Attacking Venezuela was not the original game plan. Instead, internal reports suggest that the White House’s violent boat-smashing operation in the Caribbean was merely a backup plan when a potential war on Mexico fell through.
The Trump administration—namely, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—had planned to spark a new war on drugs in the early stages of Donald Trump’s second term. That effort would have targeted Mexican cartels and alleged drug traffickers.
But as the administration geared up for the fight, sending troops to the southern border, Mexico did the same. By the end of August, Mexico had effectively cracked down on the cartels.
Still hungry for a fight, Miller pivoted, shifting his gaze toward Venezuela, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
“When you hope and wait for something to develop that doesn’t, you start looking at countries south of Mexico,” a current U.S. official told the Post on the condition of anonymity.
So far, at least 95 people have been killed since the attacks began in early September. The White House has defended the violence, chalking it up to allegedly necessary efforts to thwart the pipeline of fentanyl into the country. To further justify the brutality, the president designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” earlier this week, ostensibly legitimizing the militaristic response. Trump has simultaneously leveraged the aggression to try to shove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he attempted and failed to do in 2019.
Current and former officials that spoke with the Post argued that Miller was the primary driving force behind the operation, leading the charge on a July 25 classified directive that authorized the use of military force against criminal groups.
“The president’s memo is the original sin of the whole operation,” a former official told the Post.
But the White House is not on board with the leaking details that Miller masterminded Trump’s merciless foreign policy.
“President Trump’s counternarcotics policies come from President Trump himself,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All senior administration officials work closely together to carry out the agenda President Trump was elected to implement, including eliminating the scourge of narco-terrorism that takes tens of thousands of American lives every year.”
But lawmakers have remained skeptical as to whether the boats even qualify as a narcoterrorist threat, considering the White House has been dropping bombs without investigating or interdicting the watercraft.
Their skepticism was rewarded Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio revealed during a classified meeting that there was no intelligence indicating that fentanyl was coming out of Venezuela. Instead, the administration had learned the boats were carrying cocaine—bound for Europe, rather than America.
“That is a massive waste of national security resources and your taxpayer dollars,” said Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who attended the meeting.