Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s “days are numbered,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicted in the midst of a dramatic effort to deliver humanitarian aid to the country.
“I am confident that the Venezuelan people will ensure that Maduro’s days are numbered,” Pompeo told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning.
Pompeo projected confidence one day after Maduro’s regime stymied efforts to deliver food supplies to the country in coordination with opposition leader Juan Guaido — the top lawmaker whom the United States and dozens of other countries have recognized as the interim president of Venezuela. The food deliveries are part of a campaign to expand Guaido’s political support while mitigating the crisis that has driven millions of Venezuelans to seek refuge in neighboring countries.
“The American taxpayers provided several hundred metric tons of food supply, medical kits, hygiene kits that we delivered to Brazil and to Curacao and to Colombia trying to get it to the place that it is so desperately needed,” Pompeo said. “That was our objective yesterday. It’s our objective today. It’ll be our objective tomorrow as well.”
Four people were killed and 285 more were injured in clashes with Maduro’s regime on Saturday, while about 60 members of the Venezuelan military defected to Guaido’s side, according to Colombian officials.
“Some of this violence was clearly of these colectivos, these gangs, while the military wasn’t as certain they wanted to lean into this violence,” Pompeo observed in a separate interview on Fox News Sunday.
Maduro touted his success Saturday. “I am stronger than ever,” he said in a speech from the capital of Caracas, per Bloomberg.“Standing, ruling our homeland, for now, and for many years.”
President Trump’s team is working with Guaido to induce the military leadership around Maduro to abandon him, with the defection of Hugo Carvajal, a former intelligence chief who now sits as a legislator within Maduro’s party, as their highest-profile success to date.
“He was the head of their intelligence and counter-intelligence apparatus for both Chavez and Maduro, so this is kind of as high as it gets in [terms of] having seen and done it all,” a senior administration official told reporters Friday while discussing Carvajal. “And so I think it’s a message for the rest of the Venezuelan military that they have an opportunity.”
Vice President Mike Pence will meet with regional leaders in Colombia on Monday, and could unveil new sanctions on Maduro in light of the clashes over the weekend.
“There’s more sanctions to be had,” Pompeo told Tapper. “There’s more humanitarian assistance I think that we can provide. I think we’ll find other ways to make sure that food gets to the people who need it. And we will. We will ultimately, I believe, and the Venezuelan people will ultimately, I believe, hold accountable those who have done so much harm to the fundamental, basic rights of the people of Venezuela.”
