On the Wednesday, December 3, 2025 episode of The Excerpt podcast:There have been 21 U.S. military strikes against Venezuelan vessels since September, with a total of 83 casualties, all without Congressional approval or oversight. USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent, Aysha Bagchi sits down with Josh Meyer, USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent, to discuss the implications and potential fallout of these strikes.
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Aysha Bagchi:
The first US military strike against a Venezuelan vessel in international waters was on September 2nd. All 11 on board were killed. The justification given by PresidentDonald Trump, it was drug traffickers bringing illegal narcotics to the US. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Aysha Bagchi, USA Today Justice Department correspondent. Today is Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025. Since that first military strike, there have been 20 more, killing an additional 72 people, all without congressional approval or oversight. Meanwhile, President Trump has recently cautioned airlines to avoid Venezuelan airspace, encouraged Maduro to flee, and said land strikes could, quote, "Start very soon."
Is all of this really about combating the drug trade or could the primary motivation even be, more simply, to get rid of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro? Here to help us digest this fast-evolving and complex story is USA Today domestic security correspondent, Josh Meyer. Josh, thanks so much for joining me on The Excerpt.
Josh Meyer:
My pleasure, Aysha.
Aysha Bagchi:
Josh, let's start with the elephant in the room. How close to starting an all-out war with Venezuela are we? What do we know so far?
Josh Meyer:
You know, that's the million-dollar question. Trump and the administration have been moving military assets into the region. Really, an unprecedented shift of assets there. We've got aircraft carrier groups, we've got other assets, air, land, and sea assets in the region, and Trump is suggesting that something could happen imminently, but we don't know. He's always said that he likes to keep the element of surprise to keep people off guard, and I think that even people in the military probably aren't sure what's going to happen now. So I think one of the important things, Aysha, to look at here is I don't think we're waiting for a full-scale invasion of Venezuela. I think the first thing we would see is military strikes on land assets. Trump could use the pretense that this is a war on drugs and try to attack the drug trafficking infrastructure in Venezuela.
The catch there is that there don't seem to really be any drug trafficking assets in Venezuela, it's more of a conduit from drugs that are manufactured elsewhere, and then they're shifted through Venezuela on their way to other countries, including Honduras and then to the United States. If we're looking for a shock-and-awe type thing that happened in Iraq during the Iraq War, we're not going to see that, I don't think. I think what we would look for first is some military strikes and missile strikes in Venezuela.
Aysha Bagchi:
Now, I want to turn to the question of the legality of the military strikes, which looms large here. Let's start with what Trump has said on this front.
Josh Meyer:
Well, Trump likes to speak in general terms, and then he leaves it to others to explain the difference, but what he's saying is that we are at war with drug traffickers that are bringing deadly fentanyl into the United States. As you know, fentanyl is a very lethal drug and that even an amount the size of one or two grains of rice can kill somebody, especially an unsuspecting recreational drug user in the United States. So he's saying that we are a war with these drug traffickers. The catch is that Venezuela does not produce or transship fentanyl, it's basically a cocaine problem that comes through Colombia to there. So what Trump is saying is he's using the laws of war and he's designating them as an international special terrorist organization, and using that as a pretense to strike them.
Legal experts, however, say that, even if you are using the post-September 11th war on terrorism statutes to go after these people, just like we went after Al-Qaeda, that, basically, those can be used to sanction people, it can be used to seize their bank accounts to arrest them, of course, but it does not condone killing people and acting as judge, jury, and executioner, and there are no specific military statutes that allow you to blow up a boat in the middle of the water if it doesn't pose an imminent threat to the military.
Aysha Bagchi:
And we're just over three months past the first strike now. How has Congress responded so far?
Josh Meyer:
Well, these days, we're very fractured. Congress is very split into two. You've got the Republicans falling into line behind President Trump and the Democrats basically trying to fight back, but they don't really have any authority. They can't call congressional hearings, because they're in the minority in the House and the Senate, so basically, what they can do is make a lot of noise. But, and this is a big but, the first strike on September 2nd, there's now been reporting by the Washington Post exclusive reporting that's raising a lot of questions about whether that strike did violate the laws of armed combat, because two of the survivors of that strike were clinging to the boat, and then the military did a follow-on strike, it's called a double tap in military parlance, and killed them. Now even the Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are saying, "Well, we want to take a look at that, because it just doesn't look right and we want to get to the bottom of it." The Republicans are coming around and we may finally get some congressional review of these operations.
Aysha Bagchi:
Talking about that first military strike on September 2nd, as you just mentioned, there was some explosive reporting first published in the Washington Post last week that continues to reverberate in Washington. The story was that, after the first bomb went off, Defense SecretaryPete Hegsethsaw two people clinging to the burning vessel and then gave the order to kill everybody. Obviously, we don't know who their sources are, but if it's true, it could have massive consequences for this administration. What's been the fallout so far?
Josh Meyer:
That's a great question. I think The Post story basically said that Hegseth gave the order, and the quote in the story is "The order was to kill everybody." The question is whether Hegseth gave that order at the outset, before the first strike, or after the first strike, when they saw that there were survivors on the boat. That's one of the things that Congress says they want to investigate. But yeah, it's a very serious issue. The Post and then follow-ups, including interviews that I've done, show that military experts, even a guy that the post quoted, who was a former military law officer for the Special Operations Group, which is the SEAL Team Six that killed these people on the boat, says that this is a direct violation of the laws of war. That if somebody has survived a military strike, that you can't go back and kill them.
