Trump Signals Potential Maduro Discussions Amid U.S. Carrier Deployment to Caribbean
President Donald Trump said Sunday the U.S. “may be having some discussions” with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a potential diplomatic avenue as the U.S. further builds up its military presence near the South American country with the arrival of its most advanced aircraft carrier.
This marks one of the first signs of a possible path toward defusing an increasingly tense situation in the region as the U.S. wages a campaign of deadly strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats off the Venezuelan coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
“We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we’ll see how that turns out,” Trump told reporters on Sunday in West Palm Beach, Florida, before getting on a flight back to Washington. “They would like to talk.”
Trump offered no further details about the possibility of talks with Maduro. When asked what he meant when he said Maduro wants to talk, Trump simply said: “What does it mean? You tell me, I don’t know.”
“I’ll talk to anybody,” he added a few moments later. “We’ll see what happens.”
Venezuela’s government didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. Meanwhile the Venezuelan President has said the U.S. government is “fabricating” a war against him.
The Pentagon said earlier on Sunday that the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, with 5,000 military personnel and dozens of warplanes on board, and its strike group moved into the Caribbean. That added to the eight warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft already sent to the region.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International have condemned the boat strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings of civilians, and some U.S. allies have expressed growing concerns that Washington may be violating international law.
