Trump Gives Mixed Messages About Military Action Against Venezuela

President Trump said that he was open to talking with President Nicolás Maduro but that the United States has “to take care of Venezuela” as the U.S. builds a military force in the Caribbean.

President Trump said on Monday that he would not rule out deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, but he also said he was leaving open the possibility of talking to Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader and the target of the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign.

“I don’t rule out anything,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “We just have to take care of Venezuela.”

But his remarks, giving himself considerable leeway on how to proceed, underscored how vague the president has been in public about his intentions for military action and what his immediate goals are.

For months, the United States has been building up its military presence in the Caribbean, and the administration has said the military campaign is primarily about stopping the flow of drugs in the region.

The U.S. has launched 21 known strikes on boats the administration accuses of smuggling drugs, killing at least 83 people, but the administration has yet to detail evidence that the boats were trafficking drugs.

In private, Mr. Trump has talked to aides about Venezuela’s huge oil reserves, the largest in the world, and some of the president’s top aides have focused on removing Mr. Maduro from office. The United States and its allies do not recognize Mr. Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela after last year’s election.

“I’m not in love with the people running Venezuela,” Mr. Trump said.

Last month, Mr. Trump called off efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela. Still, the president has raised the possibility for two days running that he might still talk to Mr. Maduro, though it was not clear what contact there might have been between the two governments or how serious Mr. Trump is about negotiating a deal that would avert a decision to take further military action.

“We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out,” he said Sunday night as he departed from West Palm Beach, Fla. He added that Venezuela “would like to talk” but would not elaborate on what he meant.

“What does it mean? You tell me, I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said. When a reporter asked if he was interested in negotiations, he shrugged. “I talk to anybody,” he said. “I talk to you.”

The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the country’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, arrived in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday, expanding the U.S. military’s ability to conduct potential strikes and other attacks on Venezuelan soil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the same day that the State Department would designate a Venezuelan group, Cartel de Los Soles, as a foreign terrorist organization and said the group is “headed by” Mr. Maduro. The designation would restrict financial transactions of the group or anyone associated with it.

The series of actions follow two meetings Mr. Trump held in the Situation Room last week, where he spoke with top military advisers to review options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela. Shortly after a meeting on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the mission in the Caribbean now had a name, “Southern Spear.” He described its goal in expansive terms, saying the operation “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.”

With the arrival of the Ford and three accompanying missile-firing Navy destroyers, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, more than at any other time in decades.

The strikes by American forces on the boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific have drawn criticism from a range of experts in laws governing the use of armed forces. They say the U.S. military cannot intentionally target civilians who pose no threat of imminent violence, even if they are suspected of committing crimes.

The administration says the strikes are legal because Mr. Trump has determined that the U.S. is in an armed conflict with the drug cartels and that anyone on the boats is therefore a combatant.

At the White House on Monday, Mr. Trump suggested he was open to military strikes in Mexico, a major source of the drugs that flow into the United States.

“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me,” he said. “Whatever we have to do to stop drugs.”

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