Taking the Gloves Off
For the first time since taking office, Trump authorized lethal force against Venezuelan drug smugglers. The U.S. military struck a vessel from their narco fleet in the southern Caribbean, killing 11 suspected traffickers. Trump immediately broadcast the footage on Truth Social.
"Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America," he wrote. "BEWARE!"
The strike represents the latest escalation in Trump’s steadily intensifying pressure campaign. Over the past month, he’s deployed multiple warships, thousands of troops, and surveillance aircraft to the Caribbean, all clearly pointed at Caracas. Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist strongman, has responded by mobilizing 4.5 million militia members and declaring that the country would become a “republic in arms” if attacked, calling it the greatest threat to his country in a century.
And yet, despite these moves to confront Maduro for his years of narco-terrorism, the administration’s maximum pressure campaign has a glaring weakness. In July, after a prisoner swap that traded 252 Venezuelans for just 10 Americans, the administration reversed course and allowed Chevron to restart pumping 240,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude every single day. It's the same disastrous approach Biden took - propping up a hostile regime's oil sector while restricting domestic energy production.
We’re conducting airstrikes against Maduro’s drug fleet. At the same time, we’re funding his country through oil deals.
Chevron’s Lifeline to Caracas
This schizophrenic approach might be understandable if the administration was less clear-eyed in terms of who they were dealing with. But broadly speaking, they see who Maduro is: Attorney General Pam Bondi just doubled the bounty for Maduro’s capture to $50 million, calling him “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world, and a threat to our national security.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that he leads “a narco-terror organization which has taken possession of a country.”
Trump himself has had it out for Maduro since his first term - he invited Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to the State of the Union in 2020, and one of his first moves of his second term was to cancel the Biden-era oil licenses for drilling in Venezuela, along with 25% tariffs on any country importing oil from Caracas.
They know Maduro is a threat to American security. They have for years.
Trump's right to take the gloves off. Tren de Aragua, operating as an extension of Maduro's narco-state, has spread to over a dozen states. They're flooding our streets with drugs that kill thousands annually, running sex trafficking operations from coast to coast, and taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. For anyone concerned about nation building: military action against their supply lines isn't interventionism, it's self-defense.
So the administration's July reversal is even more baffling. The same week that the Treasury designated Cartel de Los Soles as a terrorist organization, we handed them back their oil lifeline through Chevron's growing exports each day.
China, Refugees, and a Failing State
That's the problem with engaging with terrorists and narco-regimes: It normalizes the abnormal. Every barrel of oil pumped, every dollar that flows through those joint ventures, legitimizes a regime that's flooding American streets with Venezuelan gang members and lethal narcotics. The DOJ's indictment back in April of 27 Tren de Aragua members for racketeering, murder, and forcing women into sex slavery didn't happen in Caracas - it happened in New York. This isn't some faraway threat to stability overseas. It's a threat to our domestic security.
Chevron’s defenders point to China: without their 240,000 barrels - a quarter of Venezuela’s total output - headed for the US or our allies, much of the oil would otherwise go directly to Beijing. And to their credit, we should continue to put pressure on China for its longtime support of Caracas. But jumping in to help prop up Maduro isn’t the answer, and it doesn’t achieve much of anything on the China front. Beijing already has plenty of energy sources; this will amount to a comparative drop in the bucket. Their purchases from Venezuela should be seen as an effort to prop up Maduro’s regime, not as a critical lifeline of energy.
The Venezuelan opposition, meanwhile, has begged the international community for years to stop feeding the regime. They've watched as oil revenues shot up after Biden made a similar move to expand drilling in Venezuela while being openly hostile toward domestic energy production. Maduro was laughing all the way to the bank.
Since 2013, more than 7.8 million Venezuelans - nearly a quarter of the population - have fled, creating the Western Hemisphere’s largest refugee crisis. None of this was inevitable: before Chávez’s socialist revolution, Venezuela was among the continent’s most prosperous nations.
No Half-Measures Against Narco-States
The $50 million bounty demonstrates that this administration recognizes Maduro as the narco-terrorist he is. Rubio's designation solidifies the end of decades of diplomatic concessions aimed at winning Caracas’ goodwill.
And while Trump’s strikes on Tuesday proved that he’s willing to use military force to advance our security interests abroad, the administration’s reversal on Chevron’s oil permits has to be seen as a gaping hole in their otherwise maximum-pressure campaign. While Chevron’s revenues don’t flow directly to Maduro, they still provide meaningful economic support and legitimacy to his regime.
The contradiction between the White House's stance on Venezuelan oil and everything else it's doing couldn't be starker: Trump is bombing their drug boats while permitting American energy companies to set up shop in Caracas and pump oil that keeps the country just above the point of completely failing.
The choice before us is simple. Either we treat narco-states like narco-states - no exceptions, no oil deals, no pragmatic workarounds - or we invite the terror and crime they inherently bring. The victims of Tren de Aragua deserve better, and so do the American people more broadly. And frankly, after everything we've learned from the previous administration's failures, this should be a no-brainer.
Kyle Moran
Political Commentator
