President Donald Trump will meet with key members of his Cabinet on Monday and his national security team tonight at the White House to analyze the next steps on Venezuela according to sources told CNN, while the US government intensifies its military pressure campaign for Nicolás Maduro to leave power.
The meeting, which according to CNN is scheduled for 5 pm Washington time (7 pm in Argentina) in the Oval Office, will be attended by Secretary of War (former Defense) Pete Hegseth; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine; Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio; Chief of Staff Susan Wiles and Deputy Chief Stephen Miller, among others.
The meeting, which does not appear on the official White House agenda, It happens in the midst of strong tension between the Trump government and the Maduro regimewhom the United States accuses of leading the Cartel of the Suns, an organization that has been declared terrorist and that according to authorities expands military options for an offensive in Venezuela.
President Trump arrived on Sunday night from his summer residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where he had been since Tuesday night to celebrate the long Thanksgiving weekend.
During his little vacation it turned out that had had a telephone conversation, apparently on November 21, with Maduro. In it, according to the Miami Herald, Trump gave the Venezuelan an ultimatum to leave power immediately, but Maduro refused, demanding a “global amnesty” for him and his allies.
On Sunday, the president confirmed that the call had taken place, with a vague response to reporters: “I wouldn’t say it was good or bad, it was a phone call.”
The US government has been increasing pressure on Venezuela to the maximum with attacks on vessels that supposedly transport drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing more than 80 people with missiles. It has also stationed the largest and most modern aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald Ford, plus destroyers, submarines and warplanes in the area, in an offensive called “Operation Southern Spear,” which includes 15,000 troops.
The president also said last week that the United States would stop Venezuelan drug trafficking over landin addition to sea, “very soon.”
Additionally, over the weekend, the president issued a broad directive on his social media warning airlines, pilots and criminal networks to avoid Venezuelan airspace. However, on Sunday he told reporters not to make too much of the announcement.
The Oval Office meeting comes as lawmakers They continue to question the legality of the US attackss against vessels that supposedly traffic drugs in the region. The legality of the attacks has been questioned, as the United States is not officially at war with Venezuela. The Washington Post reported this weekend that Defense Secretary Hegseth gave the order to attack a ship again after verifying that an initial attack had not killed everyone on board.
Asked by the press on Sunday, President Trump said he has “great confidence” that Hegseth did not give a verbal order to kill all the crew on board. He said the secretary had told him he had not given the order. “And I believe him, one hundred percent.”
Republican and Democratic legislators expressed serious concerns about this issue, some even pointing out which could be a “war crime”. “The law is clear,” said independent senator Angus King. “If the facts are, as has been alleged, that there was a second attack specifically to kill survivors in the water — that is an outright war crime. It is also murder.”
King, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, He said Congress would seek to interview “people along the chain of command.”
“The question is, what order did the secretary of defense give and how was it carried out? And we’re going to talk to people, as I say, from the top, all the way to the top of the chain of command and all the way down to the people who actually unleashed that attack,” he said.