In case you missed it, Donald Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, and they covered a wide range of subjects. Naturally, the topic of Venezuela and its illegitimate narco-terrorist “leader” Nicolás Maduro came up. Not to toot my own horn, but he didn’t say anything different from what I’ve been writing for the last few months.
“Are we going to war against Venezuela?” O’Donnell asked.
As I’ve said, I don’t like that phrase for two reasons. The first is that Venezuela is not the problem. Maduro, who is holding the country hostage, is. The majority of Venezuelans want us to take action to remove him from power — remember, he’s a wanted fugitive in the United States with a $50 million reward out for his arrest — so that the man who they actually elected, Edmundo González, can take his rightful seat as president and govern in a way that restores democracy to the country after decades of socialism.
Related: BLM, Antifa, Hezbollah, and More: Inside Maduro’s Global Web
The other reason I don’t like it is that it’s highly unlikely that there will be an all-out, boots-on-the-ground war there. I’ve seen so many lefties who are incredibly ignorant of the situation (and even some on the right) carrying on about this lately. If you want to use the phrase “war,” Maduro and Hugo Chávez before him began irregular warfare with the United States years ago by supporting groups like Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, and Hezbollah; flooding our country with gang members and terrorists to destabilize our communities; facilitating the drug trade; buddying up to our adversaries and enemies in various ways; etc. But I digress.
Recommended: There Will Be No ‘War With Venezuela,’ and There Is No ‘President Maduro”
So how did the president respond to the question?
I doubt it. I don’t think so. But they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs, they’ve dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn’t want, people from prisons — they emptied their prisons into our country. They also — if you take a look, they emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums — into the United States of America, ’cause Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country.
CBS: “Are we going to war against Venezuela?”@POTUS: “I doubt it. I don’t think so, but they’ve been treating us very badly — not only on drugs, they’ve dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn’t want.” pic.twitter.com/AaVTu2RIxv
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 3, 2025
He went on to talk about Joe Biden’s incompetence for a while before continuing:
But the worst thing [Biden] did was allow millions of people to come into our country that were, in many cases, criminals, murderers — 11,888 murderers were let into our country. Venezuela let a lot of those people in. But they were from all over the world. This isn’t just Venezuela. They were from all over the world…
They let people in that should’ve never been. Venezuela emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And every one of those boats that you see shot down — and I agree, it’s a terrible thing — but every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that’s shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country.
O’Donnell then asked, “I just wanna talk about the scale of the military operation around Venezuela, because it has been described to 60 Minutes as using a blowtorch to cook an egg… Is it about stopping narcotics? Or is this about getting rid of President Maduro?”
Trump responded: “No, this is about many things. This is a country that allowed their prisons to be emptied into our country.”
O’Donnell followed up, “On Venezuela in particular, are Maduro’s days as president numbered?”
“I would say yeah. I think so, yeah,” Trump said.
“Are Maduro’s days as President numbered?”@POTUS: “I would say yeah, I think so — yeah.” pic.twitter.com/xUcu9C3FCM
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 3, 2025
“And this issue of potential land strikes in Venezuela, is that true?” she asked.
Trump: “I don’t tell you that. I’m not saying it’s true or untrue…”
O’Donnell asked why we would do that.
Trump pretty much let her have it here: “I wouldn’t be inclined to say that I would do that. But, because I don’t talk to a reporter about whether or not I’m gonna strike, I’m not gonna– you know, you’re a wonderful reporter, you’re very talented, but I’m not gonna tell you what I’m gonna do with Venezuela, if I was gonna do it or if I wasn’t going to do it.”
And this is also why I keep reminding y’all not to believe everything you read in the MSM unless the outlet in question actually quotes a named source. The administration is not going to share its plans for military action with reporters, unless it’s dropping leaks to put pressure on Maduro. No one knows anything more than anyone else. Most of these outlets are just taking their conjecture and anonymous sources and combining them to create an uproar.
On Friday, we saw the perfect example. The Miami Herald was breathlessly reporting that we will strike Venezuela within days, probably even within hours. My X feed was incredibly excited and/or upset, depending on who it was. Even people whose reporting I respect were posting about it. Personally, I figured it was fake news or some sort of optics to put pressure on Maduro. Marco Rubio confirmed that just after I wrote about it in my “The New Monroe Doctrine” column.
Your “sources” claiming to have “knowledge of the situation” tricked you into writing a fake story https://t.co/YCIVkZaTiz
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 31, 2025
Related: 10 Reasons the U.S. Can’t Afford to Ignore Venezuela Anymore
What happens in Venezuela remains to be seen, but most likely, none of us will know until it actually happens. Yes, I think Maduro will go down, though I don’t know when or how. My personal prediction, which I wrote about last week, is that “…someone on the inside will take Maduro down (with our help), and, at some point, if that doesn’t work, any military action we see will be an extremely precise and limited decapitation strike. Think hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities at best, 1989 invasion of Panama at worst.”
I stand by it. And I won’t apologize for hoping it happens. Freeing Venezuela — and the entire hemisphere — of Maduro and his thugs is a huge step in the right direction for all of us.
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