The American president, Donald Trump, confirmed this Sunday that he had a telephone conversation last week with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, although he did not want to give details about it.
“I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” he responded when questioned about the news of the call, published by several American media.
“I wouldn’t say it was good or bad. It was a phone call,” he added. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had reported on the conversation.
Trump has also referred to Saturday’s publication on his social networks in which he announced that he considered Venezuelan airspace “closed”, which was interpreted as a possible indication of a US attack.
However, Trump has rejected this argument. “Do not draw conclusions from that,” he asked. The warning is due to the fact that “we consider that Venezuela is not a very friendly country.”
Trump declared that the airspace “over” Venezuela “and its surroundings” has been completely “closed” in one more step towards a possible land invasion of the country in the same week that the North American president spoke clearly about his intention to enter Venezuelan territory to begin arresting drug traffickers, especially taking into account the accumulation of his military personnel around the area.
“To all airlines, pilots, drug traffickers and human traffickers: we ask you to consider that the airspace over Venezuela and its surroundings will remain completely closed,” the US president announced on his Truth Social platform.
On the other hand, the president has rejected that his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, had ordered a second attack against an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea earlier this year, after the first one did not cause the death of all the crew.
“He said he didn’t say that and I believe him 100 percent,” Trump stressed in statements aboard Air Force One reported by CNN. “First of all, I don’t know if that happened, and Pete has said that he didn’t want to (attack them); he didn’t even know what people were talking about,” he argued, promising that his Administration will investigate it but that he “wouldn’t have wanted” the death of the two alleged traffickers “or a second attack.”
Subsequently, asked if he believes there was not a second attack, Trump responded: “I don’t know; I’m going to find out. But Pete has said that he did not order the death of those two men,” in reference to the attack on a ship on September 2, when the US Armed Forces had supposedly carried out a second attack after verifying that the first had not killed all the people on board. ‘The Washington Post’ has even published that the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, ordered “everyone to be killed.”
Hegseth responded to this information on Friday and assured that this attack was “legal under both United States and international law.” The news is “false, inflammatory and pejorative” and seeks to “discredit our sensational warriors who fight to protect the homeland,” according to the head of the Pentagon. This was the first in a series of attacks that have so far claimed more than 80 lives in the Caribbean and Pacific.
