President Donald Trump‘s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, suggested that the military will continue to target alleged drug smuggling boats until Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “cries uncle.”
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” she said, “and people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”
Her comments seemingly contradicted the administration’s stated goal of ending the flow of drugs into the United States.
Wiles discussed the administration’s strategy for Latin America and the rationale behind the bombing campaign during an interview with Vanity Fair. However, she and the administration have strongly pushed back on what she described as a “disingenuously framed hit piece.”
The two pieces came out hours after U.S. Southern Command announced it had targeted three vessels on Monday, killing eight people.
Administration officials have said the primary objective is to stop the flow of illegal narcotics into the U.S. However, Trump’s comments have raised questions about whether his administration’s actual objective is to topple Maduro’s regime.
Trump has said Maduro’s “days are numbered” and discussed possible land strikes on Venezuelan soil, which would be an escalation.
The administration has not sought congressional approval for the strikes it has conducted in international waters. However, Wiles acknowledged in the interviews that the administration would need congressional approval to carry out strikes on Venezuelan soil.
“If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress,” she said.
The military has carried out strikes on 25 vessels, killing approximately 95 people since the start of September. For the first time since the campaign began, U.S. forces seized a Venezuelan-linked oil tanker last week in what officials said could be the start of a new aspect of the pressure campaign.
Legal questions have been raised about the strikes on these vessels and whether the strategy complies with international law.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers behind closed doors on Tuesday regarding the operations.
“We’ll continue to engage with Congress on this,” Rubio said after briefing the Senate. “We’re headed to the House now to do a similar briefing and provide updates on this counter-drug mission, which is focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans … killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”
TRUMP SAYS HE HAS WATCHED VENEZUELA BOAT STRIKE VIDEO AND FLOATS FURTHER ACTION
The first of these strikes, the Sept. 2 operation, has faced significant congressional scrutiny. U.S. forces carried out a follow-up strike after seeing two survivors clinging to the wreckage, killing them.
In a later strike in October, U.S. forces rescued two survivors of a strike and ultimately handed them over to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. The U.S. informed Mexican authorities about one individual believed to have survived a subsequent U.S. strike, but they were unable to locate that person.
