RWM Venezuela

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Right-wing media's campaign for military intervention and regime change in Venezuela

Conservative pundits have spent August and September beating the drums of war

Written by Media Matters Staff

Research contributions from John Knefel, Alyssa Tirrell, Gideon Taaffe, Pete Tsipis, Jane Lee, Bushra Sultana & Helena Hind

Published

Right-wing media outlets have spent August and September agitating for the Trump administration to take military action against Venezuela, including possibly toppling the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

On August 8, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin targeting “foreign drug cartels” including the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles, which the administration recently labeled as a “specially designated global terrorist” organization supposedly headed by Maduro. Later that month, Trump directed U.S. warships carrying thousands of Marines and sailors to Venezuelan waters. On September 2, Trump ordered the military to strike a boat in the Caribbean allegedly carrying illicit narcotics, killing the 11 people aboard.

Right-wing pundits reacted by defending the legality of the strike even before the White House had offered its official legal rationale. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner asked whether critics of the airstrike were “working against America and for the drug cartels with their support."

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  • Right-wing media’s push for war on Venezuela

    Throughout August and September, right-wing pundits pushed for the Trump administration to carry out military action — which is to say, to wage war — against Venezuela. These commentators sometimes praised Trump for revitalizing the Monroe Doctrine, a longheld dream of MAGA media that connotes U.S. imperial dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

    • Fox & Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy suggested that Trump’s growing military campaign against Venezuela could allow the United States to seize natural resources in Latin America. Campos-Duffy said that Trump’s strike on a boat leaving Venezuela sent a message to “our neighborhood” that “there’s a new sheriff in town.” She added: “Make no mistake, the Southern Hemisphere, the Western Hemisphere is resource-rich — all the lithium and all the critical minerals, there’s oil, there’s so much there and we’ve ceded so much of it to China.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/4/25]
    • Campos-Duffy said that going after Venezuela is “bigger” than the war in Ukraine because “Donald Trump is cleaning up our neighborhood." Amid the summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Campos-Duffy suggested that Venezuela was more important because “Russia and Ukraine are on the other side of the world.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/13/25]
    • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh cheered on the United States initiating military action in Venezuela: “This is American chauvinism.” Walsh explained: “As the noninterventionist guy who famously doesn't care about other countries and doesn't want to get involved in their problems, as the American chauvinist — not just America first, but America chauvinist — I fully support what Trump is doing here because this is America first. This is American chauvinism.” Walsh declared that the U.S. is “going to use our strength, our power to impose our will for the sake of our national interests,” claiming, “That’s how American might, American force should be used.” He added, “They're a small, weak, pathetic, puny, poor country, and so they just have to do what we say. A war with Venezuela would last about four minutes.” [Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 8/21/25]
    • Fox News legal contributor John Yoo, who authored the controversial “torture memo” for the Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration, now justified using military force against drug cartels from Venezuela, saying, “As we did after 9/11, I think it is perfectly legal and well within the president’s constitutional authority to protect the nation’s security from foreign threats.” Yoo stated that the military should be targeting “foreign enemies” including “drug cartels that are synergistic with the government of Venezuela.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/11/25; The New York Times, 3/3/08]
    • Fox Nation host Mike Sarraille said on Fox News, “I'm a strong proponent of the action that the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, and President Trump are taking.” He also claimed, “God bless our law enforcement brethren, but this is far outside their capability. And so this is where the Department of War comes into play. It should be stiffer actions, it should be stiffer penalties for anyone trying to illicitly smuggle drugs into our nation that could potentially kill our youth and Americans.” [Fox News, America Reports, 9/5/25]
    • Former deputy national security adviser KT McFarland praised Trump’s “gunboat diplomacy.” She said: “It’s all part of a bigger plan that President Trump has, which is to go after the drug cartels that are poisoning Americans with fentanyl and with the gun trafficking and the gang bangers and ruining our security in our cities.” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade added, “And we’d love to kick China, Russia, and Iran right out of Venezuela and right out of our hemisphere. And that could happen in one swoop.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/21/25]
    • Fox News host Jesse Watters celebrated Trump’s decision to send U.S. destroyers to Venezuela to target cartels, declaring, “It's the return of the Monroe Doctrine.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/19/25]

  • Right-wing media call for Maduro’s ouster

    Right-wing pundits also called for the toppling of the Maduro government.

