The truth behind Trump’s call to Maduro

An op-ed by a friend of DD Geopolitics, Wilmer Armando Depablos, political analyst from Caracas

It was Donald Trump who made public his phone call with President Nicolás Maduro Moros, after the information had already been leaked through The New York Times.

The ultra-right was left stunned after Trump’s offhand admission to reporters at the door of his aircraft — “yes,” followed by “I don’t want to comment,” though he hinted, “I wouldn’t say it was good or bad.” From that moment on, the media operatives, the Western machinery of disinformation, the dirty-war labs and anchors all unleashed a wave of speculation — or more accurately, lies — which is normal for them.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, President Maduro and his government team did not say a single word on the matter. That silence clearly shows that a confidentiality clause existed beforehand, violated once again by the United States, as is its habitual behaviour.

What is certain is that today, 3 December, President Maduro continues to lead the destiny of the nation from the Palacio de Miraflores. The institutions are functioning, the people are going about their usual activities, and the Bolivarian National Armed Forces stand ready to defend the homeland together with the militia.

What Trump and Maduro discussed is something no one knows for sure. What is known is that after the call, the occupant of the White House attempted to isolate Venezuela by air, only to ask President Maduro yesterday to authorise the flights of the “Vuelta a la Patria” repatriation programme. How can this be understood? Who knows, as people in my town would say.

It also emerged that Trump held a meeting with his security cabinet that generated enormous expectations, and which, according to reports, ended with the phrases “let’s kill all those sons of bitches” and “he will go,” both as ambiguous as everything else but entirely in line with the language Trump has accustomed us to.

At the same time, Gallup, the renowned American polling firm, shows a steep and scandalous drop in the popularity of the current president of the United States. We should not forget that domestic polling indicates that 70 percent of Americans reject an intervention in Venezuela. In other words, Donald Trump does not have popular support, nor does he have the support of Congress, which would have to authorise such an intervention under the U.S. Constitution. And as if that were not enough, he faces clear and unequivocal warnings from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, all members of the emerging new world order: do not touch Venezuela.

Today, even several major U.S. media outlets acknowledge that the Tren de Aragua no longer exists because it was confronted and dismantled in Venezuela by the Maduro government, just as the so-called Cartel de los Soles is a fiction, part of a made-for-TV narrative crafted to justify military deployments in the Caribbean. It was Maria Zakharova, the official Kremlin spokeswoman, who invited the U.S. government to begin fighting cartels in New York if it truly wants to combat narcotrafficking, and Senator Bernie Sanders himself urged Washington to look at its own surroundings. Marco Rubio is clear proof that drug-trafficking interests have penetrated the Trump administration, hence the pardon granted to Juan Orlando Hernández, which obviously serves the interests of narcotrafficking.

Trump is not only surrounded by officials who serve the drug trade, but also accompanied by war criminals such as Pete Hegseth, who is today accused internationally of ordering the execution and murder of fishermen.

This wounded and decaying empire has not been able, and will never be able, to defeat a people who have sworn never again to be a colony or neocolony of any power. Let us remember the name of our national anthem: Gloria al Bravo Pueblo. That same brave, free, sovereign and Bolivarian people is today fighting one of the hardest battles in a hybrid war of fourth and fifth generation — a cognitive war that is multiform: economic, where we have already defeated them; financial, where we continue advancing with the Global South; military, where we stand prepared; and international, where we stand accompanied by our allies, including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Venezuela’s oil will never be used as a weapon of war, unlike the dollar and the SWIFT system, which for decades were deployed against entire peoples. The energy of our homeland will accompany the new Global South — the new multipolar and pluricentric world — for the development and wellbeing of the peoples of this rising South, which stands in direct contrast to the declining unipolar world of the G7 in opposition to the BRICS.

Enough of imbalance and asymmetry in international relations. Enough.

Wilmer Armando Depablos
International Analyst, Caracas