00:00Listen to me, not where just beats the people of the United States,
00:26the party of the Bolivarian Republic.
00:56We're already doing a lot. We've almost stopped. It's about 85 percent stopped by sea.
01:01You probably noticed that people aren't wanting to be delivering by sea,
01:06and we'll be starting to stop them by land also.
01:11The land is easier, but that's going to start very soon.
01:14We'd warn them, stop sending poison to our country.
01:18So the current situation with the U.S. and Venezuela has been building for several months,
01:28certainly with the return of President Trump coming back to office this year.
01:33But what we've seen in addition to more sort of traditional moves or measures the Trump administration has tried to put on regime
01:45that it has had problems with, like Russia, Iran, China, tariffs, sanctions, other diplomatic moves, isolation.
01:55What we're seeing in Venezuela, which is very different, is a fairly significant U.S. military buildup
02:01that is now in place in different parts of the Caribbean and Latin America,
02:08and what seemed like pretty overt threats from President Trump,
02:12warning of possible military action, covert action.
02:16So the U.S. isn't really trying to hide what it may wind up doing to President Maduro in Venezuela.
02:26But this is a very serious pressure campaign.
02:30What we haven't yet seen, though, is the next step in that.
02:33So the things that I would be looking for, and some of them have already happened,
02:47in terms of future indicators of the next phase of the U.S. strategy,
02:52are these very sort of bold statements from President Trump.
02:56And he has warned of both covert action carried out by CIA
03:01and overt military action by the Department of War against President Maduro in Venezuela.
03:09That hasn't happened yet, at least on the overt side.
03:11Now, again, there may be some covert action happening that has not been reported.
03:15But it doesn't seem, even if that's happening, it's not making headlines.
03:19Will there be additional deployments of U.S. military resources in the region beyond the presence of the largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. inventory,
03:32the Gerald R. Ford, which is on station.
03:36There are reports of lots of U.S. military aircraft in different parts of the Caribbean as well,
03:42Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, other places.
03:46There are troops either in the Marines or the Army either at sea in the Caribbean or in other fixed locations or they're moving around.
03:56So there's a lot already in the region.
03:59And if there's even more on top of that, then one would think either that capability is going to be used
04:05or it's all sort of trying to to demonstrate to President Maduro that it's either you leave the regime now
04:15and perhaps dictate some terms that are somewhat agreeable or there will be a full scale military operation to unseat you.
04:25That's a lot.
04:26That's a lot.
04:27We've been working.
04:40We've been working with political authorities, governors, also commanders who have also been pushing.
04:47But Venezuela, for now almost 20 years, has been sort of a sore spot for multiple administrations.
05:00And what we're seeing now, though, is President Trump in his second term just potentially using a different playbook
05:08and perhaps using other tools that other administrations have not in the past.
05:15The parallel I keep going back to is potentially something that would look like the invasion of Panama in 1989,
05:22which involved even more U.S. forces that are in the region right now.
05:25So is that sort of the goal?
05:45Maduro, the U.S. designated and the leader of this foreign terrorist organization.
06:12Why do you want to talk to him if he's the leader?
06:15If we can save lives, if we can do things the easy way, that's fine.
06:18And if we have to do it the hard way, that's fine, too.
06:21Mr. President, do you have a goal?
06:22If you carry on...
06:23I'm not going to tell you what the goal is.
06:25You should probably know what the goal is.
06:27But they've caused a lot of problems.
06:30And they've sent millions of people into our country.
06:32I mean, they were probably the biggest abuser with Trendy, Aragua and all the others that they sent in,
06:40the drug dealers, the drug lords, the people that they sent in, the jailbird.
06:44They opened their jails and prisons and dumped them into the United States.
06:49And we're not happy about it.
06:52So, again, there is recent history for the U.S. to go on to be concerned about the risks of,
06:58OK, you're removing the devil that you know, but what comes next?
07:02And...
07:03So, public support in the U.S. for military action,
07:18at least based on the polling data that I've seen, does not seem to be high.
07:22And this may be another fact for the administration is thinking through.
07:27Because if we are going to go to war against Venezuela to unseat the regime,
07:32that is even very different than the boat strikes that have been happening since September,
07:37which are also controversial.
07:39But I don't think the American public, for the most part, is opposed to those,
07:42as they are, at least based on polling data,
07:46as they are about a full-scale military invasion of Venezuela.
07:51And right now...
07:52They are not indestructible, indestructible,
07:54and not the best of all these times.
07:58This Caracas, defended by this guerrero pueblo,
08:03by these women guerreras,
08:05the aymaras, the Quechuan, the Guaraní,
08:09the State.
08:11All my effort...
08:12...for the victory of Venezuela!
08:1625-25!
Comentarios