    • Brian Kilmeade earlier said, “I just hope we find a way to get Maduro out. It’ll solve a lot of problems.” His comment came after Fox News senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane said that it “makes sense to get after these narco traffickers, and certainly they’re coming out of Venezuela, they’re coming out of other Latin American, South American countries, and we’re upping our game to do that. It is the right decision.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/22/25]
    • Tim Pool’s Timcast panel floated regime change and taking oil from Venezuela. One of the hosts discussed “why regime change would make sense” and would “help mitigate the immigration crisis that we're seeing,” and a guest said, “The amount of oil that those losers have. … Let’s get in there. Let’s invade Venezuela.” [Timcast, 9/3/25]
    • Fox News contributor Brett Velicovich praised the strike as “real, decisive action” and encouraged regime change in Venezuela: “The bottom line is that Maduro needs to go.” [Fox News, America Reports, 9/3/25]

  • Right-wing media celebrate Trump’s extrajudicial strike that killed 11

    Even as experts challenged the supposed legal basis of the airstrike on the boat that killed 11 people, right-wing pundits continued to praise Trump and celebrate what they characterized as his decisive action.

    • Rachel Campos-Duffy praised Trump’s airstrike, claiming he was implementing “a new doctrine” in foreign policy. Campos-Duffy claimed: “It's not just a message to the cartels. It's not just a message to Nicolas Maduro and even to Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, but it is to China. … China is in bed with all of these bad actors.” Criminals “have had free rein in our hemisphere,” she continued, adding, “That is why interdicting isn’t enough — we're going to blow you up. We're going to destroy the cartels and it’s going to send a message to everybody that there is a new sheriff in town.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/4/25]
    • Jesse Watters justified the boat strike in the Caribbean, saying, “If they’re going to kill our people with narcotics, we’re going to kill their people with missiles.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 9/3/25]
    • Brian Kilmeade said of the boat strike: “This is a message — get out — this is the Monroe Doctrine back in action.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/3/25]
    • Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty emphasized the number of Americans killed by drug overdoses each year and said Trump is “treating these cartels the way they deserve to be treated.” [Newsmax, Finnerty, 9/3/25]
    • On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Harold Ford praised the strike, arguing that it “sends a message like none other can — that even if this is outside of the realm of legality, and the courts will eventually tell us this, those on those boats know that they have a problem, that this president and our country now is going to protect and seal our borders against these kinds of things.” Ford added: “I love what the president — the things he’s doing here. We’ll see if it stands up to muster.” [Fox News, The Five, 9/3/25]
    • MAGA legal influencer Mike Davis celebrated the lack of judicial oversight of the strike, writing: “And Trump didn’t get Jeb Boasberg’s permission.” Right-wing media have waged a campaign against Judge James Boasberg since he ordered the Trump administration to halt some deportation flights in March. [X/Twitter, 9/2/25; Media Matters, 3/18/25]

  • Right-wing media suggest Trump’s military campaign expand to include Mexico, say it tells other Latin American countries “the US means business”

    Conservative pundits suggested that we need more military intervention like Trump’s actions regarding Venezuela, that “Mexico may be next,” and that his campaign thus far signals to other Latin American countries that “the U.S. means business.” Trump has contemplated bombing parts of Mexico for years.

    • Watters said “we’ll probably have to see more” military intervention against cartels, to which Good Day New York host Rosanna Scotto added, “Mexico may be next.” Scotto also praised Trump for the strike: “Finally somebody is taking action. … But it came probably too late for many families in America.” [Fox News, The Five, 9/3/25]
    • On Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast, guest Erik Bethel said Trump’s actions on Venezuela will signal to other “hard-left-leaning countries” that “the U.S. means business.” Bethel who represented the U.S. at the World Bank during Trump’s first term, said, “I think what we're doing in Venezuela and putting a price on Maduro’s head for being a narco trafficker is great, and it signals to the other hard-left-leaning countries in the region — Cuba, to some degree Colombia and Bolivia and others — hey, the U.S. means business.” [Rumble, Triggered, 8/28/25]
    • Sean Hannity: F-35s being deployed to the Caribbean show that “the president is now taking on another massive issue, and that is the influx of drugs into our country.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 9/5/25; Reuters, 9/5/25]