By John Fredericks
Compiled by Maggie Haberman, WH Press Pool
WASHINGTON, D.C.—
President Trump at WH Press Pool Gaggle Last Night
🇻🇪 VENEZUELA OPERATIONS
On Possible Strikes Against Mainland Venezuela:
“Look, Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers and drugs. It’s not acceptable.”
Removing Maduro – An Option?
“We will see what happens — it’s not an option or a non-option. We’ll see… He had an election that was wrong. It was almost as corrupt as our election in 2020, you know that? You know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t say theirs was much more corrupt, but it was certainly corrupt, but ours was corrupt also.”
Rationale for Venezuela Operations:
“A lot of drugs are coming out of Venezuela. A lot of Tren de Aragua. They’re trying to get out but we’re stopping them successfully at the border. In Venezuela, we have a tremendous amount of security. They send the Tren de Aragua. That’s the gang, probably the worst gang in the world than MS-13 now, I think they’re probably considered worst. And we don’t like what Venezuela is sending us, whether it’s their drugs or whether it’s their gang members. We don’t like it. We don’t like it one bit.”
Anticipating More Strikes:
“Well, we’ll see what happens. There’s certainly not a lot of boats out there I’ll tell you… the first strike, and then, to a lesser extent, the second. We don’t see any. I mean, we are going to see no boats out there, which is fine as far as I’m concerned. There’s been very little boat traffic. I can’t imagine why.”
Response to Venezuelan PM Calling Strike “Illegal”:
“What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat and the drugs that are being sent into our country and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs.”
“You could see it. You saw the bags of white everything right through the bags. It’s nonsense. So we knew it before they even left. We knew it before they had even left. We knew exactly where that boat, where it came from, where the drugs came from, and where it was heading. And the problem is nobody is getting on boats anymore. So maybe that’s a good problem.”