OAN Staff Blake Wolf
4:03 PM – Friday, December 12, 2025
President Donald Trump indicated on Thursday that U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan soil could come “pretty soon,” following a recent seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.
On Thursday, President Trump was asked by a reporter whether the military campaign against Venezuela is still about stopping drugs from entering the United States, or if the administration is motivated by the nation’s oil resources after the interdiction of a Venezuelan oil tanker.
“Well, it’s about a lot of things, but one of the things it’s about is the fact that they’ve allowed millions of people to come into our country from their prisons, from gangs, from drug dealers, and from mental institutions, probably proportionately more than anybody else,” Trump responded.
“We had 11,888 murderers come into our country, many of them are from Venezuela. We had thousands of Tren de Aragua – the gang – come in from [Venezuela], which they say is the most violent gang,” he continued. “So it has to do with a lot of things, they’ve treated us badly, and I guess now we’re not treating them so good. If you look at the drug traffic, drug traffic by sea is down 92%… anybody getting involved in that right now is not doing well.”
“… And we’ll start that on land too, it’s gonna be starting on land pretty soon,” Trump added without providing further detail.
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The president’s comments follow the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker on Wednesday in the Caribbean Sea, marking the administration’s latest escalation against socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.
Administration officials explained that the confiscated vessel, known as “The Skipper,” was seized since it was violating U.S. sanctions law, having been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2022 for its involvement in transporting oil linked to Iran and sanctioned networks — including those associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Additionally, the U.S. government under former President Biden and now-President Trump, in addition to the European Union (EU), has consistently declared that Maduro “lacks any democratic legitimacy” — seemingly suggesting that he stole the election.
“The vessel will go to a U.S. port and the United States does intend to seize the oil. However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil, and that legal process will be followed,” stated White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday.
“Prolonged war is definitely not something this president is interested in,” she added. “He’s been very clear about that. He wants peace. He also wants to see the end of illegal drugs being trafficked into the United States and taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans across our country.”
The socialist Venezuelan government labeled the seizure a “blatant robbery and an act of international piracy.”
Amid rising tensions, analysts have raised concerns about the risk of an all-out war between Venezuela and the United States, while critics warn that a crackdown on Venezuelan oil exports could drive up gas and energy prices for American consumers.
According to Kevin Book, the managing director of the research firm ClearView Energy Partners, if Venezuelan oil is taken off the market, the price for oil in the United States will inevitably increase.
“Venezuela currently produces more than a million barrels [of oil] per day, approximately 1% of global supply,” Book explained.
“But more importantly, second point, Venezuela’s oil is of a specific grade that is particularly useful for refineries in America’s Gulf Coast. And so the gasoline we produce and export to the world, manufactured from that grade of oil, could become slightly more expensive, not just because oil is off the market, but because a specific grade is also not available,” he added, noting that the U.S. Gulf Coast oil refineries are reliant on heavy sour oil, which largely comes from Mexico, Venezuela, and Canada.
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