Donald Trump’s recent phone call with Nicolás Maduro was far from a routine diplomatic exchange. According to sources who spoke to the Miami Herald, it was a blistering warning from the U.S. president to Venezuela’s authoritarian leader: step down now or face the consequences.
Trump publicly played it cool on Sunday, telling reporters, “I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call.” But behind the scenes, the exchange on 21 November was anything but calm. It reportedly unfolded against the backdrop of a massive U.S. naval deployment off Venezuela’s northern coast — part of a renewed pressure campaign.
According to the Miami Herald, Trump’s message during the call was as direct as it gets: “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now.” He allegedly offered safe passage for Maduro, his wife, and his son, “only if he agreed to resign right away.”
Maduro refused. Instead, he supposedly countered with demands that sounded more like wishful thinking than negotiation: “global amnesty,” immunity from prosecution everywhere, and the ability to surrender political power while still keeping control of the armed forces. Unsurprisingly, none of this gained traction in Washington.
Maduro reportedly requested another call over the weekend after Trump declared Venezuela’s airspace “closed in its entirety,” but, as the Miami Herald put it, “The Maduro government … received no response.” The first call was reportedly arranged with help from Brazil, Qatar, and Turkey — an unusual mix of intermediaries trying to keep the situation from spinning further.
Despite the escalating military posture, many observers doubt the U.S. is actually preparing to follow through with a large-scale intervention. One source with regular contact with senior Venezuelan officials told the Wall Street Journal that “Maduro and most of his cohorts view the US military threats as a bluff.”
Maduro has survived nearly everything thrown at him since 2013: a collapsing economy, rolling mass protests, the Trump administration’s earlier “maximum pressure” push, a 2018 assassination attempt, and a presidential election last year that he’s widely believed to have lost to Edmundo González. Each time, he’s stayed in power.
Still, pressure from Washington isn’t fading. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board urged the administration on Sunday to stay the course, arguing that “deposing Maduro is in the US national interest.” It warned: “If Maduro refuses to leave, and Trump shrinks from acting to depose him, Trump and the credibility of the US will be the losers.”
Other regional leaders are searching for an off-ramp. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has offered Cartagena as a venue for potential talks between the regime and the Venezuelan opposition.
Maduro, meanwhile, is leaning into defiance. In a letter to OPEC published by Venezuelan state media, he accused the U.S. of trying to “appropriate Venezuela’s vast oil reserves – the largest on the planet – through the lethal use of military force.”
With U.S. military assets tightening their presence offshore and diplomatic channels sputtering, the standoff now feels like it’s entering its most volatile stage yet — and the message from Washington, if the reporting holds, couldn’t be clearer: Maduro’s time is up.
