{"id":197909,"date":"2026-01-04T23:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T07:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=197909"},"modified":"2026-01-04T23:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T07:05:56","slug":"rubio-this-is-our-hemisphere-and-president-trump-will-not-allow-our-security-to-be-threatened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=197909","title":{"rendered":"RUBIO: This Is Our Hemisphere \u2014 and President Trump Will Not Allow Our Security to be Threatened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;This morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined multiple news programs to discuss the Trump Administration\u2019s decisive operation that successfully apprehended indicted narcoterrorist and illegitimate former Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.\u00a0Secretary Rubio underscored President Donald J. Trump\u2019s ironclad commitment to preventing the Western Hemisphere from becoming a safe haven for drug traffickers, Iranian proxies, or hostile regimes that endanger our national security \u2014 declaring the days of weakness are over and the U.S. will deploy every tool to eradicate these threats from our backyard.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThere\u2019s not a war. We are at war against drug trafficking organizations \u2014 not a war against Venezuela.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007818503202517210\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe don\u2019t have U.S. forces on the ground in Venezuela. They were on the ground for about two hours when they went to capture Maduro\u2026 What the President is saying is very simple \u2014 and that is as President of the United States, he is not going to go around telling people what he\u2019s not going to do.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007824389664882737\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live \u2014 and we\u2019re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007829441938899005\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe first steps are securing what\u2019s in the national interest of the United States and also beneficial to the people of Venezuela, and those are the things that we\u2019re focused on right now. No more drug trafficking. No more Iran, Hezbollah presence there. No more using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007822656159068382\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis was not an action that required congressional approval. In fact, it couldn\u2019t require congressional approval because this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation\u2026 We will seek congressional approval for actions that require congressional approval. Otherwise, they\u2019ll get congressional notification.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007831235091910730\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East, and our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007848190343528817\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interests of the United States. That\u2019s why we\u2019re involved here \u2014 because of how it applies and has a direct impact on the United States.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007820705962795392\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe\u2019ve seen how our adversaries all over the world are exploiting and extracting resources from Africa, from every other country. They\u2019re not going to do it in the Western Hemisphere. That is not going to happen under President Trump. Read our national security strategy. He is serious about it.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007828894104035405\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat we are going to react to is very simple: what do you do? Not what you\u2019re saying publicly, what happens\u2026 Do the drugs stop coming? Are the changes made? Is Iran expelled? Is Hezbollah and Iran no longer able to operate against our interests from Venezuela?\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007839507849064804?s=20\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIt\u2019s running policy \u2014 the policy with regards to this. We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it\u2019s good for the people of Venezuela, it\u2019s in our national interest.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007821006161817788\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe retain all the options we had before this raid and this capture and this arrest\u2026 until such time as changes are made.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007847071080939820\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIn the Biden Administration, they had a $25 million reward for [Maduro\u2019s] capture \u2014 so we have a reward for his capture but we\u2019re not going to enforce it? That\u2019s the difference between President Trump and everybody else\u2026 President Trump did something about it.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007824830352040017\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cUntil they address [the problems], they will continue to face this oil quarantine. They will continue to face pressure from the United States. We will continue to target drug boats if they try to run towards the United States. We will continue to seize the boats that are sanctioned with court orders. We will continue to do that and potentially other things until the things we need to see addressed are addressed\u2026 The number one thing we care about is the safety, security, wellbeing, and prosperity of the United States.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007828360160813335\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMaduro is not just an indicted drug trafficker; he was an illegitimate president. He was not the head of state. I continue to see these media reports referring to him as \u2018President Maduro\u2019 and the \u2018head of state.\u2019 He was not the head of state.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapidResponse47\/status\/2007839038246453746?s=20\">Watch<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;This morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined multiple news programs to discuss the Trump Administration\u2019s decisive operation that successfully apprehended indicted narcoterrorist and illegitimate former Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.\u00a0Secretary Rubio underscored President Donald J. Trump\u2019s ironclad commitment to preventing the Western Hemisphere from becoming a safe haven for drug traffickers, Iranian proxies, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Fullscreen-capture-142026-110054-PM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197911,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197909\/revisions\/197911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/197910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}