Susie Wiles’ recently published Vanity Fair interviews stand out for many reasons. But near the top of the list is what the White House chief of staff said about Venezuela

After all, this is about killing people on the high seas and potentially drifting toward war with another country—and Wiles suggested the administration has concealed what’s really driving it.

He wants to keep on blowing boats up until [Venezuela’s Nicolas] Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles said of Trump.

That is not how the administration has publicly framed its strikes on alleged drug boats. Officials have insisted the attacks are meant to stop drugs from reaching the United States, not to pressure Maduro. And they have largely sidestepped the idea of regime change in Venezuela, even as President Donald Trump has said the leader’s days “are numbered.”

Yet Wiles was saying—back as early as November—that these pieces were connected and that the real objective was to bring Maduro to heel.

Shifting rationales for actions like these are not a minor issue. You do not have to look far into modern history to see how catastrophic it can be when the United States heads toward war on misleading grounds. And yet the administration has shown remarkably little discipline in offering anything resembling a coherent, consistent public explanation.

n fact, Wiles’ remark wasn’t the only messaging shift that surfaced this week. So it’s worth walking through the clearest examples of how the administration’s rhetoric has evolved.

The stated purpose of the boat strikes

The administration has been emphatic that these boat strikes—deemed illegal by many experts—are about protecting Americans from drugs. Officials have labeled targets “narco-terrorists” and treated them as deserving of summary execution without due process.

“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America,” Trump said when he posted video of the first strikes in early September. “BEWARE!”

A week later, Fox News asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to describe the mission.

Core national interest, the safety of the American people, stop the killing, stop the poisoning of the American people,” Hegseth said. “It’s as simple as that.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt likewise presented it as a drug issue and a matter of “securing our maritime borders.”

Wiles’ account to Vanity Fair casts the strikes in a very different light.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles said. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”

Where the first targeted boat was allegedly headed

If you are going to kill people without due process, you had better be certain about who they are and what they are doing. But even regarding the strike we know the most about—the first one—the administration has struggled to maintain a consistent story.

On September 2, the day of the strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the boat was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean.”

The next day, Trump said it was coming to the United States, while Rubio revised his statement to say it “was headed towards, eventually, the United States.”

Then, this month, reporting revealed that the first strike left survivors who were later killed—raising the specter of a potential war crime—and the administration faced renewed pressure to explain what happened. CNN reported that the officer who oversaw the mission, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, told lawmakers in briefings that the boat was actually bound elsewhere: it was expected to link up with a larger vessel headed for Suriname, on South America’s northern coast.

That matters for more than one reason. It suggests the administration either did not know—or did not disclose—the full picture about the boat’s route. It also matters because Suriname is typically a transit point for drugs headed to Europe, not the United States.

The shifting rationale for threats against Venezuela

As with the boat strikes, the administration initially argued its pressure campaign against Venezuela—including Trump’s repeated threats of land strikes—was primarily about countering drug trafficking.

But that explanation has an obvious weakness: Venezuela is not a major hub in the drug trade compared with neighboring countries. If drugs are truly the primary concern, it is difficult to justify focusing on Venezuela first.

Here again, subsequent developments and the administration’s own commentary cut against the original justification—and not only because of Wiles.

The administration has also pointed to Venezuela supposedly sending criminals and other dangerous people to the United States. Two weeks ago, Trump cited Venezuela having “sent us killers, murderers … drug dealers at the highest level … [and] gang members and people from their mental institutions.”

And after initially minimizing other possible motivations—such as oil and regime change—the administration now appears to be acknowledging them more openly.

For instance, after Colombian President Gustavo Petro suggested last month this was really about oil, a State Department spokesman responded by emphasizing the administration’s “counter-drug operations in the Caribbean and its commitment to protecting Americans from the Maduro regime’s deadly poison.”

But in the weeks since, the administration has seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast—and now Trump and others have begun talking about oil frequently.

On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he wanted to reclaim “the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us,” apparently referencing Venezuela’s nationalization decades ago of an oil industry that the United States and others helped develop.

“They took our oil rights,” Trump added elsewhere. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out and we want it back.”

The administration’s posture on potential regime change has also evolved.

Rubio and Hegseth each declined to embrace that idea directly when asked earlier this year and after the first boat strike, respectively, and other officials likewise avoided taking a firm stance.

Trump, too, initially played down regime change as an objective. On September 5, he said, “We’re not talking about that.” By September 18, he said there had been no discussions about regime change in Venezuela.

But Wiles’ remark suggests that, just a month and a half later, pressuring Maduro—effectively a regime-change outcome—was essentially the point.

And Trump leaned further into that idea in a Politico interview this month. Asked whether he wanted Maduro out, Trump said, “His days are numbered.”

What it all adds up to

It is possible that the administration’s objectives shifted over time, including on something as consequential as regime change. But a more skeptical interpretation is that the administration downplayed or obscured its true goals because those goals are politically unpopular. “Regime change” remains loaded in American politics, and “war for oil” is likely even harder to sell.

“Stopping drugs” is a cleaner political message—at least to the extent the administration can make it stick.

Two recent polls show the boat strikes are unpopular by double digits. And a Quinnipiac University poll on Wednesday found voters opposed military action in Venezuela by a 63%–25% margin.

The administration has plainly struggled to persuade the public on both fronts, and the lack of transparency and message discipline is a major reason why. Trump is known for tossing out ideas and testing reactions, often repeatedly. But that is an exceptionally reckless way to build a case for war.