Trump threatens Colombia with military action as he reiterates that the US is ‘in charge’ in Venezuela – live | Venezuela
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Trump says US military operation in Colombia ‘sounds good to me’
More now on Donald Trump’s comments about Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s leftwing president: Trump said the country was being “run by a sick man” and accused him of producing and selling cocaine to the US, adding: “He’s not going to be doing it very long.”
According to an audio recording of Trump talking to media aboard Air Force One on Sunday, when a reporter asks if that means there will be a US operation in Colombia, the president says: “It sounds good to me.”
The US and Colombia have had ongoing tensions for months amid the US military build-up in the Caribbean and Petro has been one of Trump’s harshest international critics.
The Colombian leader has said his government has been seizing cocaine at unprecedented rates and last month he invited Trump to visit the country – the world’s largest producer of cocaine – to see government efforts to destroy drug-producing labs.
At the weekend Petro called the US action in Venezuela an “assault on the sovereignty” of Latin America that would lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Petro’s criticism of the US campaign against Venezuela, and its targeting of small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, has infuriated Trump, who on Saturday said the Colombian leader should “watch his ass”.
Key events
Dozens of Cubans killed in US raid on Venezuela, says Havana
Sibylla Brodzinsky
Thirty-two Cubans were killed in “combat” during the US raid on Venezuela, the Cuban government announced on Sunday
A decree issued by the office of President Miguel Díaz-Canel declaring two days of national mourning said the Cubans present in Venezuela “fell after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombing of installations”
Díaz-Canel wrote on X:
Honor and glory to the brave Cuban combattants who died facing terrorists in imperial uniform, who kidnapped and illegally removed from his country the president of Venezuela and his wife.
The Cubans were “carrying out missions in representation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the interior ministry” at the request of Venezuela, according to the decree.
Cuba has long provided security advisers and intelligence agents to Venezuela in support of the Maduro government.
Rodriguez calls for respectful relationship with Trump
Venezuela’s interim leader has reportedly asked Donald Trump for a balanced and respectful relationship.
Delcy Rodriguez has also, as mentioned, held her first cabinet meeting since the US seized leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday.
State channel VTV showed Rodriguez at a table in the Miraflores presidential palace alongside two other key Maduro loyalists, defence minister Vladimir Padrino and interior minister Diosdado Cabello.
Trump says US military operation in Colombia ‘sounds good to me’
More now on Donald Trump’s comments about Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s leftwing president: Trump said the country was being “run by a sick man” and accused him of producing and selling cocaine to the US, adding: “He’s not going to be doing it very long.”
According to an audio recording of Trump talking to media aboard Air Force One on Sunday, when a reporter asks if that means there will be a US operation in Colombia, the president says: “It sounds good to me.”
The US and Colombia have had ongoing tensions for months amid the US military build-up in the Caribbean and Petro has been one of Trump’s harshest international critics.
The Colombian leader has said his government has been seizing cocaine at unprecedented rates and last month he invited Trump to visit the country – the world’s largest producer of cocaine – to see government efforts to destroy drug-producing labs.
At the weekend Petro called the US action in Venezuela an “assault on the sovereignty” of Latin America that would lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Petro’s criticism of the US campaign against Venezuela, and its targeting of small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, has infuriated Trump, who on Saturday said the Colombian leader should “watch his ass”.
Donald Trump is being quoted as saying Operation Colombia “sounds good to me”.
Reuters is also quoting the US president as saying Colombia is run by a sick man and that he won’t be doing that for very long.
We’ll bring you Trump’s exact quotes as we get them.
Donald Trump is reportedly saying he is looking more at getting Venezuela “fixed” than holding an election there right now.
He is also being quoted as saying “we’re in charge” in Venezuela.
More on this as it comes to hand.
As just posted, British cabinet minister Darren Jones – a close ally of PM Keir Starmer – has called for a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela to be reached “quickly”.
Transfer Venezuela power ‘quickly’, says UK minister
A British cabinet minister has called for a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela to be reached “quickly”, after Donald Trump declared the US would “run” the country until a new government took over.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, declined to say whether he thought the American strikes on Caracas early on Saturday were legal, insisting it was for “international courts” to judge, PA Media reports.
The UK was reportedly not informed of the operation that saw Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro captured and flown to New York before it was carried out.
“The United Kingdom was not involved in any way,” Jones told Sky News.
We were not informed of it beforehand. So it’s not for us to judge whether it’s been a success or not. That’s for the Americans to speak to.
The minister and close ally of Starmer added:
I think the important thing now, given the events that have unfolded over the last 48 hours, is that we are quickly able to get to a point where we can get to a peaceful transition to a president in Venezuela that has the support of the people of Venezuela.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appeared to dismiss the idea of imminent elections when asked how soon a vote could take place later on Sunday, telling NBC: “I think it’s premature at this point.”
Asian stocks have opened higher on Monday as investors weighed the impact of Washington’s ousting of Nicolás Maduro.
In early trade the Nikkei in Tokyo was up 1.50% at 51,097 points while South Korea’s Kospi was 2.09% higher at 4,399, AFP is reporting.
Oil prices, meanwhile, recovered from earlier falls while gold moved higher.
Acting Venezuelan president holds first cabinet meeting – report
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, is holding the government’s first cabinet meeting since the weekend removal of Nicolás Maduro, the AFP news agency is reporting.
We’ll bring you more on this as it comes to hand.
González says Maduro’s ouster ‘important but not enough’
Venezuelan opposition figure Edmundo González has said the US’s ousting of President Nicolás Maduro is important but not sufficient to return the country to normal.
