Flight tracker shows planes avoiding Venezuela airspace after Trump orders 'shutdown'

During his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda was often described as "isolationist" — a major departure from the hawkish conservatism of GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George HW Bush and George W. Bush and the hawkish liberalism of Democratic Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry Truman.

Yet since his return to the White House, Trump has been highly confrontational with Venezuela — from strikes against Venezuelan boats (which he alleges were smuggling illegal drugs to the United States) to reportedly considering military attacks against President Nicolas Maduro's leftist government.

Now, according to The Independent's Lucy Leeson, U.S.-based airlines are making a concerted effort to avoid flying over Venezuelan airspace.

"Flight Radar shows airlines diverting away from Venezuela after Donald Trump told airlines to consider the airspace closed," Leeson reports in a late November article. "Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action 'on land.'"

In a Saturday morning, November 29 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY."