President Donald Trump said the prospect of the U.S. going to war with Venezuela is unlikely, but was unapologetic about the strikes he has authorized against Venezuelan boats carrying drugs into the country and said that Nicholas Maduro's days as president are numbered.
"I doubt it, I don't think so," Trump said to "60 Minutes," host Norah O’Donnell when asked about whether the repositioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean meant war with Venezuela.
"But they've been treating us very badly, not only on drugs," he continued.
Trump then bemoaned the way Venezuela seemingly flooded the U.S. with its criminals and mentally ill people during Joe Biden's presidency when the borders were thrown pretty much wide open.
"They've dumped hundreds of thousands of people into a country that… we didn't want – people from prisons," Trump said. "They emptied their prisons into our country. They also, if you take a look, they emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylum into the United States of America because Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country."
O'Donnell then asked Trump whether the strikes are more about stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. or removing Maduro.
"To me, that would be almost number one because we have other countries like Mexico has been very bad to us in terms of drugs. Okay. Very bad," he said. "We have a closed border right now… So think of this: zero people coming into our country through our southern border."
O'Donnell also asked Trump whether Maduro's days as president were numbers, and he said. "I would say yeah. I think so, yeah."
On the question of whether Trump planned land strikes on Venezuela, he said "I’m not saying it’s true or untrue."
He added that he wasn't going to give a reporter information about any plans for military strikes.
There have been rumors about land strikes on Venezuela, which Trump said Friday were not on the table.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was asked on Saturday whether land strikes were planned, but he also refused to discuss it.
"Appreciate the question. But, of course, we would not share any amount of operational details about what may or may not happen," Hegseth said.
It's really good to see a president do something about the flow of drugs into the country, no matter what anyone in the media thinks about it.
