President Donald Trump said the U. S. could be
March 19 (UPI) — WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said the United States could be “a lot tougher” with future sanctions against Venezuela at a Tuesday press conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
As the two leaders decried socialism in the Western Hemisphere, Trump said the United States and Brazil were united in their opposition to the left-wing governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
“The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere, and hopefully has arrived, that twilight hour, in our great country,” Trump said. “The last thing we want in the United States is socialism.”
Trump threatened to use military force against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and reiterated his administration’s demand that the country’s military abandon support for Maduro.
Bolsonaro refused to say whether he supported allowing the U. S. military to conduct operations in Venezuela from a base in Brazil, a move strongly opposed by Brazilian military officials influential in Bolsonaro’s government.
While Brazil’s military would not back a potential U. S. military intervention in Venezuela, the Trump administration would still likely succeed in overthrowing Maduro, according to Fulton Armstrong, a former U. S. national intelligence officer for Latin America.
“They set up confrontation after confrontation with the Maduro government, with hopes that the military would rise up and remove him, and so far, it’s been a pretty systematic failure,” Armstrong said. “So, what they do, like most people do when confronted with failure, is they hit their head against the wall even harder.
