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Trump Says Ground Attack on Venezuela Imminent—Plus Colombia, Mexico Also in US Crosshairs
"It's now taken as a given... that Trump is mulling a ground invasion of Venezuela and a dramatic expansion in his bombing campaign with no congressional authorization," said one critic.
Dec 09, 2025
President Donald Trump said in an interview published Tuesday that a US land attack on Venezuela is coming and signaled that he is open to launching similar military action against Colombia and Mexico.
“We’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon, too,” Trump told Politico's Dasha Burns, citing the pretext of stopping fentanyl from entering the United States.
Trump repeated his baseless claim that during the administration of his predecessor, the "very stupid" former President Joe Biden, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro "sent us millions of people, many from prisons, many drug dealers, drug lords," and "people in mental institutions."
Burns then noted that most of the illicit fentanyl sold in the United States "is actually produced in Mexico," which along with Colombia is "even more responsible" for trafficking the potent synthetic opioid into the US. She asked Trump if he would "consider doing something similar" to those countries.
"I would," Trump replied. "Sure, I would."
Pressed on his contradictory pardon of convicted narco-trafficking former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández while threatening war against Venezuela, Trump feigned ignorance, claiming that "I don't know him" and asserting that "he was set up."
Trump's latest threat against Venezuela comes amid his deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of the oil-rich South American nation, his approval of covert CIA action against Maduro's government, and more than 20 airstrikes on boats his administration claims without evidence were smuggling drugs in the southern Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Trump administration's targeting of Venezuela evokes the long history of US "gunboat diplomacy" in Latin America and continues more than a century of Washington's meddling in Venezuelan affairs. It also marks a historic escalation of aggression, as the US has never attacked Venezuelan territory.
Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of men killed in the boat bombings, contend that at least some of the victims were fishermen who were not involved in drug trafficking.
The strikes have killed at least 87 people since early September, according to administration figures—including shipwrecked survivors slain in a so-called double-tap bombing. Legal experts and some former US military officials contend that the strikes are a violation of international law, murders, war crimes, or all of these.
Critics also assert that the boat strikes violate the War Powers Act, which requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days. The Trump administration argues that it is not bound by the War Powers Resolution, citing as precedent the Obama administration's highly questionable claim of immunity from the law when the US attacked Libya in 2011.
A bipartisan bid to block the boat bombings on the grounds that they run afoul of the War Powers Act failed to muster enough votes in the Senate in October.
"Note that it’s now taken as a given—as an unremarkable and baked-in fact about our politics—that Trump is mulling a ground invasion of Venezuela and a dramatic expansion in his bombing campaign with no congressional authorization," New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent observed Tuesday in response to the president's remarks to Politico.
"What emerges from this interview," he added, "is that Trump is pulling all of this—the substantive case for these bombings, the legal justification for them, the rationale for mulling a massive military escalation in the Western Hemisphere—out of his rear end."
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Colombian President Petro Says Venezuela Oil 'At Heart' of Trump Aggression
"He’s not thinking about the democratization of Venezuela, let alone the narco-trafficking," said the Latin American leader. "In general, all of the wars of this century had to do with oil."
Nov 26, 2025
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Tuesday that US President Donald Trump's central focus with his attacks and threats against Venezuela is the desire for the nation's vast oil reserves and little if anything to do with stopping illegal drug trafficking or improving the nation's democratic prospects under President Nicolas Maduro.
In an face-to-face interview with CNN's Isa Soeres, which the correspondent described as "fiery" at times, Petro explained that Venezuela's oil reserves, among the largest in the world, is "at the heart of the matter" when it comes to Trump's repeated extrajudicial killings in waters of the nation's coast this year and a broader military buildup that includes deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier group and mobilization of US Southern Command.
"What lies behind this," said Petro, "is the same thing behind the war in Ukraine... petroleum," noting the size and quality of Venezuela's reserves. "In general, all of the wars of this century had to do with oil."
If Trump were to get the upper hand, Petro suggested, the United States would get Venezuela's oil "almost for free," predicting that—"based on the evidence so far"—that the US will go to war over the resources.
Trump, said Petro, "is not thinking about the democratization of Venezuela, let alone the narco-trafficking," adding that Venezuela is not considered a major drug producer or transit point for most narcotics headed to the United States.
"You only have to look at the numbers," said Petro. "Only about 4 percent of Colombia's cocaine production... goes through Venezuela—a small margin—while most of it goes out through the Pacific Ocean."
As CNN notes, "Petro has been at odds with Trump since he returned to the White House. In the past year, the Colombian leader has harshly criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies, its support for Israel and its military activity around Latin America."
In September, the US State Department under Trump had Petro's visa revoked following critical comments he made during the UN General Assembly in New York.
This week, the US designated a new group, the Cartel do Los Soles, as a terrorist organization, naming Maduro its de facto leader, a claim that experts say there is no evidence to support.
