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00:00In a shocking interview, Colombia's President Gustavo Petro was caught musing about getting
00:04rid of President Trump, as Trump's crackdown on South American drug cartels intensifies
00:09in the Caribbean, and tensions in the region are rising.
00:30What is the latest on Trump's armed conflict with South American drug cartels, and which
00:43countries are involved?
00:45Here's everything you need to know.
00:47The goal of the United States is to really have, let me use this term, regime change
00:53in Venezuela.
00:54President Trump has made waves in Latin America after the commander-in-chief directed the U.S.
00:58military to target and wipe out more than half a dozen drug-smuggling vessels at sea in
01:04coordinated strikes.
01:06It started in August when President Trump secretly authorized the U.S. military to use force against
01:11Latin American drug cartels, classified as foreign terrorist organizations.
01:16One of the gangs included in the classification list was Trende Aragua, one of Venezuela's
01:21most dangerous criminal organizations.
01:24In a show of force to combat the cartels, which Trump blames for flooding American communities,
01:28with fentanyl and other illicit drugs, the administration sent U.S. warships into Venezuelan waters.
01:34When you come out and when you leave the room, you'll see that we just, over the last few
01:40minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat, and you'll
01:48be seeing that and you'll be reading about that.
01:50While Trump has been critical of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's leadership and even
01:55placed a $50 million bounty on the dictator's head to face outstanding drug charges in New
02:00York over the summer, the president's September announcement of the initial strike on a Venezuelan
02:05boat raised the stakes.
02:07In a subsequent post on Truth Social, the president published a video of the attack, asserting the
02:11craft's occupants were members of Trende Aragua.
02:14The sinking of this particular ship, that was significant, but the significance of the
02:19type of military engagement and the stepping up of our navy particularly is an indication
02:26that we are prepared to draw maybe attacks in Venezuela proper.
02:32We used to use the phrase a long time ago, flexing our military muscles, and that's what
02:36we're doing.
02:37That September strike marked the beginning of the U.S. flexing its military muscles in the
02:42region.
02:42In the subsequent weeks, the Trump administration continued their defensive maneuvers, wiping
02:46out more than half a dozen drug smuggling vessels at sea in coordinated strikes, which
02:52have primarily targeted vessels believed to have links to Venezuela and have led to at least
02:5731 deaths.
02:58Two major factors have come into this, because the drug flow, Maduro, Trende Aragua, this is
03:06not news.
03:07This has been going up.
03:08It's a narco state.
03:09But what is news, we have a president that has now put the drug trade and fentanyl and
03:17what's coming into the country as a number one priority.
03:20Number two, this Trende Aragua issue is real.
03:24Maduro is in the drug business.
03:26What has changed is a difference in policy that is really going to try to step this up for the
03:31United States.
03:32Maduro has expressed deep concern with the U.S. deployment and attacks, calling it an illegal
03:36regime change attempt.
03:38As a result, he reportedly brought thousands of citizens in for a day of lessons on weapons
03:43handling and other revolutionary resistance tactics.
03:47And in what the Pentagon described as a highly provocative move, Venezuelan military aircraft
03:52even flew over a U.S. Navy ship, conducting counter-drug operations in the area.
03:57If they fly in a dangerous position, I would say that you or your captains can make the
04:03decision as to what they want to do.
04:05How close did they get?
04:07Well, I don't want to talk about that.
04:09But if they do put us in a dangerous position, they'll be shut down.
04:14On October 9th, Venezuela's government requested an emergency session of the United Nations Security
04:19Council because of the strikes, as Maduro claimed that there would be an armed attack against
04:24Venezuela in a very short time.
04:27What's the next step in this war on cartels?
04:29And are you considering options, are you considering strikes on land?
04:33Well, I don't want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because
04:36we've got the sea very well under control.
04:38The feud has now expanded beyond Venezuela and into Colombia, where the country's president,
04:44Gustavo Petro, has accused Trump of striking a Colombian fishing vessel.
04:48That was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure on September 15th,
04:54even going so far as to accuse the U.S. of murder.
04:58In response, Trump threatened to close up the killing fields in Colombia and announced
05:02he was slashing U.S. subsidies for the Latin American country.
05:05Now, Petro is fired back in a shocking Univision interview in which he mused about getting rid
05:11of Trump.
