A day before President Donald Trump is set to address the nation, he releases an ominous social media post warning Venezuela, saying the country is “completely surrounded.”
The president noted that the South American nation is surrounded by the “largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America,” adding that it “will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
He followed the warning telling leaders of the country to “return to the United States of America all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”
Trump called the Maduro regime “illegitimate,” accusing Venezuelan leadership of “using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping.”
The president said for those reasons he was designating the Venezuelan regime as a foreign terrorist organization.
“Therefore, today, I am ordering a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela. The illegal aliens and criminals that the Maduro regime has sent into the United State during the weak and inept Biden administration, are being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace,” Trump wrote. “America will not allow criminal, terrorists, or other countries, to rob, threaten, or any other assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, immediately.”
The post comes on the heels of the U.S. seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which U.S. officials claimed was transporting sanctioned oil. Trump indicated that, eventually, the U.S. would like to take possession of the oil ultimately.
The Trump administration, specifically the Department of War, has been increasing its military presence in the region, including deploying the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier and its carrier strike group in the Caribbean.
The Department of War has been conducting counter-narco operations in the region, striking more than two dozen suspected drug boats off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia.
