President Donald Trump warned that Venezuelan aircraft would be shot down after the Pentagon announced a U.S. warship encountered two Venezuelan fighter jets in international waters.
In a statement posted to X on Sept. 4, the Pentagon said two military aircraft flew close to a U.S. Navy vessel, declaring, “This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter narco-terror operations.”
The Pentagon went on to warn that “the cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the US military.” No further details on the event were given.
The president chose not to get into specifics when he addressed the flyover during a press conference in the Oval Office on Sept. 5. However, he affirmed that if Venezuela did it again, U.S. military forces had his permission to shoot the planes down.
He turned to his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Daniel “Razin” Caine, and said: “I would say, general, if they do that, you have a choice of doing anything you want, OK? If they fly in a dangerous position, I would say that you or your captains can make the decision as to what they want to do.”
If Venezuelan aircraft put U.S. forces in a dangerous position, Trump added, “they’ll be shot down.”
That flyover followed U.S. military action that eliminated a boat from Venezuela that the president said was filled with bags of drugs bound for the United States and was occupied by 11 members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization.
Trump affirmed that the United States would continue to take similar actions if needed.
“When I see boats coming in, like loaded up the other day with all sorts of drugs—probably fentanyl, mostly, but all sorts of drugs—we’re going to take them out, and if people want to have fun going on the high seas or the low seas, they’re going to be in trouble,” he said.
He said the area of the Caribbean Sea where the boat was spotted was called “the runway,” because it operated like a runway to the United States, and that since that boat was struck, boat traffic in that area “is very substantially down,” adding, “You can imagine why.”
Meanwhile, Venezuela has deployed troops on its coast and border with Colombia, and urged its people to enlist in a civilian militia.
Venezuela’s socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro, announced during a news conference on Sept. 1 that his country was at “maximum preparedness,” and if it were attacked, he could constitutionally declare a “republic in arms.”
“President Donald Trump, the pursuit of regime change is exhausted; it has failed as a policy worldwide,” Maduro said. “You cannot pretend to impose a situation in Venezuela.”
Trump said regime change in Venezuela was not a topic of conversation, but said he was talking about Venezuela’s recent, “very strange” election.
Following a hotly contested 2024 presidential election and the Venezuelan National Electoral Council’s announcement of Maduro’s victory, the United States rejected that result, stating that Maduro “clearly lost … and has no right to claim the presidency.”
Trump also emphasized that billions of dollars of drugs were coming to the United States from Venezuela and other countries, and he believed that more than 300,000 people were dying every year from those drugs.
He said that each bag of drugs visible on the boat that was struck down this week represented “hundreds of thousands of dead people in the United States.”
Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
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