Trump FAFO to Venezuela as Aircraft Carrier group heads to the Caribbean

1. Military Escalation

• The USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group (including five destroyers and nine aircraft squadrons) are being deployed to the U.S. Southern Command region.
• The deployment is described as a response to intensified drug trafficking, particularly involving fentanyl and cocaine.
• The Pentagon claims the goal is to “detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors” threatening U.S. safety and prosperity.

2. Narco-Terrorism Framing

• Congressman McCormick, a veteran, defends the strikes as intelligence-based, targeting confirmed threats.
• The document emphasizes the lethality of fentanyl and its impact on American communities, especially inner cities.
• The Trump administration has designated drug cartels as unlawful combatants, invoking legal frameworks similar to those used after 9/11.

3. Venezuela Focus

• Several boats targeted by U.S. strikes are said to originate from Venezuela, and the Tren de Aragua gang is specifically named.
• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is portrayed as a potential target, with speculation about regime change.
• Maduro responds by mobilizing defensive exercises along Venezuela’s coastline, accusing the U.S. of preparing for an invasion.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
They're not great. Questions to them, must say you know this,
but we'll see you later.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
You're listening to the forty seven Morning Update with Ben ferguson.

Speaker 4 (00:14):
Good Monday morning. Nice to have you with us on
the forty seven Morning Update, And we've got one big
story for you. The US military is sitting an aircraft
carrier fighter group to the waters off of South America,
the Pentagon announcing this and making it very clear Donald
Trump and his administration is more than happy to unleash
more strikes against terrorist organizations. But first, did you see

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Speaker 3 (02:55):
Story number one.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
The US is now sending an aircraft carrier to South
America as the Narco strikes are intensifying. This as Democrats
are claiming that, well, we don't really know if the
people on these boats are actually Narco terrorists. Congressman McCormick,
who is a veteran that served as country, set the

(03:17):
record straight on that on Newsmax with credevn Sustra. Listen
to what he said about these strikes, including the submarine
that was blown up earlier this week.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
A lot of this is due with our intelligence gathering capabilities. Obviously,
we don't take out people just based on a hunch.
They get confirmation from real intel on what these boats
have on board, like he knew with the submarine, for example,
had mostly fentanyl. Bad guys. We knew what gangs they
belonged to, and we take out the bad guys. It'd
be very careful in selection. When we used to be

(03:48):
on floats and we'd have an idea what we're going
to take out take down a ship like that, we
couldn't even talk about we had real live intelligence. If
we had any doubt at all, it'd be called off.
So these are confirm targets. These aren't just we hope
they're bad guys.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Why don't we there's no effort to contact them and
board them. I mean the old days you could contact
if they have a flag from Venezuela called Venezuela and
say can I board it? Or from Panama or you
can ask to aboard it. But are we boarding? Are
we attempting to board anyth these? Or we just make
the determination these are bad and boom the.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Guns and we've done it in the past. Two things
can happen. First of all, they can run and they
can get away and go back and they going back
into the international while they're home free. Or they can
shoot back and kill our marines and our sailors or
seals or whomever is trying to board that ship. Now
you have a very dangerous situation. The question is are
you willing to risk lives to take somebody who you
know is smuggling jail? Now you're got to put them

(04:39):
in jail, in our jail system and eventually get them
back there. The expense and the danger to our troops
versus just taking out bad guys who are literally coming
here that have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, more
than all the wars we've ever fought together. When you
start combining all the deaths that have happened from fentanyl
and overdose and drugs in the gang wars and the
inner cities, you look at the immortality morbidity of a

(05:01):
male black man in America, And I got this from
doctor Sache when I was a student at Morehouse. It
declined dramatically with the cocaine wars. With crack cocaine is
only escalated with this sort of warfare that they're basically
having on us.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
You listen to Congress from McCormick there, he's absolutely right,
and he's saying, why would we risk our lives knowing
that these are bad guys that need to be taken out,
Which brings us to the new point. The US military
sending this aircraft carrier to the waters off South America.
The Pentagon announcing this on Friday, in the latest escalation
of military firepower in a region where the Trump administration

(05:37):
has unleashed more rapid strikes in recent days against boats
it accused of carrying drugs just like fetnyl. The Secretary
of War Pete Edseth ordered the USS Gerald R Ford
and its Strike Group to deploy to the US Southern
Command region to quote bolster US capacity to detect, monitor,

