(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on December 17, 2025, shows Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum speaking during her daily press conference at Palacio Nacional in Mexico City on November 28, 2025, and US President Donald Trump looking on during a Mexican Border Defense Medal presentation in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Yuri Cortez | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump suggested in a new interview that the U.S. military could launch land strikes on drug cartels in Mexico.
“We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water. And we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview aired Thursday night.
“The cartels are running Mexico, it’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country,” Trump said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC on the president’s remarks.
Trump’s suggestion comes less than a week after U.S. forces struck Venezuela and captured its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The Venezuelan government has said more than 100 people were killed in the military operation, which came after a monthslong pressure campaign against Maduro.
The Trump administration has carried out 35 known strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, killing 115 individuals, according to The New York Times.
Trump previously has floated the idea of executing attacks on Mexico.
“Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in November when asked if he would consider military action across the southern border.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back on Trump at that time, saying there would be no U.S. military action in Mexico without her permission.
This week, Sheinbaum condemned the U.S. capture of Maduro and reaffirmed her country’s sovereignty.
“It is necessary to reaffirm that in Mexico the people rule, and that we are a free and sovereign country—cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no,” Sheinbaum said, according to Reuters.
The Trump administration has also threatened military action in Cuba, Colombia and Greenland over the last week, prompting some backlash even from within the ranks of the congressional GOP.
The Senate on Thursday took an initial vote to block Trump from further military action in Venezuela.
Five Senate Republicans voted in favor of the measure, known as a War Powers Resolution, indicating it has enough bipartisan support to clear a final vote.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the GOP members to vote in favor of the preliminary measure, said she supported Trump’s removal of Maduro, but also said that further action would require congressional approval.
“I distinguish that from what happens next,” Collins said. “And when the president raises the issue, as he has with not only Venezuela, but Greenland, of military force being used, then it does implicate the War Powers Act and Congress’s constitutional role.”
Correction: Cilia Flores is Nicolás Maduro’s wife. An earlier version misspelled her name.
Read the original article here