CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday launched what he promised will be a “definitive” escalation of pressure to force the country’s embattled leftist leader from office.
Addressing a giant anti-government rally in Caracas, Guaido — whose claim to be interim president is supported by around 50 nations — kicked off what he called “Operation Liberty,” his plan to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
“Everyone to the streets, let’s start the final phase of the end of the usurpation!” he told supporters, speaking from the back of a pickup truck.
He called for a huge nationwide turnout on Wednesday, and urged his followers to redouble their efforts to maintain pressure in the streets.
“The greatest escalation of pressure we have seen in our history” has begun, Guaido said.
The call comes amid massive blackouts and the collapse of water supplies affecting the nation, further exacerbated a growing political crisis.
The United States meanwhile has stiffened its economic sanctions against Maduro, and one top US official warned Venezuela’s military that it must protect the rights of peaceful protesters.
At the rally, Guaido also warned Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel that the supply of subsidized Venezuelan oil to the Caribbean communist island nation was over.
Venezuela has been sending cheap oil to Cuba in exchange for labor from Cuban doctors and teachers, but Guaido said the oil was actually financing a Cuban intelligence group known as G2 that was cracking down on Maduro opponents in the Venezuelan military.
“The exploitation of Venezuelan oil is over, so Mr.Diaz-Canel... Venezuelan oil will not be used to submit and investigate our military officials” through the G2, he told the crowd.
Pro-Guaido protests drew thousands in rallies across the country on Saturday.
A pro-Maduro counter-demonstration in Caracas, with supporters dressed in red, drew a large crowd that gathered at the Miraflores presidential palace.
“Together, permanently mobilized, let’s keep defending national peace and independence; no more interference!” Maduro tweeted.
Later, he called upon Mexico and Uruguay to relaunch their proposal for dialogue to resolve the crisis without foreign intervention. The two countries had first introduced that idea in January.
Two opposition deputies were detained at an anti-government demo in the western city of Maracaibo, but a few hours later Guaido announced that the two had been released.
Elimar Diaz, a lawmaker who marched in Maracaibo, told AFP the protest there had encountered “brutal repression,” including tear gas canisters dropped from helicopters, the use of National Guard armored vehicles and attacks by members of the pro-government militia, known as “colectivos.”
Diaz said people in Maracaibo had gone “days without electricity” amid “inhumane rationing” by the government.
Maduro Saturday claimed that attacks on electricity infrastructure had been carried out from Chile and Colombia with the support of the US.
The opposition blames a failure to maintain critical infrastructure for the blackouts, which have deprived millions of power.
Facing intense pressure at home and abroad, the Maduro government has sought to weaken Guaido.
The government has stripped his parliamentary immunity, authorized his prosecution for proclaiming himself acting president, and banned him from holding public office for 15 years.
Guaido said earlier this week he feared that he could be abducted by government agents.
Speaking to the pro-government Constitutional Assembly, Maduro’s top lieutenant Diosdado Cabello slammed the US point man on Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, as an “assassin.”
“It is Abrams who should be in prison, condemned in the United States for genocide in Central America,” said Cabello, referring to the US official’s controversial role in the Central American conflicts of the 1980s.
Washington meanwhile kept up the international pressure on Maduro to step down.
Vice President Mike Pence on Friday announced fresh sanctions against 34 vessels belonging to Venezuela’s state oil company and two companies that ship crude to Cuba.
“This is only a first step,” US national security adviser John Bolton tweeted on Saturday in reference to the sanctions.
He cautioned the Venezuelan defense minister in a separate tweet of the official’s “constitutional responsibility to protect innocent civilians who are peacefully demonstrating,” adding: “Do not let the Cubans or the ‘colectivos’ inflict violence against Venezuelan patriots.”
Maduro is supported by the Venezuelan military, China and Russia.
Washington and its allies view the socialist president as illegitimate since he took office in January for a second term following elections widely seen as deeply flawed.
Washington has convened a UN Security Council meeting for Wednesday to discuss the Venezuelan crisis.
Since Venezuela’s massive blackout of March 7, the country has been subject to repeated power cuts, with electricity being rationed outside of Caracas.
The blackouts have knocked out water supplies as well as transport and communications, forcing many people to trim their work days to six hours.
Venezuelans protest as Guaido declares ‘definitive’ escalation
Venezuelans protest as Guaido declares ‘definitive’ escalation
- Addressing a giant anti-government rally in Caracas, Guaido kicked off what he called “Operation Liberty,” his plan to oust President Nicolas Maduro
- He called for a huge nationwide turnout on Wednesday, and urged his followers to redouble their efforts to maintain pressure in the streets
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
