Trump says US will begin land strikes on Venezuela ‘very soon’

President Trump said the US military would “very soon” start missile strikes on land against drug smugglers as he led a fightback against allegations of war crimes on suspected gang members killed at sea.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, an unapologetic Trump said that his policy was “taking those son-of-a-bitches out”, while sitting next to his embattled secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, who was accused of scapegoating a top admiral for the decision to “eliminate” survivors of a drug boat strike.

Trump went further than the immediate row about a US military operation off the coast of Venezuela, saying that he could order attacks on any country producing drugs that reached America.

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“All I know is this, every boat that you see get blown up, we save on average 25,000 lives,” Trump said, when asked about a remark he made on Sunday, claiming he did not want a second strike on survivors clinging to wreckage.

Since then the White House has admitted there were follow-up attacks that killed those in the water, saying this was ordered not directly by Hegseth but by Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, commander of US Special Operations Command.

President Maduro attends a rally in Caracas on Monday JESUS VARGAS/GETTY IMAGES

Footage of a US strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel boat in September REUTERS

Trump said at the cabinet meeting: “As far as the attack is concerned … I still haven’t gotten a lot of information because I rely on Pete [Hegseth]. But to me, it was an attack. It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes … I wasn’t involved in it. I knew they took out a boat … I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is an extraordinary person.”

The president also returned to his recent threats to attack on land, saying: “We’re going to start doing those strikes on land too, you know, the land is much easier, much easier and we know the routes they take. We know everything about them.

“We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we’re going to start that very soon, too.”

In a bipartisan effort on Tuesday, several US politicians said they would file a new resolution to force a congressional vote on the issue if the administration carries out a strike on Venezuela.

“Unauthorised military action against Venezuela would be a colossal and costly mistake that needlessly risks the lives of our servicemembers,” Democrats Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff, along with Republican Rand Paul, said in a joint statement.

A defiant Hegseth confirmed that he watched the initial boat strike but said he did not stay to watch follow-up action, which lasted more than an hour.

“I did not personally see survivors … because the thing was on fire. It was exploded and fire and smoke,” he said during the televised meeting. “This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories.”

Hegseth was defiant during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

He added: “A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the [decision] — which he had the complete authority to do — and by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat and eliminated the threat and he was the right call.”

Hegseth concluded: “President Trump is prepared to do what’s necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the middle of the night to protect the American people.”

Trump told his cabinet that drug smugglers were responsible for 200,000 American deaths last year. Official drug overdoses were put at 82,000 by the CDC health agency.

“I can say this. I want those boats taken out and if we have to, we’ll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea … We’re taking those sons of bitches out,” Trump said.

He added that countries other than Venezuela producing drugs could face military strikes. “Anybody that’s doing that and selling it to our country is subject to attack,” he said.

Trump said that he would crack down further on “garbage” immigrants, including a Democratic congresswoman from Somalia, Ilhan Omar. He said of Somali immigrants that they “come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch”, adding: “We don’t want them, let them go back to where they came from and fix it”.

Amid the row over strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats, Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator, said Hegseth had provided a “case study in how not to lead”, adding: “He is selling out Admiral Bradley and sending chills down the spines of his chain of command, who now know their boss will sell them out if he is taking heat.”

Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley AP//MARIAM ZUHAIB

Hegseth said the military was “going after narco-terrorists and designated terrorist organisations in our own hemisphere”, indicating that Trump’s “America First” credo extends to nearby countries the US claims influence over.

This explains the huge military build-up near Venezuela which Nicolás Maduro, the president, claims is designed not simply to interdict drug boats but to force him out of power so the US can “seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the biggest in the world, by using military force”.

Hegseth added that the Trump administration would not follow the “kid gloves” approach of President Biden.

“We’ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,” he said.

“President Trump said, ‘No, we’re taking the gloves off.’ We’re taking the fight to these designated terror organisations … I would just end by saying, as President Trump always has our back, we always have the back of our commanders who are making decisions in difficult situations. We do in this case and all these strikes. They’re making judgment calls, ensuring that they defend the American people. They’ve done the right things. We’ll keep doing that and we have their backs.”

The unapologetic approach faces scrutiny from a Republican-controlled Congress, which for most of the year has shied away from challenging Trump. The Republican chairmen of armed services committees in the House and Senate announced investigations into the policy claimed as legal by Trump under laws governing warfare, after declaring the drug gangs to be foreign terrorists.

Criticism of Hegseth is being led by Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona on the armed services committee, who posted a video urging US troops to refuse to follow illegal orders. Trump responded that Kelly and others were engaging in “seditious behaviour, punishable by death”.

Senator Mark Kelly has led criticism of Hegseth AP

Kelly said he refused to be silenced and that “unqualified” Hegseth should testify before Congress on the boat strikes.

“I want to see the written order, we haven’t seen that yet. The legal analysis for the overall operation should be made public,” Kelly told MSNow.

“I feel awful for members of the United States navy. I served in the navy for 25 years, I’ve been involved in operations like this. I’ve sunk two ships myself in the first Gulf War. Stuff like this should not happen. It’s pretty obvious that you do not execute survivors who are clinging on to a side of a ship.”

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Trump’s supporters are digging in. Megyn Kelly, a podcaster, said the military did not go far enough. “I really do, kind of, not only want to see them killed in the water whether … but I’d really like to see them suffer,” she told listeners. “I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.”

The Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual states that “it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors”.

There appears to have been a change in approach since the killing of survivors, which took place on the first mission against a drug boat on September 2.

On October 18, Trump wrote on Truth Social that two “narco-terrorists” were caught after a US attack killed two more on a submarine. “The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution,” he wrote. This was seen as an admission that the US did not have jurisdiction to prosecute suspects from international waters, even as it claimed the right to kill them.

Pope Leo XIV joined calls for restraint. “On the one hand it seems there was telephone conversation between the two presidents, on the other there’s this danger, this possibility of an activity, an operation including invading the territory of Venezuela,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV urged the US government to exercise restraint on Tuesday REUTERS/ALESSANDRO DI MEO

“I believe it’s better to look for ways of dialogue, perhaps pressure — including economic pressure — but looking for other ways to change, if that’s what the United States wants to do.”

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In an apparent overture to Trump, who posted on Saturday that Venezuelan airspace should be considered “closed in its entirety”, Venezuela has resumed taking flights of migrants expelled from the US.