We Are Invading Venezuela
Dan McKnight / Bring Our Troops Home
(October 28, 2025) — After years of hyper-focusing on areas of conflict like the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I’m as surprised as you that the new focus of regime change is here in our own backyard: Venezuela.
There are 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed in the Gulf at this moment, the most since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
For two months, the U.S. Navy has been blowing small boats in the Caribbean, alleging that they’re Venezuelan drug traffickers headed to the United States.
But as Senator Rand Paul — one of the earliest endorsers of our Defend the Guard legislation — has been beating his desk repeating, neither the American public or the Congress has received a briefing, or evidence, or names that these individuals are who the White House claims.
These kinds of extrajudicial killings are not new. They proliferated under the Obama administration, which killed thousands of anonymous individuals with drone strikes. That same practice increased under the first Trump administration and continued under Joe Biden.
Now, in a major press conference last Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that the fighting is going to advance from international wars into the sovereign territory of Venezuela. He even commented on whether Congress would have any input in the action.
Trump said:
“And even the land is concerned because I told them that’s going to be next. You know the land is going to be next. And we may go to the Senate, we may go to the Congress and tell them about it but I can’t imagine they’d have any problem with it. I think, in fact, while we’re here, I think it’s a good idea Pete [Hegseth]. You go to Congress. You tell them about it. What are they going to do? Say ‘Gee, we don’t want to stop drugs pouring in.’ They’re killing 300,000 people a year.”
First, in his usual fashion, Trump has said out loud what everyone already knows: What is Congress going to do? Nothing.
Seventy-five years of unconstitutional wars and executive overreach have been enabled by a flaccid, cowardly Congress unwilling to grasp its Article I responsibilities.
That is why Defend the Guard is the only solution: we must throw the gauntlet at the federal government and tell them, unless you vote, you will not have our National Guard to fight your illegal wars.
Secondly, I must point out, when Trump refers to hundreds of thousands of American deaths, he’s referring to fentanyl overdoses. And fentanyl does not come from Venezuela; its origin is overwhelmingly from China via Mexico. The claim that these attacks on boats is fundamentally about drugs is a cover.
As a follow up, a reporter asked, “Mr. President, if you are declaring war against these cartels and Congress is likely to approve of that process, why not just ask for a declaration of war?”
Trump responded:
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them. You know? They’re going to be like dead.”
This may come as a surprise, but the president of the United States does not have the legal authority to kill any of the world’s 8.1 billion people on a whim. In the pursuit of law enforcement — which is what the war on drugs is — you cannot summarily execute people without due process.
A war against Venezuela, which would be without provocation or justification, launched without a vote by Congress would be the most egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution imaginable.
Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government has long been the target of Marco Rubio, secretary of State and acting national security advisor. Rubio and the usual suspects want regime change in Caracas, not because it has any relation to drug trafficking, but because of personal grievances and resistance to imperial power.
Take Lindsey Graham, for instance. This week, when he was asked by Margaret Brennan on CBS if the intention was regime change in Venezuela, Senator Graham — who President Trump just endorsed for reelection — said matter-of-factly, “Yes, it is.”
Later in the interview, Graham had the temerity to say, “There is no requirement for Congress to declare war before the commander-in-chief can use force.”
Don’t you just wish you could shove your pocket Constitution, complete with Article I, Section 8, right in his mouth?
For my part, I’ll say that while Lindsey Graham was safe in his JAG office, polishing the buttons on his nice clean uniform, I was deployed for eighteen months to the Pech River Valley in Afghanistan. I knew too many men who were buried in those same uniforms.
And to anyone willing to support another endless war, I say: You may break me, but you will not bend me.
My team and I are ready to mobilize the grassroots to pass the Defend the Guard Act, which is the only fix to a broken foreign policy the American people possess.
Do not abandon us in this crisis right in our backyard! When the bombs fall, do not let your reaction be, “I could have done more.”
Sign up now to become a regular contributor to the Defend the Guard movement!
-Sgt. Dan McKnight
Chairman, Bring Our Troops Home
