Why Venezuela? Trump's shifting explanations about military buildup

Amid the news that the U.S. carried out a "large scale strike" on Venezuela overnight Saturday and captured the country's leader, Nicolas Maduro, Americans may be wondering why Trump, who promised voters no more wars, would launch a risky ground operation to capture a foreign leader.

So far, Trump and his top aides have offered shifting explanations since Trump’s military buildup in Latin America began earlier this year.

Initially, Trump defended his military operations near Venezuela as keeping drugs out of the US, although experts say the cocaine that passes through Venezuela winds up mostly in Europe while fentanyl is sourced from China.

Trump also accused Maduro of emptying Venezuela’s prisons and “mental institutions” into the U.S., although there’s no evidence of that either. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have settled in the U.S. in recent years due to economic and political instability in their home country.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/why-venezuela-trumps-shifting-explanations-143759048.html