Amid multiple reports in recent weeks about the Trump administration eyeing possible military strikes inside Venezuela, the Republican president hasn’t made much of an effort to downplay the speculation. Asked recently whether he’s prepared to launch military strikes on mainland Venezuela, he responded, “We’ll see what happens.”
Trump then published an item to his social media platform about undocumented immigrants from Venezuela that he believes the South American country has somehow “forced” into the U.S. “GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, OR THE PRICE YOU PAY WILL BE INCALCULABLE!” he concluded.
Days after posting this, The New York Times reported that the White House had called off diplomatic efforts with Venezuela, “paving the way for a potential military escalation.”
This week, the Times also reported that Trump had “secretly authorized” the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela; and as NBC News reported, the American president confirmed that reporting soon after. From NBC News’ report:
The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had authorized it to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgment from a commander in chief.
I don’t mean to sound picky, but as I understand it, the whole point of “covert” intelligence operations is that they’re supposed to be kept under wraps. Sure, Trump has a scandalous record of blurting out sensitive national security secrets for no apparent reason, but it’s hardly unreasonable to think he knows not to talk about CIA missions in adversarial counties.
And yet, when a reporter asked the Republican why he authorized CIA intervention in Venezuela, Trump went ahead and answered the question, claiming that Venezuelan officials “have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.” He added, “They’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, mental institution, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, emptied out into the United States.”
It was a highly problematic answer — in part because he’s not supposed to talk about CIA operations, and in part because there’s still no evidence whatsoever that Venezuela did what Trump keeps claiming it did.
The president is moving the U.S. closer to a military conflict based on a set of assumptions that doesn’t appear to be true.
As the White House event continued, a reporter asked the Republican whether the CIA had authority to “take out” the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Trump replied, “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”
That wasn’t a “no.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
