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Susan Wiles admitted Trump's boat strikes are about pressuring Maduro, not stopping non-existent drug running to the US
Last edited Wed Dec 17, 2025, 04:31 PM - Edit history (2)
Rep. Andy Ogles @RepOgles
The Constitution gives President Trump clear authority to defend the United States against invasion.
He also has explicit authority to suppress piracy. These Venezuelan drug boats are actively committing crimes by trafficking fentanyl into the United States. From Reagan to Clinton, there is a clear history of using military force against drug traffickers at sea.
Their fentanyl kills our citizens. Americans die because of it.
President Trump must do what he can to defend Americans. The law and morality are on his side.
6:18 PM · Dec 16, 2025
The Constitution gives President Trump clear authority to defend the United States against invasion.
He also has explicit authority to suppress piracy. These Venezuelan drug boats are actively committing crimes by trafficking fentanyl into the United States. From Reagan to Clinton, there is a clear history of using military force against drug traffickers at sea.
Their fentanyl kills our citizens. Americans die because of it.
President Trump must do what he can to defend Americans. The law and morality are on his side.
6:18 PM · Dec 16, 2025
...despite this congressman or the WH claiming Trump/Hegseth's boat strikes are about a drug war, Trump's own chief of staff, Susan Wiles contradicted that propaganda, making clear that attacks on boats outside of Venezuela are mainly about improbably pressuring Maduro, the dictator running the country, not concern over American lives lost to drugs that she and Trump are using to paper over the killings of dozens of non-combatants from the air under his orders to the military.
from Vanity Fair:
___During my first visit with Wiles at the White House in November, Trump’s revenge tour against his domestic enemies was in full swing. So was his lethal campaign against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who, Trump was convinced, headed a powerful drug cartel. Over lunch, Wiles told me about Trump’s Venezuela strategy: “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” (Wiles’s statement appears to contradict the administration’s official stance that blowing up boats is about drug interdiction, not regime change.)
I’d already pressed Wiles on Trump’s practice of blowing boats out of the water. The casualties almost certainly include unsuspecting fishermen. In 2016, Trump had famously mused that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. Now he seemed to be testing that idea on the global stage. When a critic on X denounced these killings as “war crimes,” Vance posted: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” Pressed at an October press conference on why he didn’t just ask Congress for a declaration of war, Trump swatted the question away: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay?” I asked Wiles: “What do you say to people who ask, doesn’t anybody in this administration have a heart?”
Wiles didn’t mince words: “The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times…. These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege.” The boats, she argued, carried drugs; eliminating them saves lives. “The president says 25,000. I don’t know what the number is. But he views those as lives saved, not people killed.”
“Drug smuggling,” I pointed out to Wiles, “is not a death penalty offense, even if the president wishes it were.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not saying that it is. I’m saying that this is a war on drugs. [It’s] unlike another one that we’ve seen. But that’s what this is.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-2
I’d already pressed Wiles on Trump’s practice of blowing boats out of the water. The casualties almost certainly include unsuspecting fishermen. In 2016, Trump had famously mused that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. Now he seemed to be testing that idea on the global stage. When a critic on X denounced these killings as “war crimes,” Vance posted: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” Pressed at an October press conference on why he didn’t just ask Congress for a declaration of war, Trump swatted the question away: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay?” I asked Wiles: “What do you say to people who ask, doesn’t anybody in this administration have a heart?”
Wiles didn’t mince words: “The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times…. These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege.” The boats, she argued, carried drugs; eliminating them saves lives. “The president says 25,000. I don’t know what the number is. But he views those as lives saved, not people killed.”
“Drug smuggling,” I pointed out to Wiles, “is not a death penalty offense, even if the president wishes it were.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not saying that it is. I’m saying that this is a war on drugs. [It’s] unlike another one that we’ve seen. But that’s what this is.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-2
...fact check:
___Independent reporting and analysts cited in the sources warn that the label and rhetoric do not necessarily equal public, court‑grade evidence of a centrally‑coordinated narco‑state run directly by Maduro. The BBC notes Washington “hasn’t published evidence publicly of Maduro's direct involvement in drug trafficking” and that critics see the move as a potential pretext for expanding targeting options [3]. Wikipedia summarizing expert views points out that scholars and think‑tank analysts argue the “Cartel of the Suns” may describe a loose set of networks and corrupt actors rather than a single, centrally controlled cartel run by the president [4].
The sources show the U.S. claims and legal actions but also make clear that the administration “hasn’t published evidence publicly” proving Maduro’s direct management of drug operations; expert commentary cited says definitive proof of centralized government coordination has not been presented in public reporting [3] [4]. Available sources do not mention independent judicial findings convicting Maduro of running a drug gang or a public unclassified dossier that lays out chain‑of‑command evidence.
Bottom line: U.S. authorities now officially allege Maduro heads the Cartel de los Soles and have applied legal tools consistent with that allegation [1] [2]; however, published reporting in these sources also records expert caution that publicly disclosed, centralized evidence tying Maduro personally to day‑to‑day cartel operations has not been produced [3] [4].
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/is-maduro-leader-of-drug-gang-294cf2
...thing is, the U.S. support and encouragement for regime change in Venezuala didn't originate under Trump. It's a Biden-era policy that included a bounty by the Democratic president for Maduro's capture which appears to have been bastardized into this unauthorized, quasi-war against Venezuela using drugs as a smokescreen.
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