In a recent interview with Axio, President Donald Trump indicated that he would be willing to meet with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Newsmax reported that Trump “who he previously refused to recognize as the country’s leader {Maduro], distancing himself from Juan Guaidó, who he previously supported.”
Trump supported Guaidó after he named himself the interim president of Venezuela at the start of last year. However, Trump now has second thoughts about trying to get rid of Maduro. He is even considering a meeting with the Venezuelan strongman.
When he was questioned about potentially meeting with Maduro during an interview on June 19, 2020 Trump responded:
“I would maybe think about that. … Maduro would like to meet. And I’m never opposed to meetings — you know, rarely opposed to meetings. I always say, you lose very little with meetings. But at this moment, I’ve turned them down.”
He continued, “Guaidó was elected. I think that I wasn’t necessarily in favor, but I said — some people that liked it, some people didn’t. I was OK with it. I don’t think it was — you know, I don’t think it was very meaningful one way or the other.”
This comes a time when rumors have circulated about Trump’s belief that Guaidó was a weak leader. One rumor making waves was that Trump described Guaidó as the “Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela”, which prompted the American president to get cold feet. Trump was referring to the failed Democrat candidate for Texas’s Senate seat in the 2018 election cycle.
Such a move would be more proactive than many of the regime or even direct military intervention proposals foreign policy elites have been floating out there for a while.
