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Venvasion: Will drugs be Trump’s Venezuela WMD?

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Boat Blow-up: President Trump (left) in the White House Oval Office in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025; Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (right) in Caracas, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025.
Evan Vucci (left); Ariana Cubillos
/
AP
Boat Blow-up: President Trump (left) in the White House Oval Office in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025; Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (right) in Caracas, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025.

Opinion: The U.S. military strike on a suspected Venezuelan narco-boat raises a troubling question: is Trump looking to use drugs as his version of weapons of mass destruction?

On the latest episode of Americas Decoded, WLRN’s Americas editor Tim Padgett worries that small victories like the recent military strike on an alleged Venezuelan boat could create bigger, Iraq-style temptations for Trump – with drugs as the reason he eventually seizes on to take an ill-fated regime-change leap.

“I’m talking about the outright U.S. invasion of Venezuela that so many Venezuelan exiles in Florida dream Trump will order to topple the country’s brutal dictatorship. Let’s call it the Venvasion,” he said, explaining why, unlike the 1989 invasion to topple Manuel Noriega in Panama, here it would likely take us into a “dystopian tar pit.”

You can watch the full video for this and other Americas Decoded commentaries on WLRN’s YouTube channel on youtube.com/@WLRN or on WLRN.org/Decoded. You can read Tim’s digital commentary along with WLRN’s coverage of Americas news on WLRN.org/americas. Sign up for the Americas Report newsletter on WLRN.org/newsletters. WLRN is South Florida’s NPR member station.