President Donald Trump announced that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela would be closed, just hours after a leak suggested that his agenda in the Caribbean Sea could constitute a war crime.
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the president wrote on Truth Social Saturday.
Trump’s latest threat followed an insider leak about U.S. orders in the Caribbean Sea, with Pete Hegseth reportedly having directed forces to kill indiscriminately.
The leak came after a Sept. 2, attack on a suspected drug trafficking boat near Trinidad, during which Special Operations forces killed all 11 people on board. After an initial strike, a second missile was then deployed in order to kill the two survivors on the boat wreck.
A source told the Washington Post of the instructions from the Defense Secretary: “The order was to kill everybody.”
Hegseth clapped back against the troubling claim on X Friday, writing: “As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”
After blasting the bloodthirsty report as inaccurate, Hegseth then followed up by vowing: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
Trump’s new focus on controlling the Venezuelan airspace comes after months of strikes on boats surrounding Latin American coasts, which have been undertaken without Congress’s approval. At least 83 people have been killed, and 21 vessels have been struck.
The efforts have now officially been ramped up into the campaign “Operation Southern Spear,” which Hegseth promises will “remove narco-terrorists from our hemisphere.”
Despite Trump and Hegseth’s passion for the anti-cartel project, both their GOP colleagues and voting base have suggested that the hyper-focus on overseas campaigns could fracture the MAGA movement.
An IPSOS/Reuters poll from this month revealed that just 29 percent of voters support the U.S. killing suspected drug traffickers, and 51 percent responded that they opposed the execution of suspected criminals without trial.
Republican senator Rand Paul blasted Trump after the president this month refused to dismiss the option of sending U.S. troops onto Venezuelan soil, pointing out that his actions weren’t looking quite as “America First” as promised.
“I think a lot of people, including myself, were attracted to the president because of his reticence to get us involved in foreign war,” he said.
On Saturday, Venezuela responded to Trump’s order, describing it as a “colonialist threat.” The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement confirming that the U.S. had “unilaterally suspended” its weekly migrant repatriation flights and calling on “the international community, the sovereign governments of the world, the UN and the relevant multilateral organizations to firmly reject this immoral act of aggression.”
The statement described Trump’s remarks as “another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people.”
