US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Saturday declined to comment on whether the US was planning to bomb Venezuela amid a major US military buildup in the Caribbean and frequent strikes on alleged drug boats in the waters of Latin America.
“Appreciate the question, but, of course, we would not share any amount of operational details about what may or may not happen,” Hegseth said in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when asked if the US was preparing to strike inside Venezuela.
The Miami Herald reported on Friday that the US has made a decision to attack military targets inside Venezuela as part of a campaign against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, whom the US seeks to oust. The report said that the US strikes could begin within a matter of “hours or days,” but President Trump claimed he was not considering bombing Venezuela.
When asked by reporters if he was planning strikes inside Venezuela, Trump said “no,” though he has previously suggested that the US may begin bombing alleged drug shipments inside the country “by land.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor and has been leading the push toward regime change in Venezuela, also denied the Miami Herald report.
“Your ‘sources’ claiming to have ‘knowledge of the situation’ tricked you into writing a fake story,” Rubio wrote on X in response to the report.
For weeks, multiple media outlets have been reporting that the US is considering launching strikes in Venezuela, and the US has built up a force in the region that’s well beyond what is needed to bomb small, defenseless boats. US officials have also made clear that the real goal of the campaign is regime change in Venezuela, something Rubio has wanted for many years.
A US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is also being deployed to the Caribbean, and the US has begun to run weekly bomber flights near the coast of Venezuela. Much of the military action and the leaks to the media are part of a psychological campaign aimed at getting Maduro to voluntarily step down or someone in his inner circle to turn on him, but it’s unlikely that will happen.
