Things have been rather frosty between the U.S. and Venezuela of late. The Trump administration has been targeting drug smuggling vessels, many of which originate from Venezuela, and the U.S. has been pouring military assets into the Caribbean. The State Department designated the South American country’s notorious Tren de Aragua prison gang as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in February.
In October, President Trump issued a savage verbal takedown of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, stating:
“He has offered everything. He’s offered everything. You’re right. You know why?” Trump replied. “Because he doesn’t want to f*** around with the United States.”
But on Sunday evening, as he spoke to reporters from the airport in Palm Beach, Florida, ahead of his return to the White House, the president hinted that there may be some discussions with Venezuela in the offing.
Asked by a reporter whether there were any updates on Venezuela, Trump initially said, “No, no update on Venezuela.”
In follow-up, the reporter asked about the administration’s impending designation of yet another Venezuelan cartel as an FTO and whether that would enable the administration to target Maduro’s assets or infrastructure. Trump replied:
“It allows us to do that, but we haven’t said we’re going to do that. And we may be discussing — we may be having some discussions with Maduro. And we’ll see how that turns out. But they would like to talk.”
If the aim here has been to put sufficient pressure on the Maduro regime to bring them to the table and force some concessions out of them, it appears it may be working. What any such discussions might look like, of course, remains to be seen.
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