President Trump confirmed that the CIA has a presence in Venezuela amid ongoing tensions with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump, to which he said there were “two reasons.”
“Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. They came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border policy. And as soon as I heard that, ‘I said a lot of these countries’ – they’re not the only country, but they’re the worst abuser, and they’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, people from mental institutions, insane asylums – emptied out into the United States,” he explained, adding, “Many, many countries have done it also, but not like Venezuela — they were down and dirty.”
The second reason, Trump said, is drugs. “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” he stated.
President Trump was then asked if the CIA “has the authority to take out Maduro,” to which he said it would be a “ridiculous question” for him to answer.
“I think Venezuela is feeling heat. But I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat too,” he noted. “We’re not going to let this country, our country, be ruined because other people want to drop, as you say, ‘their worst’ — they have given us their worst. They’ve loaded up our country with prisoners, with mentally ill people that are seriously ill, criminally ill, and we’re not going to take it.”
Trump’s comments follow a recent memo sent to Congress that declared the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
Cartels “illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year,” the memo explains. “Although friendly foreign nations have made significant efforts to combat these organizations, suffering significant losses of life, these groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere in the form of organized cartels. Therefore, the President determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
