Trump warns Venezuela: ‘If we have to, we’ll attack on land’

U.S. President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet on Tuesday for the last time this year. It was the ninth such meeting since he returned to power for a second term, and the staging felt familiar. All its members sat around the room in the White House reserved for these gatherings, listening as he delivered an exaggerated review — peppered with falsehoods — of what he claims to have achieved in these 11 months. They laughed heartily at his jokes before launching into praise for their leader (“the best Cabinet in history for the best president in history,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick). This came before the press took questions, at which point the Republican unleashed his usual attacks on the media.

Hovering over the press conference was uncertainty about the decision Trump has made — or not made — regarding a potential strike on Venezuela. “If we have to, we’ll attack on land,” said Trump. “We’re taking those sons of a bitches out,” he added, referring to drug traffickers. “The land is much easier. We know the routes they take. We know everything about them,” said Trump.

Beyond the president, all eyes were also on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was accused in a journalistic investigation last week of ordering a second strike on a suspected drug boat in international waters in the Caribbean on September 2 — a move lawmakers from both parties consider tantamount to executing a defenseless wounded combatant, and therefore a war crime. “We’ve only just begun striking narco folks and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,” Hegseth said, seated to the president’s left when it was his turn to speak.

The White House confirmed on Monday that second strike, which killed the two survivors of the initial attack, bringing the total death toll to 11. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed the order to Admiral Frank Bradley, head of the Special Operations Command, in what appeared to be an attempt to shield the Pentagon chief. Hegseth later wrote on X that he supported that decision and continued to have confidence in the admiral.

On Tuesday, he reiterated his support for his subordinate, explaining that while he had been watching the strike live, he “didn’t stick around” for the remainder of the mission, and was not present when the second strike occurred. “That thing was on fire and it exploded... you can’t see anything. This is called the fog of war,” he said. “This is what you the press don’t understand.”

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, boasted at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting about his campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean. Maritime drug trafficking has fallen “91%,” he claimed, though he provided no evidence for the figure.

The cost of living, a ‘democratic hoax’

Trump opened the meeting with a defense of his economic record, which, according to polls, is the major weak spot of his presidency one year after his election. And it is, in large part, because of his aggressive tariff policy, which the Republican also passionately defended on Tuesday. In recent weeks, the cost of living has become his biggest problem.

The U.S. president dismissed these criticisms as “a Democratic hoax.” The Democratic Party won key elections in early November by promising to reduce the cost of living. That remark was yet another sign of Trump’s confidence in the power of his words to deflect conflict: it is risky to assume that Americans — who feel the state of the economy in their wallets — will buy into this idea of a “Democratic hoax.”

Trump then spoke at length about the reforms he has ordered in the White House; insisted that Washington is now a safe city thanks to his deployment of the National Guard, two of whose members were shot last week; claimed he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize; and spent a long time praising what he described as his excellent health, contrasting it with that of his predecessor, Joe Biden, as doubts grow about the oldest president’s ability to maintain the frenetic work pace of recent months.

“Is Trump in good health?” he asked himself before giving the floor to his Cabinet, during whose remarks he sometimes struggled not to fall asleep. “I sit here, I do four news conferences a day. I ask questions from very intelligent lunatics, you people,”— he said, referring to the press. “I give the right answers. There’s never a scandal, there’s never a problem. I give you answers that solve your little problems.”

The meeting came hours after Trump set new, admittedly unbeatable, personal records on social media on Monday night. Between 11 p.m. and midnight (Washington time), he posted 93 messages on Truth Social, the platform he owns. It was a stream of posts about a wide assortment of topics, none of great importance, many of them repeating the same ideas.

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