There was another strike on a suspected drug boat near the coast of Venezuela yesterday. President Trump announced the strike on Truth Social.
This is the fifth such strike by the US in the past few months. Trump has blamed the narcotics trafficking on Venezuela as he did again yesterday.
Trump told reporters later on Tuesday in the Oval Office that Venezuela is “a big purveyor of drugs,” and accused Venezuela of sending their “criminals” into the U.S.
Today, the NY Times is reporting that President Trump has gone beyond targeting Venezuelan drug boats and has now authorized the CIA to take covert action in the country.
The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.
The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
Well, it seems the secret authorization didn’t stay secret very long. I wonder how that happened.
Trump’s desire to get rid of President Maduro has not been a secret. That link above goes to a story published at the end of September which reported. Sec. Marco Rubio was leading the effort.
The push by top aides to President Trump to remove Nicolás Maduro as the leader of Venezuela has intensified in recent days, with administration officials discussing a broad campaign that would escalate military pressure to try to force him out, U.S. officials say.
It is being led by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser. Mr. Rubio argues that Mr. Maduro is an illegitimate leader who oversees the export of drugs to the United States, which he says poses an “imminent threat.”…
Mr. Rubio repeatedly cites the Justice Department’s 2020 indictment of [Maduro] and other Venezuelan officials on drug trafficking charges. He recently described Mr. Maduro as a “fugitive from American justice” and the head of “a terrorist organization and organized crime organization that have taken over a country.”…
Mr. Rubio met with five opposition figures in May who secretly fled to the United States in what he called a “precise operation.” He has praised the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whom he called by her nickname, the “Venezuelan Iron Lady,” in a tribute this year.
Machado just won the Nobel Peace Prize last week for her efforts leading the Venezuelan opposition. The backstory here is long but the very brief version is that President Maduro allowed an election to take place and then, after Machado won a referendum among the opposition, had his government announce that Machado was ineligible to run for office. Maduro’s goon squad then arrested a bunch of her stop staffers.
A minor figure ran in Machado’s place with her support (and her appearance at every campaign stop). The stand-in candidate won the election but Maduro announced himself the winner anyway. Evidence from polling stations around the country leaked and proved that Maduro had lost the election badly to Machado’s stand in. Maduro is an illegitimate dictator but he remained in power. Now the opposition is planning for what happens once he is gone.
The obvious question not answered in this story is who leaked it.
White House findings authorizing covert action are closely guarded secrets. They are often reauthorized from administration to administration, and their precise language is rarely made public. They also constitute one of the rawest uses of executive authority.
Select members of Congress are briefed on the authorizations, but lawmakers cannot make them public, and conducting oversight of possible covert actions is difficult.
Democrats have been trying their best to make Trump’s strike on suspected drug boats into a bigger issue.
The President’s authorities under Article II are limited to responding to an armed attack or the threat of an imminent armed attack and do not apply here.
These continued strikes — 27 killed to date — risk getting the U.S. into a full fledged war.@SenTimKaine and I forced a… pic.twitter.com/oURa5NMf9f
— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) October 14, 2025
Now that he’s in the Senate, is Schiff still getting classified intelligence briefings? If so, he’d be my first suspect in handing this information to the NY Times.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
Help us continue to report the truth about the Schumer Shutdown. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership.
