Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday danced to Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” while urging attendees at a rally to be ready in case of an American attack amid rising tensions between his country and the Trump administration.
He urged supporters to be united and be “ready to smash the teeth of the North American empire if necessary,” The Guardian reported. Maduro carried a sword that belonged to 19th-century Venezuelan politician and South American hero Simón Bolívar as he spoke.
Maduro’s rally took place as the Trump administration announced that the U.S. Coast Guard seized a Venezuelan oil tanker. Coast Guard members aboard a helicopter deployed from the massive USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, landed on the tanker and took control of it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security collaborated in executing the seizure warrant for the tanker. She said the vessel intended to “transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela to Iran.”
It’s unclear what will happen to the oil, with Trump suggesting to reporters that, “Well, we keep it. I guess.”
The Venezuelan government accused the U.S. of committing an act of piracy and that Trump is pursuing a “deliberate plan to plunder our energy resources.”
Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, worry about further escalation in the region. Trump previously warned that the U.S. would take action on Venezuelan soil “very soon.”
“It is needlessly and recklessly escalating a potential conflict,” Blumenthal said after the tanker was seized. “Trump seems to be stumbling into war without any endgame or strategy. He seems to be making decisions without telling the American people, let alone Congress, what his plan is in seizing tankers or killing supposed drug traffickers who come from Venezuela.”
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said the seizure “clearly has the potential to provoke a larger conflict.”
“Is it about narcotics?” asked Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees member Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “Is it about oil? Is it about regime change? There were those questions about what’s really going on here.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has praised Trump’s actions toward her country as “decisive.” She sidestepped answering if she supports a U.S. military intervention to remove Maduro, but said she will one day return to Venezuela whether Maduro’s regime is toppled or if he is still in power.
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