Donald Trump has a strange new excuse for attacking Venezuelans.
Seated beside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during a White House press conference Tuesday, the president blamed his administration’s dubious airstrikes on several Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying what he described as “water drugs.”
“We call them the water drugs,” Trump said. “The drugs that come in through water. They’re not coming.”
“There are no boats anymore. Frankly, there are no fishing boats. There are no boats out there, period, if you want to know the truth. We’re saying, ‘Does anybody go fishing anymore?’ The fact is we knocked out, probably saved at least 100,000 American lives—Canadian lives, by taking out all those boats coming in,” Trump said.
He did not elaborate on how his administration had reached the conclusion that killing more than a dozen Venezuelans outside of U.S. waters could save so many people in the northern hemisphere.
Over the last several weeks, the U.S. has destroyed at least four small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters that Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs. At least 21 have been killed in the attacks.
In a memo to Congress on Thursday, Trump declared that the U.S. government is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
“The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations,” the leaked memo, obtained by the Associated Press, read.
Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has accused the Trump administration of violating U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime,” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”
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