Donald Trump has repeatedly said in recent weeks that he intends to start ordering military strikes on targets inside Venezuela, which made it all the more notable on Friday when the president said he’d already done exactly that.
The trouble is, there’s some uncertainty surrounding the existence of the operation.
The day after Christmas, Trump appeared on a conservative radio program and boasted that the U.S. military, acting on his orders, “knocked out” a facility on Venezuelan soil two days earlier. This came as something of a surprise: There’d been no announcement about any such mission, and The New York Times reported, “Military officials said they had no information to share, and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment. The White House declined to comment.”
The same Times report added, “U.S. officials declined to specify anything about the site the president said was hit, where it was located, how the attack was carried out or what role the facility played in drug trafficking. There has been no public report of an attack from the Venezuelan government or any other authorities in the region.”
But while we’re left to wonder whether the sitting American president bragged about a foreign U.S. military strike that may or may not have happened, there’s far greater clarity about a foreign U.S. military strike that definitely happened. My MS NOW colleague Nicholas Grossman reported:
The United States military bombed Nigeria on Christmas, reportedly targeting ISIS militants. President Donald Trump claimed the U.S. struck terrorists ‘who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries.’
Nigeria has been plagued by sectarian violence, but that violence hasn’t primarily targeted Christians — and certainly not at historically unprecedented levels. America’s logic here isn’t clear, but the strikes appear driven more by Trump putting on a show for his evangelical base than trying to reduce violence in Nigeria or even advance U.S. national interests.
To be sure, the operation didn’t come out of nowhere. The Republican declared in early November that he was prepared to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” in response to conditions on the ground that he didn’t seem to fully understand.
Weeks later, he followed through, though the point of the mission still hasn’t been explained in any meaningful way. Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, “It is not clear from these actions that the administration is executing any sort of strategic plan for addressing these threats, nor is there an explanation of how these strikes fit into and advance such a plan.”
Smith added, “Further, Trump’s claims that the group struck Thursday are targeting mostly Christians is factually wrong and potentially dangerous. Far more Muslims are being killed by ISIS in the region. … It is unnecessarily escalatory and, if it leads to a broader conflict, it clearly places more Americans everywhere at greater risk.”
For those keeping score, as 2025 nears its end, Trump this year has launched preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran, initiated a bombing campaign in Yemen, targeted ISIS sites in Syria, launched a bombing operation in Nigeria, struck ISIS targets in Somalia, and launched at least 29 deadly strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.
It’s possible that he also “knocked out” a facility on Venezuela, though it’s also possible he just made that up. As best as I can tell, the folks at FIFA, who recently gave Trump a new, hastily arranged “peace” prize, have not commented on the developments. For good measure, it’s worth noting for context that the American president has also announced his desire to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gaza Strip, and spoken publicly about possibly returning U.S. troops to Afghanistan. If you voted for Trump because you expected restraint on foreign policy and the use of military force abroad, I have some bad news for you. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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