President Trump said on Monday that he wouldn’t rule out sending American troops into Venezuela amid the US military buildup in the Caribbean and push toward a potential war to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“I don’t rule out that. I don’t rule out anything,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if he would rule out putting troops on the ground in Venezuela.
The New York Times previously reported that Trump has been presented with options for attacking Venezuela, including two that involve sending troops: deploying a special operations team to kill or capture Maduro or sending a much larger force to seize strategic airfields and oil infrastructure inside the country. Amid US threats to attack Venezuela, US troops have been conducting drills in the region, including training in jungle warfare at a base in Panama.
Trump has been sending mixed signals on the possibility of starting a war with Venezuela, which would be illegal without congressional authorization, per the US Constitution. On Sunday, Trump said that his administration “may be having some discussions with Maduro,” suggesting he may not have cut off all diplomacy with the Venezuelan government.
Last week, Trump was reportedly briefed on options to bomb Venezuela. According to The Washington Post, senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, held deliberations with Trump on Friday to discuss whether and how the US should attack Venezuela.
One administration official told the Post that Trump was “very good at maintaining strategic ambiguity, and something he does very well is he does not dictate or broadcast to our adversaries what he wants to do next.”
Rubio is seen as the main driver of the US push toward war with Venezuela within the administration, and he declared on Sunday that the State Department would label the so-called “Cartel of the Suns,” an organization that doesn’t actually exist, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Rubio also claimed that Maduro is a leader of the non-existent organization, giving the US a pretext for military action against him.