The menacing comments were interwoven with specific threats toward three other countries that could soon be in the administration’s sights: Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.
The rest of the hemisphere is paying attention, and attempting to push back on Trump through condemnations of the strike itself and warnings of what could come next.
“All nations of the region must remain alert, as the threat hangs over all,” the Cuban government said in a statement.
The administration’s warnings, meanwhile, are getting bolder and more definitive. Trump again accused Colombia’s president of “making cocaine” and reaffirmed his past threats that he “does need to watch his ass.” He predicted “we will be talking about Cuba.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more sinister threat of future American action.
“Look, if I lived in Havana and I worked in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.
Earlier during a phone interview with Fox News, Trump warned that “something will have to be done about Mexico,” stating that he’s asked President Claudia Sheinbaum if she wants the U.S. military’s “help” in rooting out drug cartels.
“American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack as an aggression against all of South America and announced the mobilization of troops along the country’s border with Venezuela to halt a possible flood of refugees.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has tried to establish a rapport with Trump, said in a post on X that Maduro’s ouster “crossed an unacceptable line” and “recalls the worst moments of interference in the politics of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Mexico also criticized the strikes, which Sheinbaum said are a violation of the U.N. Charter. The Mexican, Colombian and Cuban embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s latest threats against their governments.
At the same time, some countries made an effort to play peacemaker. Colombia’s embassy in Washington said in a statement that Petro offered to help mediate a solution to the crisis.
Trump outlined a more aggressively expansionist foreign policy in his inaugural address nearly one year ago, shocking long-time allies with threats of making Canada “the 51st state” and colonizing Greenland, an autonomous region belonging to Denmark. Over his first year in office, his focus on several different foreign policy fronts — the Middle East, Asia, Europe and his thus far futile attempts to resolve the war in Ukraine — have frustrated some allies who’ve noted this is far from the isolationist, “America First” approach he ran on.
Although the looming midterm elections in November provide a political incentive to shift his focus toward domestic matters, going ahead with regime change in Venezuela has opened up yet another foreign policy front on which the president — and by extension, his party in Congress — will be judged.
For Trump, in a final term no longer burdened by electoral concerns of his own, a short-term operational success in Venezuela could be emboldening, leading to the additional operations across the region that the president and aides already seem to be telegraphing. Katie Miller, the former administration official-turned-podcaster and wife of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image on her X account on Saturday showing a map of Greenland colored by the American flag with a one-word caption: “SOON.” (The Danish embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment).
In his prepared remarks Saturday, Trump cited the Monroe Doctrine, a 200-year-old foreign policy blueprint that has seen something of a revival in conservative circles. It stems from President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration of a U.S. sphere of influence in the Americas that also served as a warning to would-be European colonizers to limit their aims to their own affairs.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. But we’ve superseded it by a lot,” Trump said. “They now call it ‘the Donroe Document.’”
In south Florida, where Trump and Rubio both make their homes, there’s deep support in many communities for further action, particularly in Cuba.
Florida state Rep. Juan Carlos Porras (R-Miami) applauded the administration’s moves and Rubio, specifically, as the “mastermind” behind it. “Even more movement in Cuba would really take it to the next level,” he said, adding that it could theoretically happen quickly given the “precision and force” shown in Venezuela.
At least one lawmaker suggested that Maduro’s toppling in itself is likely to destabilize Cuba’s government, given its economic dependence on Venezuela.
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“That could be a tipping point,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla). “Venezuela has been propping up the Cuban regime, and so if we have a democracy in Venezuela, that will stop. And so we would hope that maybe the regime falls under its own weight.”
But even with U.S. forces already positioned in the region, managing a still-fluid situation in Venezuela may take precedence for now.
“There’s no plan at this point” for another military operation in the Americas, said one person in close touch with the White House national security team and granted anonymity to describe private conversations. To orchestrate Venezuela’s transition to a new government and the extraction of the country’s oil resources, the U.S. will continue to “need [military] capability to pressure compliance from incoming leaders,” the person added.
Kevin Whitaker, a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the first Trump administration, said he did not glean from Saturday’s press conference that the White House had imminent plans to take action across other countries in Latin America.
“While Secretary Rubio had very clear views on the message that Cuba ought to take out of this action, he was responding to a question,” Whitaker said. “The fact that they didn’t raise it suggests to me that that’s not on the Trump administration’s immediate short-term agenda. And it stands to reason: They’ve bitten off a lot here.”
After all, the administration now must work to avoid splits in the Venezuelan military or the rise of criminal groups from further destabilizing the country.
But even if Trump remains preoccupied with Venezuela for the time being, his deposing of its longtime leader underscored a clear disregard for the sovereignty of other nations, which could presage additional conflicts to come.
Even Sheinbaum, generally seen as having maintained a positive relationship with both Trump and Rubio, could be seeing the limits of what personal diplomacy can achieve.
Trump said Saturday morning that he’s told Sheinbaum about wanting to deploy American forces to take out fentanyl-trafficking drug cartels inside her country’s borders. It’s actually something Trump debated doing during his first term, according to Alex Gray, who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council during Trump’s last administration.
“It may be on Mexican territory but it’s oftentimes territory the Mexican state is unable to police,” he said. Sheinbaum, he continued, “has done a good job of coordinating with us on the counter narcotics trafficking, but there’s an element of lack of state capacity to a certain degree, to take action in some of these spaces.”
While Trump is approaching his final term seemingly racing the clock and focused on short-term results, autocrats around the globe able to play a longer game could benefit from rising tensions between the U.S. and a number of its neighbors.
Stephen McFarland, a former ambassador to Guatemala during the Obama administration who also held diplomatic postings in Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador and Bolivia, said that “China might see opportunities: a potential failure for the U.S., increased division within the U.S. if it fails, and long-term a stimulus to Latin American countries looking to balance the U.S. by looking to China.”
And Chile’s former ambassador to China, Jorge Heine, said that Trump’s action against Venezuela may embolden Beijing to get more aggressive over its territorial claim to Taiwan.
“Beijing’s reasoning may be, ‘Well, why not Taiwan?’” Heine said. “You could say China has a much more significant claim on Taiwan than the United States on Venezuela.”
Kimberly Leonard and Phelim Kine contributed to this report.