Trump Denies Report Suggesting US Deployed B-1 Bombers Near Venezuela

Despite Wall Street Journal reports, based on open-source flight tracking data, President Trump said that reports claiming the U.S. military deployed B-1 bombers near Venezuela to intensify military pressure on the South American nation were false.

Two U.S. B-1B Lancer bombers flew a Caribbean patrol today, entering Venezuela’s ADIZ and nearing within 80 km of the coast, briefly switching off transponders in what appeared to be a strike simulation.

The mission follows earlier B-52 and F-35 flights near Venezuela this… pic.twitter.com/Sz3nQNlya2

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 23, 2025

As Aldgra Fredly reports below for The Epoch Times, Trump was responding to a reporter’s question on recent reports claiming that two B-1 Lancer bombers took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on Oct. 23 and headed toward the coast of Venezuela.

The president denied that any such deployment had occurred.

“No, it’s not accurate. It’s false. But we’re not happy with Venezuela for a lot of reasons, drugs being one of them,” Trump told reporters following a roundtable with administration officials at the White House.

Trump also noted that “sea drugs”—referring to drugs smuggled into the United States by sea—have been largely stopped, claiming they are now “like five percent of what they were a year ago.”

But the president warned that drug cartels may shift to land routes as sea-based drug smuggling declines.

“So now they’re coming in by land. And even the land is concerned because I told them, that’s going to be next, you know, the land is going to be next,” he said.

“And we may go to the Senate, we may go to Congress and tell them about it. But I can’t imagine they’d have any problem with it.”

Since September, the U.S. military has conducted lethal strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea that U.S. officials said were carrying illegal drugs to the United States.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Oct. 23 that the U.S. military conducted a “lethal kinetic strike” on a vessel suspected of narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific, killing two suspected drug traffickers onboard.

In a post on X, Hegseth said the vessel was carrying narcotics while transiting along “a known narco-trafficking transit route” in the Eastern Pacific.

He later posted another statement on X, saying the U.S. military carried out a second lethal kinetic strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific, killing three suspects onboard.

No U.S. forces were injured in either operation. The strikes raised the total number of vessel attacks by the U.S. military in the waters near the United States to nine amid rising tensions with Venezuela and Colombia.

“These strikes will continue, day after day. These are not simply drug runners—these are narco-terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities,” Hegseth stated. “We will find them and kill them, until the threat to the American people is extinguished.”

The U.S. military had previously deployed F-35 stealth fighters to a Puerto Rico airbase and warships to conduct operations in the Caribbean, aiming to combat drug trafficking into the United States.

Trump has accused Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro of involvement in drug trafficking, which Maduro and Venezuela’s ruling regime have rejected.

Last week, Trump said he had authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela, citing two main reasons: Venezuela had sent prisoners into the United States and the regime’s involvement in drug trafficking.

“They have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. … They came in through the border. They came in because we had an open border,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Oct. 15.

Venezuela later responded to Trump’s comments, saying they were a violation of international law and an effort to effect a “regime change” in pursuit of oil resources.

“Our Permanent Mission to the U.N. will raise this complaint with the Security Council and the Secretary-General tomorrow, demanding accountability from the United States government,” Venezuela said in a statement released by Foreign Minister Yván Gil on his Telegram account.