President Donald Trump gave a fiery interview to Politico in which he ridiculed European leaders as “weak” and “politically correct,” claimed Europe is “falling apart,” and refused to rule out a U.S. ground invasion of Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro.
Key quotes from the interview:
On European leaders opposing his Russia-Ukraine peace outline:
“I think they’re weak… they’re trying so hard to be politically correct. I think they don’t know what to do. Europe doesn’t know what to do.
On Maduro’s future:
When asked how far he would go to oust the Venezuelan president, Trump replied, “His days are numbered.”
On possible military action:
Trump explicitly declined to take a ground operation off the table and said he is also weighing strikes against drug-cartel targets in Mexico and Colombia.
The interview comes one day after the U.S. deployed the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group to the Caribbean, a move that prompted Venezuela to declare a heightened military alert on Sunday.
At the same time, the New York Post reported that the Trump administration has quietly floated a diplomatic off-ramp: Maduro could go into exile in a Gulf state (reportedly Qatar is the leading candidate). Sources say Trump personally raised the idea in a recent phone call with Maduro, who responded with a list of conditions he would require before considering the offer.
The Venezuelan crisis has rapidly re-emerged as a top Trump foreign-policy priority in his second term, with the White House linking the Caracas regime to both regional drug trafficking and support for Iran-backed networks.
