Targeting of Venezuela is raising alarm

New revelations emerge about Trump team’s tactics for escalating the conflict.

- BY MICHAEL WILNER, ANA CEBALLOS, KATE LINTHICUM AND PATRICK J. MCDONNELL

PETE MAROVICH Getty Images PRESIDENT TRUMP speaks to reporters Sunday after spending Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

The Trump administration is facing sharp scrutiny this week over its approach to Venezuela after turning its focus to the beleaguered nation, weighing U.S. military strikes against a Latin American state for the first time in more than 35 years.

President Trump scheduled a meeting with top generals and Cabinet officials on the matter at the White House on Monday evening, debating target options now available with the deployment of more than a dozen warships to the Caribbean Sea.

Trump has sent conflicting signals to the country’s dictatorial president, Nicolás Maduro, whose grip on power since 2013 has decimated Venezuela’s economy and prompted a massive migration crisis. Trump warned air traffic away from Venezuelan skies before speaking by phone with Maduro over the weekend, only to caution reporters trying to interpret his actions against predicting his next moves.

Whether Trump will choose to go to war with Venezuela has become a source of alarm on Capitol Hill as new revelations emerge about his team’s tactics for escalating the conflict.

The White House has accused Maduro of driving migrants and drugs across America’s borders, and has begun pressuring his government with military strikes targeting maritime vessels — in international waters, but departing from Venezuela — that the Defense Department claims have been used to smuggle illegal narcotics.

The first of those attacks targeting alleged drug traffickers, conducted on Sept. 2, included a second strike ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “kill them all,” according to a report by the Washington Post.