President Donald Trump greets officials before boarding Air Force One at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea on Thursday, October 30, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
Former Army officer Rep. Jason Crow (D-WI) tells CNN that President Donald Trump's use of the military is alarming and absurd, arguing that sending our military into Nigeria would be disastrous.
The Trump administration told lawmakers Thursday that the United States is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and doesn't have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets, at least not right now, CNN's Wolf Blitzer reports.
Crow, a ranking member on the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations in the House Armed Services Committee, says he's worried about what the administration is doing in the Caribbean where they claim to be fighting a war on drugs.
"I'm deeply concernedabout a large military buildupin the Caribbean," he says. "You know, we have aircraftcarrier battle groups goingthere, submarines, destroyers.We have over a tenth of the U.S.naval assets, pre-positioning tothe Caribbean, and there are noclear answers about what thisadministration is doing. This isvery risky stuff."
The Trump administration has actively pursued regime change against Nicolás Maduro's government through a combination of severe economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, covert intelligence operations and recent military buildup in the Caribbean, and Crow says it's a terrible idea.
"We should beout of the regime changebusiness. The last 25 years, ifit taught us anything, the United States shouldn't bepushing to change regimes andnation building. We spent $3trillion doing that, 25 yearsdoing it. It ended up poorly.And I hope that thisadministration will not continueto repeat the mistakes of thepast, but they seem to be on acrash course to do just that, infact," Crow says.
Blitzer asked Crow about the military drawing up plans to address violence against Christians in Nigeria, as Trump has threatened military action against the African nation and ordered the Pentagon to prepare for "possible action" if the Nigerian government does not stop the alleged killing of Christians by Islamist militants.
"I think leading with military and sending our military in that situation would be a disaster. That's what I think," Crow says. "And this is yet another example of the Trump administration seeing a problem that they automatically think they can bomb their way out of this."
Crow says the Trump's foreign policy ignorance is especially dangerous in these tenuous situations.
"You know, Donald Trump doesn't like a situation that, or doesn't see any of these situations, that he doesn't think he can just use the military to fix. And again, I served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan," Crow says.
"We spent over 20 years of our blood and our treasure suffering. Have we learned nothing about leading with military first and not resorting to diplomacy, not resorting to the other tools in our toolbox? This is absurd. It's madness, actually, the extent to which this administration is so quick to just use our military for anything and everything," he added.
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