelan oil tanker off the South American country’s coast, U.S. President Donald Trump has said that “land strikes” against the country are ahead, and “soon.”

He did not elaborate what “soon” meant in answering a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

Early this month, Trump said the same thing. But with the seizure of the tanker, which carried sanctioned oil, the threat to attack the country and drive communist dictator Nicolas Maduro out of power appears to be well into the planning stages. In October, Trump strongly suggested that a land operation was ahead.

We’re Keeping the Oil

The latest threat to strike Venezuela on land followed the announcement about the tanker, which in turn followed almost two dozen strikes against boats that Trump officials say carry drugs to the United States.

On X two days ago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed that the FBI, Coast Guard, and Homeland Security Investigations, backed by the Defense Department (referred to by the administration as the War Department), landed on the vessel.

“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” Bondi said:

This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely — and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues.

White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt confirmed what Trump said about the oil: “We keep it, I guess.”

She said the U.S. will seize the oil through a “legal process.”

Yesterday, Fox’s Doocy asked the president whether the action against Venezuela is “still just about drugs or is it now also about oil.”

Gang Members From Venezuela

Noting that almost 12,000 murderers had entered the country, including “many” from Venezuela, Trump said:

Well, it’s about a lot of things, 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 said “thousands” of Tren de Aragua (TdA) terror gang members entered the country. In invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport gang members in April, Trump said that the Maduro regime essentially controls the gang. In April, citing the FBI, Fox News reported that the regime “likely facilitates” the entry of TdA members into the United States. A top official in the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed the FBI’s assessment. 

In March, a former CIA official told the Miami Herald that Maduro had “operation control” of the gang and had sent 300 members with paramilitary training into the United States. And as The New American has repeatedly reported, the Biden administration permitted TdA to establish operations in major cities nationwide.

In August, Trump ordered the military to destroy the drug cartels, and last month, NBC News reported, he OK’d military action inside Mexico to do so.

As for land strikes in Venezuela, Trump said that striking the drug boats had reduced seaborne drug traffic by 92 percent. “And we’ll start that on land, too,” he said. “It’s going to be starting on land pretty soon.”

Previous Warnings

In early December, a reporter asked Trump whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Admiral Frank Bradley, a former SEAL Team Six member and head of U.S. Special Operations Command, should be punished for the killing of two survivors of the first drug-boat strike on September 2.

“I think you’re going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions actually, if you look over a few years,” Trump said. Noting that the families of drug-overdose victims have a “very receptive ear” to the boat strikes, he said land strikes were ahead.

“And very soon, we’re going to start doing it on land, too,” he said:

Because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we know where they put it all together, and I think you’re going to see it very soon on land also.

In October, Trump strongly hinted that land strikes were ahead.

And in invoking the AEA, he signaled back in March what was in store for TdA, Maduro, and Venezuela.

“TdA is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the Maduro regime, including its military and law enforcement apparatus,” Trump wrote in the executive order:

TdA grew significantly while Tareck El Aissami served as governor of Aragua between 2012 and 2017. In 2017, El Aissami was appointed as Vice President of Venezuela. Soon thereafter, the United States Department of the Treasury designated El Aissami as a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. …

Maduro leads the regime-sponsored enterprise Cártel de los Soles, which coordinates with and relies on TdA and other organizations to carry out its objective of using illegal narcotics as a weapon to “flood” the United States. In 2020, Maduro and other regime members were charged with narcoterrorism and other crimes in connection with this plot against America.

Venezuela is a “hybrid criminal state” that had organized “an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States,” the order said.

Citing INTERPOL, the order said TdA was a “significant threat to the United States as it infiltrates migration flows from Venezuela.”