Trump insists ‘cartels are running Mexico’ and announces ground operations: ‘We are going to start hitting land’
In an interview with Fox News, the US president also said he will meet with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado next week in Washington
Donald Trump remains obsessed with drug trafficking despite having decapitated, according to himself, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations with the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in a lightning military operation in Venezuelan territory.
The U.S. president stated in an interview on Fox News with host Sean Hannity: “We have knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water. We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels.”
The Republican leader has not offered much explanation about these attacks, nor where they will take place, or their scope. It remains unclear whether he was referring to new operations in Venezuelan territory or other military interventions on Mexican soil. “The cartels are running Mexico,” he added. “It’s very sad to watch, to see what’s happening to that country. They’re killing 250,000–300,000 people in our country every single year. It’s horrible."
The president often uses that figure to refer to overdose deaths in the United States, although most of the deaths are due to fentanyl or other opioids, which are mainly manufactured in Mexico with chemical components imported from China.
The United States has declared war on drug trafficking. Last summer, it launched Operation Southern Spear and deployed a large military contingent to the Venezuelan coast, with more than 14,000 troops and a fleet of warships, the largest deployment in the region in decades.
Since September, the U.S. military has bombed approximately 30 vessels it described as drug-running boats that were sailing the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, allegedly transporting drug shipments. In these operations, carried out without a court order or a congressional mandate, more than 110 people have been killed.
Last Saturday, the U.S. military launched a lightning military operation in Caracas to capture president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were transferred to New York to face justice on charges of narcoterrorism.
During the interview, Trump revealed that he will meet next week with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is scheduled to visit Washington. When the Fox News host mentioned that Machado has expressed a willingness to share the Nobel Peace Prize, which she received last November, Trump said, “I’ve heard she wants to do that. It would be a great honor. I fought in eight wars,” he added, implying that he had accumulated the necessary qualifications to have received the award, which he has never concealed his fervent desire for. In fact, he has admitted to his inner circle that he was annoyed that it was awarded to Machado and not to him.
The U.S. leader, who is a teetotaler and avowed enemy of drugs after losing his brother to alcoholism, added during the interview: “It’s horrible, its devastated families, you lose a child or a parent. We’ve done a really good job, we’re knocking it down. The figures are going down, just like at the border.”
Trump hasn’t explained which border he’s referring to, but it’s assumed he means the one between the United States and Mexico. “The borders are ostensibly really closed now. They can’t come in and nobody comes. Nobody even tries.”
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