United States President Donald Trump is planning “potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,” Conservative US Senator Lindsay Graham told television network CBS.

In an interview with Face the Nation, Lindsay said that Trump has decided that Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro “is an indicted drug trafficker, that it’s time for him to go, that Venezuela and Colombia have been safe havens for narco-terrorists for too long.”

President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia, so there will be a congressional briefing about the potential expanding from the sea to the land. I support that idea, but I think he has all the authority he needs.

US Senator Lindsay Graham

Lindsay’s threat comes days after Trump told press that “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, okay?” when asked about a possible war with Venezuela.

We’re just gonna kill them, you know? They’re gonna be like dead.

US President Donald Trump

Since early September, the US military has killed at least 43 people in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean in what the US president has called attacks on “narco-terrorists.”

At least one of the victims of these extrajudicial attacks was a Colombian fisherman with no ties to drug trafficking, according to his family.

The drone strikes have escalated ties between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who was accused of being “an illegal drug leader” by his US counterpart.

The US Department of the Treasury said Friday that it had put Petro, some of his family members and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti on the sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Throughout his decades-long political career, investigations led by the Colombian President helped put many dozens of politicians with ties to drug trafficking paramilitary groups in prison.