{"id":195055,"date":"2025-12-30T07:36:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T07:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-says-us-knocked-out-facility-was-there-a-venezuela-strike-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T07:36:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T07:36:23","slug":"trump-says-us-knocked-out-facility-was-there-a-venezuela-strike-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-says-us-knocked-out-facility-was-there-a-venezuela-strike-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says US 'knocked out' facility. Was there a Venezuela strike? – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> said the United States on Dec. 24 “knocked out” a facility, leaving unanswered questions about whether the military had launched its first on-land strike in Venezuela<\/a>, which Trump has been threatening to attack for months.
“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out,” Trump said in a Dec. 26 interview<\/a> on WABC, a New York City-based radio station. Trump did not elaborate on where the facility was.
Asked about the comment on Dec. 29, Trump told reporters the U.S. had hit an “implementation area” where drugs are loaded onto boats, but he gave no more details on the location or timing of the strike.
“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” he said. “We hit all the boats, and now we hit the implementation area.”
A strike on Venezuelan territory would constitute a significant escalation of Trump’s ongoing pressure campaign<\/a> to oust Venezuelan President Nicola\u0301s Maduro. Since September, the Trump administration has launched dozens of strikes on boats that it has accused, without providing evidence, of carrying drugs.
More than a hundred people have been killed in the strikes, including some Venezuelans. The first strikes were located in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela. In recent months, they have moved to the eastern Pacific.
The Pentagon referred USA TODAY to the White House, which did not immediately return a request for comment. The Venezuelan government has not commented publicly.
Trump’s comment set off swirling rumors after local news<\/a> reports and videos<\/a> on X circulated of an explosion at an industrial zone in Maracaibo, a city in northwestern Venezuela. Primazol, a chemical production company, said<\/a> in a public statement that a warehouse it owned in the area had caught fire in the early hours of Dec. 24, and in a later statement<\/a>, that it “categorically rejects” the rumors on social media.
Since the boat strike campaign began, Trump has regularly threatened to strike targets<\/a> on land. Legal experts say that the boat strikes are illegal<\/a> and that despite the Trump administration’s claims, Venezuela is not a major source<\/a> of deadly drugs.
In addition to the boat strikes, the Coast Guard has also seized two oil tankers<\/a> off the coast of Venezuela, and it is pursuing a third that refused to be boarded. Trump has declared a “complete blockade” on sanctioned oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil.
This story has been updated with new information.<\/em><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump said the United States on Dec. 24 “knocked out” a facility, leaving unanswered questions about whether the military had launched its first on-land strike in Venezuela, which Trump has been threatening to attack for months.“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-195055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}