President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to imply that the ongoing series of lethal U.S. military strikes in Caribbean waters against alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela might not be entirely about the drugs.
Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy on Thursday asked Trump during an Oval Office press conference about the U.S.’s Wednesday seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker if the Caribbean campaign is really “still just about drugs” or now “also about oil.”
“Well, it’s about a lot of things,” the president replied Thursday. “But one of the things it’s about is the fact that they’ve allowed millions of people to come into our country from their prisons, from gangs, from drug dealers and from mental institutions.”
Trump has long used such rhetoric when discussing immigrants crossing into the U.S., but has been launching actual strikes against foreign nationals on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September.
The deadly campaign has killed more than 80 people without due process or evidence of their crimes. One operation in particular is suspected of being a war crime, as the U.S. on Sept. 2 engaged in a “double-tap” airstrike on an alleged drug boat, an operation that killed shipwrecked survivors. The strikes shocked even some Republicans: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has likened them to “summary execution.”
