Right-wing media outlets have spent August and September agitating for the Trump administration to take military action against Venezuela, including possibly toppling the government of President Nicolas Maduro.On August 8, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin targeting “foreign drug cartels” including the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles, which the administration recently labeled as a “specially designated global terrorist” organization supposedly headed by Maduro. Later that month, Trump directed U.S. warships carrying thousands of Marines and sailors to Venezuelan waters. On September 2, Trump ordered the military to strike a boat in the Caribbean allegedly carrying illicit narcotics, killing the 11 people aboard.Right-wing pundits reacted by defending the legality of the strike even before the White House had offered its official legal rationale. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner asked whether critics of the airstrike were “working against America and for the drug cartels with their support."