President Trump on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean – however without specifying which country was hit (whether Venezuela or perhaps Colombia).
Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign.
The United States had knocked out “a big facility” last week, Trump described somewhat vaguely, in apparent reference to a drug facility on the Latin American coast.
“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”
According to the full remarks in context, the president said:
“But every time I knock out a boat, we save 25,000 American lives. It’s very simple. And what’s happening is they’re having a hard time employment-wise, they can’t get anybody.
And we just talked out, I don’t know if you read or you saw, they [Venezuela] have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard. But drugs are down over 97 percent. Can you believe it?”
Some unnamed American officials suggested to the New York Times that the Commander-in-Chief was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela:
Trump did not name the location of the facility, though American officials told the New York Times that the president was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela that was eliminated. The president’s comment is the only report of such an attack. No other Latin American government, including Venezuela, has disclosed a strike of this sort.
But information or confirmation other than that disclosure remains a mystery, as neither the CIA nor Pentagon have commented, as the NY Times notes:
If Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the United States had struck a site in the region proves accurate, it would be the first known attack on land since he began his military campaign against Venezuela. U.S. officials declined to specify anything about the site the president said was hit, where it was located, how the attack was carried out or what role the facility played in drug trafficking. There has been no public report of an attack from the Venezuelan government or any other authorities in the region.
Hellbound and Down 