In fact, even the Defense Department published articles on this, say that, specifically, if somebody's in a boat and they've survived, you can't go back and kill them and sink the boat. There's a lot of questions, I think, that are arising from this. Nobody has specifically disputed the Post article, that's important. Initially, they denied everything, and then now, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt did acknowledge that there was a second strike, but she said that the admiral that was responsible for ordering that strike was well within his legal authority to do so, and Pentagon Secretary Hegseth has also said that the admiral that did that was well within his operational command authorities.
Aysha Bagchi:
I want to dig into that a little more. How have Hegseth and President Trump, how have they responded to these reports?
Josh Meyer:
There's been a lot of chatter about that on social media, because if you really parse what Hegseth said and what President Trump has said, they're throwing this admiral, Admiral Mitch Bradley, who's the head of special operations command, they're throwing him under the bus and saying that he was well within his operational command authority to do this. And there's people, former military constitutional scholars, that are saying, "Well, that doesn't sound like Hegseth himself or the president are backing him up. They're saying that he made the right call," in reference to the admiral. Whether or not people are pointing fingers at each other, it looks that way, but I guess we'll have to really get to the bottom of that. But Trump, as he always does, is not apologizing for anything that he's done or that he's ordered. He said he's within the rights to do that. The other day, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said that the president does not issue any illegal orders, so she's basically saying that nothing wrong happened, but they're not really delving into the specifics.
Aysha Bagchi:
One obvious question here is about the evidence for these attacks. How can the US military be so certain as to who exactly is in the boat? What's been the administration's response here?
Josh Meyer:
That's another good question. I've covered the intelligence community and the law enforcement community and counter narcotics for more than 30 years, and it all comes down to the evidence. The Pentagon is saying, and they're not really being very forthcoming with any details about this, but what they're saying on background to reporters is that they were tracking these boats, and that they were convinced that the people on these boats were drug traffickers and that they were bringing drugs to the United States. But there's a lot of questions about that. We don't know if they even knew the names of these people, if they were following them before. If you look at the boats, these boats are not equipped and they don't have the capacity to make it to the United States, so there's a lot of questions about whether they're drug traffickers at all.
In their story, The Post said that there's a lot of questions about the people on the boat that was sunk on September 2nd and whether they were drug traffickers. There were two survivors of one of the attacks, and their families say that they were not involved in drug trafficking either, and I think one of the biggest questions here is, if you're really going after the drug cartels that are bringing the drugs to the United States, especially fentanyl, killing small-time smugglers on boats like this is not going to do anything to get rid of the problem. What you really need to do is go after the big-time traffickers, the cartel leaders, and at the same time that Trump is saying that he needs to go after the people on these boats, he just pardoned the former President of Honduras, who was convicted in a federal court in New York with trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. There's a lot of questions here about what the motivations are, what the strategy is, and whether it's really consistent.
Aysha Bagchi:
The United States, under the Trump administration, is among many nations that doesn't recognize Maduro as Venezuela's legitimate leader. Trump has claimed that the 2024 election was rigged. Are there credible arguments to suggest that regime change is the real goal here? And if so, why?
Josh Meyer:
There's a lot to unpack there. One, I think it's important to note that, even if Maduro is not the free and fair winner of elections in Venezuela, and there are a lot of people that have challenged that, there's literally dozens of other countries around the world where the elections have come into question. In Africa, Latin America, Asia, for instance, and we're not going after them and seeking regime change. The fact that Maduro is maybe not the winner of free and fair elections there I think is no reason to engage in regime change there. There's a lot of questions about whether we're going in there because we need the crude oil that Venezuela produces, because Trump wants another bulwark against communism in Latin America, and these are some comments that even Trump administration officials have made about that, saying that the first thing we would do in there is make sure that the oil gets to American consumers.
It's a very politically-fraught situation, but I think that there's a lot of other countries around the world that are looking somewhat with dismay that we would just go and order a regime change against a government just because we don't like them. A lot of eyes are watching this to see what happens next.
Aysha Bagchi:
Regarding impending land strikes, of course, Congress is the only entity empowered to declare war. We're not talking about drug cartels operating in international waters anymore. How has Congress responded to Trump's latest threats, if it has at all?
Josh Meyer:
I think, again, the Republicans are trying to duck for cover, because they want to support Trump 100%, oftentimes without really asking a lot of questions about why he's doing something, and the Democrats are pushing back. But I think this is probably going to come to a head. I do think that the Republicans, so far, have not pushed back on land strikes in Venezuela, unless one of them has said something that I missed. But right now, Congress is staying out of the way and letting things play out the way they are, at least the Republicans who could team with the Democrats to stop something like this. But Congress has often been left out of the loop when it comes to military strikes in foreign countries.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks, Josh, for being on The Excerpt.
Josh Meyer:
My pleasure, Aysha, anytime.
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Aysha Bagchi, USA Today Justice Department correspondent. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA Today's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Trump threatens Venezuelan land strikes as tensions mount
On the Wednesday, December 3, 2025 episode of The Excerpt podcast:There have been 21 U.S. military strikes against Ven...
