The U.S., in its bid to curb Venezuelan drug imports, has launched strikes on Venezuelan submarines in an attempt to cripple Venezuela’s drug cartels and put pressure on the contested Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the strikes in a press conference held in the White House this week.
"We attacked a submarine. That was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs — just so you understand. This was not an innocent group of people," Trump said.
“We are undertaking these operations against narco terrorists. That's what they are — they are terrorists, let's be clear,” Rubio remarked.
These attacks on Venezuelan vessels alongside vocal support for Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado have seemingly been building up for a full-scale U.S. involvement to usher in regime change and topple Venezuelan socialism.
Florida Republicans, including Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira-Salazar, have strongly criticized the Venezuelan regime, demanding its dissolution and supporting Machado’s rightful claim to power.
“The criminal Maduro is not a head of state. This is a narco-cartel that has seized control, using force and terror, of a great country. President Trump is not willing to allow these narco-cartels to continue poisoning the United States and our youth, nor to keep posing a threat to the national security of the U.S. To the Cartel of the Suns – and those who run it – little time is left,” Díaz-Balart shared on social media.
“Maduro is not Venezuela’s president; he is a narco–terrorist. A direct threat to U.S. national security, flooding our streets with drugs and unleashing Tren de Aragua to kill Americans. To make America safe again, Maduro must face justice,” Salazar wrote.
