Humberto Fontova, who fled Cuba in 1961 and has since written several books on that regime, says one of the rogue governments that will require Donald Trump's attention is Venezuela, where strongman Nicholas Maduro was recently sworn in for another term.
Maduro has ruled the repressive regime since the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013. And despite significant evidence that he did not actually win re-election last July, the National Electoral Council, which he controls, declared him the winner.
After what he called a sham election in 2017, then-President Trump said he would not rule out a military option to confront Maduro, and he refused to recognize him as the democratically elected leader. Now, political observers are wondering what Trump might do this time.
"This is going to be a whole new ball game," Fontova suggests. "We've got Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. My goodness, he is a major enemy of the Castro regime and the Maduro regime. The European Union has condemned them. The European Union is not always in lockstep with the U.S., especially with Republicans, but they refuse to recognize Maduro as a president."
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at the Washington Stand, a publication of the Family Research Council. He recently published a column entitled "Venezuela Dictator Will Be Another Headache for Trump."
"I think that Venezuela's been a difficult situation for America for decades because it's run by a left-wing socialist regime that's kind of run its economy into the ground. It's increasingly become clear that it is not a legitimately elected government so in Trump's first term he refused to recognize Maduro and recognized the opposition leader as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela instead," he said.
Arnold says following Trump's first term the U.S. basically didn't challenge Maduro in a four-year hiatus of normal relations.
"America did not strongly resist Venezuela. Biden went to them begging for oil at some point. And so the problem is left unresolved, and it's just another foreign policy disaster of the Biden administration that Trump is going to have to deal with in his next term."
Sanctions ahead?
With Trump back in office, Fontova expects to see some serious sanctions imposed on Venezuela, whos government is believed to be working with vicious gangs and where Maduro has imprisoned 10 U.S. citizens.
Though it might not be immediate, "Maduro's going to face some serious trouble," he says.
Comments from Joshua Arnold were added following a later interview.