Asked by CNN if he assesses Maduro as a gang leader, dictator, or narcotrafficker, Petro said investigations in Colombia have never shown Maduro to be connected to the black market drug trade and that his country's data doesn't even show the existence of the alleged cartel designated this week by the Trump administration.
"The problem of Maduro," said Petro, "is lack of democracy and dialogue."
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As Trump Issues New Threats to Mexico and Colombia, Democrats Push to End Unauthorized Aggression
Rep. Gregory Meeks, who introduced a war powers resolution, said Trump’s actions combine the “worst excesses of the war on drugs and the war on terror.”
Nov 18, 2025
As Democrats in the US House of Representatives introduced their latest measure to stop President Donald Trump from continuing his attacks against alleged drug cartels without approval from Congress, the president said he wouldn't "rule out" deploying US ground troops in Venezuela—and warned he could escalate attacks across Latin America, with possible strikes in Mexico and Colombia as well.
Shortly after the Department of Defense, called the Department of War by the Trump administration, announced its 21st illegal airstrike on what they've claimed, without evidence, to be "narco-terrorist" vessels mostly in the Caribbean—attacks that have killed at least 83 people—Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that he may soon begin similar operations against drug cartels in mainland Mexico.
“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me. I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand,” he said. “We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways, but we know every route."
Earlier this month, following reports from US officials that the Trump administration had started “detailed planning” to send US troops to Mexico, the nation's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, retorted that "it’s not going to happen."
In his comments Monday, Trump threatened to carry out strikes in Colombia as well, saying: "Colombia has cocaine factories where they make cocaine. Would I knock out those factories? I would be proud to do it personally.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been one of Latin America's fiercest critics of Trump's extrajudicial boat bombings, last week referring to the US president as a "barbarian." Trump, meanwhile, has baselessly accused Petro of being "an illegal drug leader," slapping him and his family with sanctions and cutting off aid to the country.
In response to Trump's threats on Monday, Petro touted the number of cocaine factories that have been "destroyed" under his tenure. According to figures from the Colombian Ministry of Defense, around 18,000 of them have been taken out of commission since Petro took office in 2022, a 21% increase from Colombia's previous president.
Immediately after Trump issued his threat against Colombia, he backpedaled, saying: "I didn't say I'm doing it, I would be proud to do it."
However, reporting from Drop Site News earlier this month has suggested that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) "was briefed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on the new list of hard targets inside Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico in early October, and lobbied fellow senators on expanding the war to include drug-related sites in Colombia."
The senator had alluded to the plans on CBS News' "Face the Nation," saying: “We’re not gonna sit on the sidelines and watch boats full of drugs come into our country. We’re gonna blow them up and kill the people who want to poison America. And we’re now gonna expand our operations, I think, to the land. So please be clear about what I’m saying today. President Donald Trump sees Venezuela and Colombia as direct threats to our country, because they house narco-terrorist organizations.”
On Tuesday, a group of Democrats in the US House of Representatives introduced another measure that would stop Trump from continuing his attacks against alleged drug cartel members without approval from Congress.
The measure would require the removal of “United States Armed Forces from hostilities with any presidentially designated terrorist organization in the Western Hemisphere,” unless Congress authorizes the use of military force or issues a declaration of war. Previous measures to stall Trump’s extrajudicial attacks have been narrowly stymied, despite receiving some support from the Republican majority.
“There is no evidence that the people being killed are an imminent threat to the United States of America,“ said Rep. Gregory Meeks (NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced the resolution.
Meeks added that Trump’s campaign of assassinations in Latin America combines “the worst excesses of the war on drugs and the war on terror.”
Trump's threats of military action come after Hegseth announced what he called "Operation Southern Spear" last week, which he said would be aimed at "remov[ing] narco-terrorists from our hemisphere." In a description that evoked the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, Hegseth wrote on social media that "the Western Hemisphere is America's neighborhood—and we will protect it."
In the Oval Office, Trump declared, without evidence, that with each strike his administration carries out against Venezuelan boats, "we save 25,000 American lives," which experts say is obviously false since Venezuela plays a very minor role in global drug trafficking.
Several international legal experts have said Trump’s strikes constitute a war crime. Earlier this month, Oona A. Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said that members of the Trump administration “know what they are doing is wrong.”
“If they do it, they are violating international law and domestic law,” Hathaway said. “Dropping bombs on people when you do not know who they are is a breach of law.”
The Trump administration has argued that its actions are consistent with Article 51 of the UN’s founding charter, which requires the UN Security Council to be informed immediately of actions taken in self-defense against an armed attack.
The administration has not provided evidence that its attacks constitute a necessary form of self-defense. But last month, a panel of independent UN experts said that “even if such allegations were substantiated, the use of lethal force in international waters without proper legal basis violates the international law of the sea and amounts to extrajudicial executions.”
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