(05:58):
and disrupt illicit act and activities that compromise a safety
and prosperity of the United States That coming from the
Pentagon spokesman Sean Pernell. The USS Ford, which has five
destroyers in its strike group, is now deployed to the
Mediterranean Sea. One of its destroyers is in the Arabian

(06:18):
Sea and another in the Red Sea. A person familiar
with the operation told the Associated Press as a Friday,
the aircraft carrier was in port in Croatia on the
Arctic Sea. The person, who spoke on condition of amininity
to discussions of military operations, would not say how long
it would take for the strike group to arrive in
the waters off South America, or if all five destroyers

(06:42):
would make that journey while deploying an aircraft carrier would
surge major additional resources to a region that has already
seen an unusually large US military build up in the
Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela. The latest deployment
and the quickening pace of the US strikes, including one
on Friday, raise new speculations about how far the Trump

(07:03):
administration may go in operations it says are targeting drug trafficking,
including whether it could try to topple the Venezuelan president Maduro,
who already has a massive bounty on his head now
he faces charges of narco terrorism in the United States
of America. There are already more, by the way than

(07:25):
six thousand US sailors and marines on eight warships in
the region. If the entire USS Ford Strike Group arrives,
that could bring nearly four thousand, five hundred more sailors,
as well as the nine squadrons of aircraft assigned to
the carrier. Complicated the situation is also tropical store Melissa,

(07:47):
which has been nearly stationary in the Central Caribbean, with
forecasters warning it could soon strengthen into a powerful hurricane.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Now.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
Hours before Parnell announced the news, the Secretary of War
Headsets said the military had conducted the ten strike on
a suspected drug running boat, leaving six people dead and
bring the death count for the attacks that began in
early September to at least forty three narco terraces. Head

(08:17):
Sets set on social media that the vessel struck overnight
was operating by the trend de Iragua gang. It was
the second time the Trump administration has tied one of
its operations to the gang that originated in a venezuela
in prison. The strikes have ramped up from one every
few weeks when they first began last month to three

(08:40):
this week alone, killing a total of at least forty
three terrasts Now. Two of the most recent strikes were
carried out in the Eastern specific Ocean, expanding the area
where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where
much of the cocaine from the world's largest producers is smug. Quote.

(09:01):
If you're a narco terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere,
we will treat you like al Qaeda. Heads has said
in a post Day or night. We will map your networks,
track your people, hunt you down, and kill you. The
strike drew parallels to the first announced by the US

(09:21):
last month by focusing on the trendy Ragua, which the
Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization and
blame for being the root of the violence and drug
dealing that plagues some of the cities. While not mentioning
the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration now
says at least four of the boats it has hit

(09:44):
have come from Venezuela. On Thursday, the US military flow
a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up the coast of
Venezuela in a show of strength. Merduro argues that the
US operations are the latest efforts to force him from office.
Maduro on Thursday praise security forces and a civilian militia

(10:07):
for defense exercises along some one thousand, two hundred miles
of coastline to prepare for the possibility, he says, of
a US attack, saying in the span of six hours,
one hundred percent of all the country's coastline was covered
in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons
to defend all of Venezuela as coast if necessary, Morduro

(10:30):
said during a government event shown on state television. The
US military presence is less about drugs than sending a
message to countries in the region aligned with the US interest.
According to the International Crisis Group, Senior analysts for the
ANDRES Regent Elizabeth Dickinson, an expression that I'm hearing a
lot of drugs are the excuse, and everyone knows that,

(10:53):
Dickinson said, And I think that message is very clear
in regional capitals. So the messaging here is that the
US is intent on pursuing specific objectives and it will
use military force against leaders and countries that don't fall
in line. That is what the left is obviously trying
to get you to believe. But Headset's remarks around the

(11:14):
strikes have recently begun to draw a more direct comparison
between the war on terrorism that the US declared after
nine to eleven and the attacks and Donald Trump's administration's
cracked down now on the drug traffickers whose drugs are
killing countless Americans. President Trump this month declared drug cartels

(11:36):
to be unlawful combatants and said the US was in
an armed conflict with them. Relying on the same legal
authority used by the Bush administration after nine.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
To eleven, Thank you for listening to the forty seven
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