Trump has vowed to strike Venezuela ‘soon’ for months
By Betsy Klein, CNN
(CNN) — In President Donald Trump’s telling, a land strike on Venezuela could come “soon.”
He’s been saying that since mid-September. In that time, he’s publicly hinted or outright promised US military action on land at least 17 times, according to a CNN analysis of his appearances.
The president’s rhetorical threat has been backed up by a massive show of force in the region, including roughly 15,000 US troops and more than a dozen warships, plus at least 12 strikes launched against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Last week, the US seized a tanker full of Venezuelan crude off the country’s coast. And on Tuesday, Trump announced a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving from Venezuela, applying new economic pressure on Caracas.
The Trump administration has sold its boat strikes as an effort to crack down on illegal flows of drugs and migrants from Venezuela. But its actions have also pointed to a sweeping pressure campaign on President Nicolás Maduro — whose ouster White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has suggested is the administration’s real goal.
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will,” Wiles said of Trump in an interview with Vanity Fair that published this week.
Trump has been briefed by his team on a range of options for Venezuela, including airstrikes on key military or government facilities or drug trafficking routes — or a more direct attempt to take out Maduro.
But as the president appears to still be weighing a decision, he’s repeatedly invoked the threat of land strikes — even bringing them up unprompted at unrelated events.
“We’re telling the cartels right now. We’re going to be stopping them, too. When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats. And you’ll see that,” Trump said at a September 15 event on federal assistance for Memphis law enforcement in the days after the boat strikes began.
During October 5 remarks to US service members aboard the USS Harry S. Truman in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump warned, “They’re not coming in by sea anymore. So now we’ll have to start looking about the land, because they’ll be forced to go by land. … That’s not gonna work out well for ‘em either.”
He said October 22 while meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte that he planned to “hit them very hard when they come in by land.”
The president added: “And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that. We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land. We don’t have to do that.”
The following day at a homeland security roundtable, Trump said, “The land is going to be next.”
The president offered a “very shortly” timeline when speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on October 24.
At a FIFA task force meeting on November 17, he declined to rule out US troops on the ground in Venezuela. And as he spoke to US troops by phone on Thanksgiving, he said, “People aren’t wanting to be delivering by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop ‘em by land also. The land is easier, but that’s gonna start very soon.”
Convening his Cabinet on December 2, Trump signaled that land strikes would be “easier” than sea.
“We’re doing these strikes and we’re going to start doing those strikes on land too. You know, the land is much easier, it’s much easier,” he said.
December 3, he suggested that “we’re going to start very soon on land.”
At a December 6 Kennedy Center Honors dinner, he pledged, “We’re gonna start that same process on land because we know every route. We know every house. We know where they live.”
In a December 8 interview with Politico, Trump ratcheted up to “very soon.” He said “pretty soon” at an executive order signing three days later. And he raised eyebrows the next day, while honoring the “Miracle on Ice” US Olympic men’s hockey team, with an initial use of the present tense.
“And now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” he said.
This week, he again returned to “going to start” while speaking at event on border defense.
“We’re going to start hitting them on land, which is a lot easier to do, frankly,” he said.
But Trump’s threats took on a new economic dimension on Tuesday as he announced the oil tanker blockade, suggesting Venezuela give up land, oil and assets to the United States.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,” Trump said in a post to social media.
Taken together, the comments have left Caracas on edge, bracing for the president to follow through on his threats.
The-CNN-Wire
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