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Secretary of State Marco Rubio unloaded on Venezuela’s “illegitimate” regime Friday, openly admitting the aim of the US pressure campaign on the country aims to end dictator Nicolás Maduro’s reign as he partners with terrorists and drug cartels that poison the United States.
“The status quo with the Venezuelan regime is intolerable for the United States,” Rubio said at a year-end press conference, charging that Caracas doesn’t just tolerate criminal groups but “partners with and participates in activities that threaten the national interest of the United States.”
Rubio said the Trump administration’s aggressive posture is already paying dividends, including making smugglers too scared to take to the water after the US military blew up a series of suspected drug boats.
“People were just going out there without any fear,” he said, referring to drug-running boats. “Now people understand it’s not a good idea.”
He noted that there have been no US strikes in the Caribbean for nearly five weeks — not because enforcement stopped, but because smugglers “don’t want to get on a boat anymore.”
But that doesn’t mean all strikes in the Western hemisphere have stopped; the US military on Wednesday killed four narcoterrorists in the Pacific.
Rubio framed the overarching strategy as a core promise kept by Trump.
“He said he was going to go after the cartels — and now he’s going after the cartels,” Rubio said, mocking critics who now act “shocked.” “This is a man who says and then does.”
According to Rubio, the biggest danger to the US in the Western Hemisphere comes from transnational criminal and terrorist groups fueled by narcotrafficking — and nearly every country in the region is helping confront it.
“The single most serious threat to the United States from the Western Hemisphere is from transnational terrorist criminal groups primarily focused on narco trafficking, but they’re on all sides’ businesses as well,” Rubio said, referencing Hezbollah’s use of Venezuela as a vehicle to threaten the US.
The “good news,” Rubio said, is that there are many countries in the region — such as Mexico, Ecuador and El Salvador — “openly cooperate and work with us to confront these challenges.”
He praised cooperation from Mexico as “their level of cooperation with us is the highest it’s ever been in their history,” as well as Caribbean nations including Jamaica, Guyana and the Dominican Republic.
“There’s one place that doesn’t cooperate, and it’s the illegitimate regime in Venezuela,” Rubio said. “Not only do they not cooperate with us, they openly cooperate with terrorists and criminal elements.”
“For example, they invite Hezbollah and Iran to operate from their territory, but they also allow [Columbian terror groups] ELN and the FARC dissidents not just to operate from inside of Venezuelan territory, but to control Venezuelan territory unencumbered, unimpeded,” he added.
Rubio also defended the Trump administration’s decision to move toward military and economic pressure over continued diplomatic niceties with the regime, blasting past US efforts to cut deals with Maduro.
He pointed to a failed agreement under the Biden administration that included sanctions relief and prisoner releases in exchange for promises of free and fair elections, which did not happen.
“He pocketed all the benefits and lived up to none of the commitments,” Rubio said. “It’s hard to do a deal with someone who never keeps a deal.”
The Trump administration, he stressed, can’t make peace with criminal organizations “any more than you can do a peace deal with the mafia.”
“You can’t reach a peace deal with narco-trafficking gangs,” Rubio said. “We reserve the right to use every element of national power to defend the national interest of the United States.”
Rubio also touted Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying illegal border crossings have “collapsed” after years of what he called “the most reckless migratory incompetence in American history.”
Still, the US remains the world’s most generous country for legal immigration, OKing nearly 1 million green cards this year. The difference, Rubio said, is that prior administrations conducted mass admissions under weak vetting created serious security risks.
“I think everyone would understand that after a flood of 15 to 20 million people into our country — almost unrestrained in some extent — over the last four years before taking over in January of this year, there’s a desire in our country to put a stop to that,” the secretary said.
“Until we can fix these processes to ensure that not only do we know who’s in the country now, but in the future, we’re not going to face some of these challenges that we faced in the past.”
English (US)