“This moment represents an important step, but it is not enough,” he said in a post on Instagram on Sunday from exile in Spain.
Agence France-Presse quoted González as saying the country could return to normal only when “all Venezuelans who have been deprived of their freedom for political reasons are released” and the results of the 2024 election, which he claims to have won, are respected.
Oil prices slip despite Venezuela upheaval
The price of oil has slid in early Asian trade on Monday after the weekend’s events in Venezuela.
The drop comes amid ample global oil supply despite concerns about the political upheaval in Venezuela disrupting shipments, Reuters is reporting.
Brent crude futures fell 34 cents to $60.41 a barrel by 23.08 GMT while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $56.91 a barrel, down 41c.
The US strike on Venezuela to extract President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas at the weekend inflicted no damage on the country’s oil production and refining industry, two sources with knowledge of operations at state oil company PDVSA said at the weekend.
Opec+ had its monthly meeting on Sunday and decided to hold output.
Analysts said there was plentiful oil supply in global markets, meaning any further disruption to Venezuela’s exports would have little immediate impact on prices.
Sibylla Brodzinsky
At the Simón Bolívar International Bridge, which spans the Táchira River, foot and vehicle traffic flowed as normal through the main border crossing between Venezuela and Colombia.
But a day after the extraordinary US capture and rendition of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, there was an air of uncertainty over what comes next.
On the Venezuelan side of the bridge, a member of the Bolivarian national guard said that his instructions from the military top brass had not changed.
“It’s a bit tense but we have been given no new orders,” he said.
Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US would now “run” the country for an indeterminate period of transition, but such claims seemed not to have filtered down to this corner of the country, 640km (400 miles) from Caracas. “Whoever governs us has to be a Venezuelan,” said the man.
In a sign that Venezuelan authorities are also on edge, his commanding officer angrily cut short the conversation and tore a page from a reporter’s notebook before suggesting that she return to the Colombian side.
“Things are complicated,” he said.
Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, said on Sunday that the US wants a leader in Venezuela who will be “a partner that understands that we’re going to protect America” to stop drug trafficking and “terrorists from coming into our country”.
Noem indicated in an interview on Fox News Sunday that the immigration status of Venezuelan nationals living in the US under temporary protected status (TPS) was part of an administration-wide decision-making process that her department would follow.
“Venezuela today is more free than it was yesterday,” Noem said, adding that “every individual that was under TPS has the opportunity to apply for refugee status”. She added: “We need to make sure that our programs actually mean something, and that we’re following the law.”
Four months ago, Noem terminated the 2021 Biden-era designation of TPS for Venezuela, affecting over 250,000 Venezuelans living in the US, after determining it is “contrary to the US national interest”.
Those covered joined around 350,000 Venezuelans stripped of temporary protected status under a previous order.
Edward Helmore
US vice-president JD Vance has addressed the apparent disconnect between the Trump administration’s military operations in Venezuela and justifications based in part of an effort to curb the trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the US.
In a post on X , Vance said he wanted to address “a lot claims [sic] that Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs because most of the fentanyl comes from elsewhere.”
“First off, fentanyl isn’t the only drug in the world and there is still fentanyl coming from Venezuela (or at least there was). Second, cocaine, which is the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela, is a profit center for all of the Latin America cartels. If you cut out the money from cocaine (or even reduce it) you substantially weaken the cartels overall. Also, cocaine is bad too! Third, yes, a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. That continues to be a focus of our policy in Mexico and is a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.”
Outgoing Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene raised the question of why the US was striking Venezuela if part of the purpose was to reduce fentanyl deaths in the US. (The administration said it was moving to list the synthetic opioid as a weapon of mass destruction.)
“The majority of American fentanyl overdoses and death come from Mexico,” Greene said. “Those are the Mexican cartels that are killing Americans. And so my pushback here is if this was really about narco-terrorists and about protecting Americans from cartels and drugs being brought into America, the Trump administration would be attacking the Mexican cartels.”
In his remarks, Vance said he’d seen “a lot of criticism” about oil.
“About 20 years ago, Venezuela expropriated American oil property and until recently used that stolen property to get rich and fund their narco-terrorist activities. I understand the anxiety over the use of military force, but are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing? Great powers don’t act like that. The United States, thanks to President Trump’s leadership, is a great power again. Everyone should take note”.
Maduro’s son vows the ousted president ‘will return’
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, said his father’s supporters are more resolved than ever to support the ousted president, according to an audio shared on social media.
“They will not see us weak,” the younger Maduro said. “The President Nicolás Maduro will return. He will return. It’s been a day of shock, of course, we’re all in shock.”
“But we will take to the streets, we will convene the people, we will unite, we will form a nucleus around our highest political-military command with maximum unity,” he added.
The younger Maduro is currently a member of the Venezuelan national assembly and likely remains in Venezuela.
He was also recently indicted, alongside his father, in the southern district of New York. The indictment, including the younger Maduro, was released on Saturday.
Venezuelan president Maduro had been indicted in 2020 in the same case, alongside other top Venezuelan officials and former Colombian guerrilla leaders. But the indictment released on Saturday is the fourth and latest, accusing Maduro and others of other illegal activities since 2020. The latest indictment also included new defendants, including Maduro’s son and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, who was also abducted and brought to New York.
“History will show who the traitors were,” the younger Maduro said in the audio. “History will reveal it. We will see it. But we need to concentrate on moving the nation forward, raise the flags of Chavez and bring back safe and sound Nicolás Maduro Moros and Cilia Flores.”