05:12When asked about his goal of getting the best possible negotiations for his country, Petro
05:16told the interviewer, Humanity has a first off-ramp.
05:19It is to choose to change Trump in various ways.
05:22The easiest way may be through Trump himself.
05:25If not, get rid of Trump.
05:27Petro later tried to walk back the remarks on X, claiming,
05:31I didn't threaten Trump.
05:32I just said that Trump should change his heart from defending death-dealing policies around
05:36the world.
05:37If that change doesn't happen, then the American people themselves will change Trump, because
05:42we can't commit suicide.
05:44But Petro's Univision interview drew concern from Florida Rep Carlos Jimenez, who sits
05:49on the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.
05:53Petro's threats must be taken seriously.
05:55He is a genuine threat to the safety and security of our hemisphere, he wrote.
05:59Trump has now upped the ante beyond the strikes, announcing that the U.S.'s intelligence officers
06:04were also joining in the mix.
06:06Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?
06:10And is there more information you can share about these strikes on the alleged drug books
06:15in the Caribbean?
06:15Well, I can't do that, but I authorize for two reasons, really.
06:18Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America at a level
06:23that probably not many, many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela.
06:27They were down and dirty.
06:28And the other thing are drugs.
06:29We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.
06:31Trump is a unique president and a unique situation.
06:34I was also trying to think if this has ever been just announced before.
06:37Hi, we're sending the CIA into this country.
06:39I mean, normally the CIA officers, you want to be very under the radar.
06:44I'm sure there were some collective groans in Venezuela by some of our CIA people.
06:48On the other hand, what Trump may be doing, if you want to try to get in his head here,
06:52is scare the Maduro administration a little bit, make them back on their heels, make them
06:58fear that something's coming, whether it's coming or not.
07:01Trump can be very good at that.
07:02Any situation like this, you want to mess with the heads of the bad guys.
07:06You want to mess with the heads of not only the bad guys in that regime, but with their
07:11friends elsewhere.
07:12You want to put the Chinese on notice.
07:14You want to put the Russians on notice.
07:16We're going after this regime.
07:18If you interfere, that's going to be a problem.
07:21So the president wants to put that concern into the calculus of Chinese, Russians, Iran,
07:28whoever else.
07:29After the president's shocking confirmation of CIA clandestine operations, the Maduro regime
07:34reportedly offered to provide U.S. companies preferential contracts and access to all existing
07:40and future oil and gold projects in Venezuela as part of a deal discussed with Trump administration
07:45officials, according to The New York Times.
07:48Trump's response to the supposed deal was swift and to the point.
07:51He has offered everything.
07:53He's offered everything.
07:54You're right.
07:55You know why?
07:56Because he doesn't want to f*** around with the United States.
07:59Thank you, everybody.
08:01It's not just Maduro and Petro who have been critical of America's actions.
08:06Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have also spoken out.
08:09In early October, the Senate voted down a resolution, 48 to 51, to stop strikes against the drug-trafficking
08:16boats off Venezuela's shores under the War Powers Act.
08:20Senators Tim Kaine, Rand Paul, and Adam Schiff are co-sponsoring a second push to force a vote
08:26on a War Powers resolution, which requires the president to notify Congress when there is
08:31a plan to initiate or escalate military actions abroad.
08:35In an interview with Call to Activism's Daily Mic Drop podcast, Kaine shared why he was hesitant
08:40about the U.S. strikes against the alleged drug boats.
08:44I think there's a significant likelihood that in one of these first four strikes already
08:47that it was a mistake.
08:49The Coast Guard stats show one in four ships that the Coast Guard interdicts for suspicion
08:54of drug activity has no drugs on it.
08:57So there's already a one in four chance that you're going to stop somebody that's going
09:01to turn out that they don't have drugs.
09:02But the strikes keep coming.
09:04On October 19th, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the U.S. killed three Colombian
09:09narco-terrorists in another airstrike on a boat involved in drug smuggling.
09:15Those killed were allegedly members of a powerful Colombian insurgent group known as ELN.
09:21The Trump administration has told Congress that the U.S. is engaged in a, quote,
09:25non-international armed conflict with drug cartels.
09:28The Department of War told lawmakers that the trafficking gangs who were targeted in airstrikes
09:33were now designated as combatants, waging an armed attack on America because of a deadly
09:39surge in drug overdoses.
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