President Donald Trump confirmed to reporters that he spoke with Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro over the phone on Sunday.
President Donald Trump confirmed to reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One that he spoke with Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro over the phone.
“I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” President Trump said when asked about a report published Friday by the leftist publication the New York Times, which has published Maduro as a contributor, stating that Trump had recently spoken with Maduro.
While President Trump did not disclose details on the call, he stressed, “I wouldn’t say it went well or badly. It was a phone call.”
President Trump’s remarks come hours after he wrote in a Truth Social post that the airspace around Venezuela should be considered closed amid rising tensions between both countries over the Venezuelan government’s active role in trafficking drugs to the United States.
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” President Trump wrote.
Asked by reporters why the airspace above Venezuela should be considered closed, President Trump said, it is “because we consider Venezuela to be not a very friendly country.”
President Trump continued:
They send millions of people, really, and probably a number in excess of that. And a lot of those people shouldn’t be in our country, from jails, from gangs, from drug dealers, from all of the people that came into our country, shouldn’t have been in our country, causing a lot of problems — and drugs.
When asked if his warning meant that an airstrike is “imminent,” he stressed, “Don’t read anything into it.
