Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States had carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat and killed three alleged terrorists he claimed were transporting drugs, expanding his administration’s war against drug cartels and the scope of lethal military force to stop them.
The US president gave few details about the strike, saying in a social media post that the action was on his orders and that it had happened earlier in the morning. The post was accompanied by a video clip showing the boat, which appeared to be stationary, erupting into a fireball.
“The strike occurred while these confirmed narco-terroists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s announcement of the strike appeared to be worded in a way to suggest there was a valid legal basis for the strike – an issue that became a source of heavy criticism in Washington after the operation against the first alleged Venezuelan drug boat earlier this month, which killed 11 people.
According to people familiar with the matter, the administration briefed Congress last week that the first strike was legal under the president’s article 2 powers because it involved a boat connected to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump designated a foreign terrorist organization.
The administration has provided little evidence that the first boat was carrying illegal drugs beyond asserting they had tracked the drugs being loaded on to the boat in order to be distributed in the United States, even if the boat at one point was said to have turned around.
Asked on Sunday about that first strike and claims it was a fishing vessel, Trump said in response to questions from the Guardian: “You saw the bags of white. It’s nonsense. So we knew it before they even left. We knew exactly where that boat, where it came from, where the drugs came from and where it was heading.”
By claiming, for the strike on the second boat, that the drugs were a threat to the United States and asserting that the boat’s crew were “terrorists”, Trump appeared to be preemptively setting the groundwork to make the same article 2 legal claim to order a missile strike against the second boat.
The latest strike comes as the US continues a massive buildup of forces around Venezuela. Over the weekend, five F-35 fighter jets arrived in Puerto Rico to join about half a dozen US navy destroyers already moved to the US territory recently, and support assets the administration said had been deployed to disrupt the flow of illegal drugs.
The US naval forces in the region are comprised of the Iwo Jima amphibious ready group – including the USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale carrying 4,500 sailors – and the 22nd marine expeditionary unit, with 2,200 marines, according to administration officials.
Trump has been noncommittal about conducting military operations inside Venezuela against the drug cartels or the government, and deflected questions about the legality of the strikes on Sunday night. “What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat,” he told the Guardian.
On Monday evening, Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator, said in a post on social media that “I’m drafting a resolution and forcing a vote to reclaim Congress’s power to declare war.” He said: “These lawless killings are just putting us at risk” and could prompt another country to target US forces without proper justification.
For his part, from Caracas, the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro said hours before Trump announced the second strike that his country would defend itself against foreign aggression as he lashed out at US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
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“[He is] the Lord of Death and War and Hatred,” Maduro said at a news conference of Rubio, who has played an outsize role in the administration’s Venezuela operations as both the top US diplomat and Trump’s national security adviser.
Observers have downplayed the likelihood of a US military intervention on Venezuelan soil. Many believe the US pressure campaign is partly designed to trigger defections that might help bring down Maduro’s administration and partly political theatre for a domestic audience.
Still, given Trump’s unpredictable nature, members of Maduro’s regime and officials in other South American countries have watched the situation anxiously.
“In Venezuela, the governing Chavistas have gone from disbelief to surprise, from surprise to indignation, and from indignation to horror” over Trump’s behaviour, the Spanish newspaper El País reported on Monday.
The newspaper said Maduro’s inner circle had initially interpreted the US naval deployment as a Trumpian negotiating tactic. “As the days passed, however, they have become convinced that Washington is preparing for an invasion,” El País reported.
“All that’s left is for them to shoot at the buildings we’re sitting in, damn it,” one senior official close to Maduro was quoted as saying.
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