Trump sees 'a military option' for Venezuela. The Pentagon does not.
"We have many options for" dealing with the ongoing political unrest in Venezuela, President Trump said Friday. "I am not going to rule out a military option," he added, noting the United States has "troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away" and "Venezuela is not very far away."
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino labeled Trump's comments "a crazy act, an act of supreme extremism." The Department of Defense said in a statement the "Pentagon has not received any orders with regards to Venezuela," calling rumors of a U.S. invasion "baseless."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.