Handout/Reuters
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused President Trump of running an “extremist Ku Klux Klan government” with “bad” advisers who just want to seize the country’s oil. “Everything that the United States government has done has been doomed to failure," Maduro said in an interview with ABC News. “They are trying to fabricate a crisis to justify political escalation and a military intervention in Venezuela to bring a war to South America.” When asked if he fears Trump, Maduro said he does not fear the U.S. president but fears the men around him. He said National Security Adviser John Bolton was an “extremist and expert of the Cold War,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was a “CIA agent that has an antiquated scheme of old intelligence from the Cold War,” and Vice President Mike Pence was a “man that does not know world politics[.]” “I think these people surrounding President Trump are bad and advising him on Venezuelan policies are bad,” Maduro said. “And I think that at one point, President Trump will have to say stop, we have to see what happens with Venezuela, and change his politics.”