Trump says US bombed alleged drug facility in Venezuela. No one knows if it’s true.

Quick note: Thanks for your patience the past week or so as the flu prevented me from publishing The Handbasket. Also just wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ll be on vacation 1/7-1/12, so there will be no new baskets during that time. Thanks for all the love and support.

It started, as so many stories do for me, with a stray social media post from a random account on Sunday. “Trump says this December 26 in an interview with John Catsimatidis that the US destroyed a drug trafficking plant in Venezuela on Christmas Eve: ‘They have a big plant. A building from where the boats leave. Two nights ago we hit them hard.’”

Catsimatidis—sometimes referred to as Cats, for short—is something of a local New York celebrity: An owner of the extreme right-wing local radio station 77 WABC (home of Sid Rosenberg’s show) and barron of arguably the city’s worst grocery store chain, he came into wealth and prominence alongside Trump, and the two are dear pals. So close, in fact, that Trump gave Cats a call on Friday while he was guest hosting for Rosenberg. While the two septuagenarians chopped it up, Cats brought up Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan boats. Trump claimed without evidence that drug traffic from Venezuela is down more than 97% thanks to his efforts and that "everytime I knock out a boat we save 25,000 American lives.” But most shocking of all was this admission: “I don’t know if you read or you saw, they have a big plant or big facility where the ships come from: Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”

Prior to seeing the Bluesky post around 2pm ET on Sunday afternoon, I hadn’t seen or heard anything about a US land strike in Venezuela. Google turned up no results (though that doesn’t mean as much as it used to since their search function has been degraded) and I didn’t see other mentions on Bluesky. Even WABC radio’s write up of Trump’s Friday guest spot didn’t mention his claims about a strike. It wasn’t until I listened to that portion of the call myself that I was able to confirm he actually said it. (I emailed and called WABC radio on Monday to get clarity on what—if true—would be a massive scoop for their station, but have received no reply.)

The New York Times on Sunday night was seemingly the first mainstream outlet to report about Trump’s comments on an alleged strike. “American officials said that Mr. Trump was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela and that it was eliminated, but provided no details,” their story said. “Military officials said they had no information to share, and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment. The White House declined to comment.”

By Monday morning, reports from NBC News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Reuters and other corporate outlets rolled in—but none with any confirmed information beyond what the Times had reported. 

Trump doubled and tripled down Monday afternoon on his claims of a strike in Venezuela during an appearance outside Mar-a-lago alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of all people. When a reporter asked for more information about the alleged strike and if it was carried out by the US military, Trump replied “Well, it doesn't matter. But there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. We hit all the boats and now we hit . . . the implementation area. That is where they implement, and that is no longer around.” 

When pressed again about which US entity carried out the alleged strike—military? CIA?—he replied, “Well, I don't want to say that. I know exactly who it was, but I don't want to say who it was. It was along the shore.”

One possible explanation is that Trump either saw or heard that people online were spreading a rumor without any evidence that a fire at a Venezuelan raw chemical material facility was the result of a possible strike by the US. How the president could see an online rumor about his own country and take it at face value is something beyond my comprehension, but as a man who’s displayed extreme cognitive difficulties in recent months, it’s possible he just got confused. 

A translation of an article from Venezuelan outlet El Nacional sheds some light on the fire at a warehouse belonging to a chemical company called Primazol—and the ensuing misinformation. 

“A fire recently broke out at the Primazol company, located in the Zulia municipality of San Francisco,” El Nacional wrote on Monday. “Following this incident, users on social media began to link the two events and suggested that the company may have been the target of the alleged attack mentioned by Trump.”

The story links to a post from a random X account that says, according to a translation from Spanish, “I wonder if this explosion at ~2am on December 24 in the warehouses of the company Primazol, a company dedicated to the production of chemical products located in the Industrial Zone of the municipality of San Francisco, Zulia state, is the attack that Trump referred to on the Cats & Cosby radio program on December 26.”

El Nacional also referenced posts from El Público TV journalist Jhorman Cruz, who is local to the area near the Primavol facility. A translation of one post says: “It’s prudent to say that we still don’t know what started the fire. The residents didn’t see anything strange, no drones, no cars, no presence of foreigners. Beware of strange hypotheses (...) People were calm and no one mentioned any strange theories.” 

Cruz added that El Público tried earlier to get close to the site of the fire, but were unable to due to firefighters still working in the area.

In a press release issued Monday, Primazol obliquely refuted the rumors without explicitly naming Trump. “We categorically reject the versions circulating on social media that seek to damage the reputation of our founder and the organization,” a translation of part of the release states. “We responsibly clarify that these claims have no connection whatsoever to the incident and do not constitute official or verified information.”

I reached out to Primazol directly about the matter but haven’t received a reply. I also reached out to the White House, the Department of Defense and the House Armed Services Committee but have received no response.

After I posted the audio of Trump’s WABC phone call during which he first claimed a strike in Venezuela, I was surprised by the amount of hand-waving in response. A popular response was that Trump is a serial liar and that he probably just made up the strike story. Another explanation—based on nothing—was that someone on his team showed him an AI video of an explosion and told him it was a US land strike in Venezuela. And yet another explanation was that he was probably just confusing it with the Christmas Day strike on ISIS in Nigeria. In the absence of a concrete explanation, any of those remain possibilities. 

But what struck me most [no pun intended] was the incuriousness and the learned helplessness; the permeation of this idea that Trump’s words and actions are so often inscrutable that trying to divine meaning from them is useless. I think this is wrong. Not only does it let Trump off the hook from explaining himself, but it also lets journalists off the hook from doing our jobs.

If Trump is lying about ordering a land strike on Venezuela, that is important information. If Trump did, in fact, order his first land strike on Venezuela, that is important information. If Trump believes the US carried out a land strike on Venezuela based on social media rumors or his own cognitive deficiencies and his team is running cover for him, that is important information. This isn’t Trump running his mouth about how the economy is really great, actually, and how America is back, baby. No, this is a question of whether or not the US just escalated a war.

Notably, the Venezuelan government has been radio silent since Trump’s radio comments. A story from EL PAÍS on Monday underscored this point: "What is striking in this murky affair is that Caracas has not denounced the attack, or that more information from the ground has not come to light."

As is often the case with a story involving Trump, it’s near impossible to parse fiction presented as fact from actual facts. He is equal parts reckless and stupid, and it’s hard to know which is at play at any given time—if not both. When it comes to the Venezuela facility strike story, either Trump revealed a covert operation or amplified an internet lie. Regardless, we need to know which one it was.