Following the action in Venezuela, the Trump administration is hinting at possible action elsewhere in the region.
In a speech aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening, Trump mentioned Colombian President Gustavo Petro and said Colombia was “also very sick, led by a very sick man.”
Mr. Trump said he had a feeling Petro “wouldn’t be around for much longer,” and when asked if he would also conduct a military operation there, the president replied: “Sounds good to me.”
Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a new dire warning to the Cuban government, a longtime U.S. adversary and one of Venezuela’s key allies and trading partners. Rubio appears on NBC’s “Meet the Press” said he thinks, “You’re in big trouble.”
“I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps will be and what our policies will be right now in this regard,” Rubio said. “But I don’t think it’s a secret that we’re not big fans of the Cuban regime, which, by the way, are the ones who supported Maduro.”
He said Cuban officials visited Maduro in Venezuela before his arrest.
“It was Cubans who were guarding Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards,” adding that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government.
The Cuban government said on Sunday that 32 Cubans had been killed in the US military operation to capture Maduro.
Mr Trump said the Cuban economy, which had suffered for years under a US embargo, was in shambles and would falter even further with the fall of Maduro, who had supplied the Caribbean island with subsidized oil.
“It’s going downhill,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”
-CBS/AP
