Pedestrians walk past destroyed containers at La Guaira port after explosions were heard in Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026.Matias Delacroix/AP
Even some Republican lawmakers criticized the Trump administration’s assertion that it is engaging in a military campaign in Venezuela to block fentanyl trafficking into the US.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is resigning from Congress on Monday following a split from Trump, said on Sunday that the president should target Mexico if he wants to stop fentanyl.
“The majority of American fentanyl overdoses and deaths come from Mexico. Those are the Mexican cartels that are killing Americans,” Greene told NBC’s Meet the Press. “If this was really about narco-terrorists and about protecting Americans from cartels and drugs being brought into America, the Trump administration would be attacking the Mexican cartels.”
Greene compared the capture of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, to the US capturing Saddam Hussein and the war in Iraq, calling it the “same Washington playbook” that only “serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives.”
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexico is the primary mass producer and exporter of fentanyl into the US, while China is a leading manufacturer.
The UN Office of Drugs and Crime World Drug Report from 2025 only considers Venezuela as a minor transit center for cocaine.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) also condemned the Trump administration’s narrative on Venezuelan drugs on Sunday. “Wake up MAGA. VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for,” Massie wrote on X.
But Vice President JD Vance defended Trump’s military operation, arguing that combating cocaine trafficking in Venezuela will weaken cartels.
“If you cut out the money from cocaine (or even reduce it) you substantially weaken the cartels overall,” Vance posted on X. “Also, cocaine is bad too!”
He also weakly maintained the link between Venezuela and fentanyl—“There is still fentanyl coming from Venezuela (or at least there was)”—and acknowledged Mexico’s role in fentanyl and considered it “a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.”
But pinning fentanyl on Venezuela avoids a broader point on health policy. My colleague, Julia Lurie, wrote in April that the Trump administration was using the “name of reducing fentanyl overdoses” to levy tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China and list cartels as terrorist organizations.
The dramatic proclamations gloss over a glaring reality: The administration is slashing funding for state and federal agencies that provide addiction treatment and overdose prevention programs. And these cuts are likely just the beginning.
And Julia was right.
Since then, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which provided coverage to about half of all non-elderly adults with opioid use disorder. Health care subsidies on Obamacare have also lapsed, more than doubling the average cost for health insurance premiums.
Trump’s attack on Venezuela is for himself and even his own party is beginning to realize it.
