{"id":10862,"date":"2025-11-26T14:21:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T09:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=10862"},"modified":"2025-11-26T14:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T09:21:30","slug":"trump-leaves-door-open-to-talks-with-venezuelas-maduro-amid-us-military-buildup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/uncategorized\/trump-leaves-door-open-to-talks-with-venezuelas-maduro-amid-us-military-buildup\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump leaves door open to talks with Venezuela\u2019s Maduro amid US military buildup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON<\/strong>: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he remains open to speaking with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, despite Washington\u2019s recent decision to designate him as the leader of a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll see, but we\u2019re discussing,\u201d Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled from Washington, DC to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday, when asked if he will talk to Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asked why he still wants to talk to Maduro despite designating him as the leader of a foreign terrorist organization, Trump responded: \u201cIf we can save lives, if we can do things the easy way, that&#8217;s fine. And if we have to do it the hard way, that&#8217;s fine too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pressed on his objectives for any possible talks, he suggested that the answer was obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou should probably know what the goal is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ve caused a lot of problems, and they\u2019ve sent millions of people into our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump claimed that Venezuela had been \u201cthe biggest abuser\u201d among countries that, according to the administration, transferred criminals to the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey sent in the drug dealers, the drug lords\u2026the jailbirds. They opened their jails and prisons and dumped them into the United States, and we\u2019re not happy about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The US on Monday formally designated the Venezuela-based Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tensions between the US and Venezuela have been on the rise since Trump in August ordered a military deployment in the Caribbean with the aim of attacking drug cartels and stopping drug trafficking routes, which are linked to Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Caracas maintains that what is being sought is regime change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since early September, the US military has carried out a total of 21 strikes on vessels it claimed were loaded with drugs, killing 83 people, and Trump has signaled that he could attack alleged drug trafficking targets on the ground in Venezuela.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he remains open to speaking with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, despite Washington\u2019s recent decision to designate him as the leader of a foreign terrorist organization. \u201cWe\u2019ll see, but we\u2019re discussing,\u201d Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled from Washington, DC to Florida for the [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}