Argentine President Javier Milei emphasized his admiration and support for American counterpart Donald Trump in an interview with the British Telegraph on Monday, praising Trump as a peacemaker and clear-minded leader.
Milei also suggested that he would support American military efforts against the illegitimate narco-regime in Venezuela, led by dictator Nicolás Maduro – and, further, that the demise of both the Venezuelan regime and its patrons in Cuba would bring a net benefit to humanity.
President Trump has authorized significant military action against drug traffickers linked to the Maduro regime in the Caribbean, including “Operation Southern Spear” targeting drug-carrying boats believed to be trafficking cocaine. He also announced in December that he would declare the Maduro regime itself a terrorist organization and blockade Venezuela’s attempts to transport sanctioned oil, citing the expropriation of American company properties by Maduro and predecessor Hugo Chávez.
Milei spoke to the Telegraph in the context of that newspaper’s world leader rankings, which placed Milei in third place; the newspaper has yet to reveal who it placed in the top two spots, though Milei was preceded by Syrian jihadist President Ahmed al-Sharaa in fourth place. Milei responded to questions about his assessment of the second Trump administration and his relationship with the American head of state, asserting that he “deeply admires Trump” and praising him for having “managed to end nine wars.” Milei had revealed in October that he nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize during a visit to the White House. This year’s award ultimately went to Venezuelan freedom fighter María Corina Machado, who dedicated her award to Trump.
Milei assessed that Trump’s strength lay in the fact that “he is someone who is very clear that the enemy is socialism.” Milei himself, the first president anywhere in the world to win the position as an explicitly libertarian third-party candidate, has also spent much of his career condemning socialism as a plague that “infects” the world, one of the many arms of what he refers to as “collectivism” that also includes communism, social democrats, and other variants.
“Mr. Milei, somewhat unsurprisingly, supports possible American airstrikes on Venezuela as Mr. Trump ramps up pressure on Nicolas Maduro, its president,” the Telegraph observed, referring to Maduro incorrectly as the president since he lost the 2024 presidential election.
Milei explained the problem presented by Venezuela is a “geopolitical” issue involving the nefarious influence of China and Russia in the Western Hemisphere.
“The discussion today is not about globalisation, the discussion is geopolitical. There is a bloc that is China and its satellites. There is another one that is Russia and its satellites,” he noted. “And there is another that is the U.S., trying to ensure that their influence area — their bloc of satellites — is all of the American continent.”
“Maduro is someone who has used the state resources to infect all of the continent with communism,” Milei asserted, adding “The world would be a better place without Venezuelan communism and if, fundamentally, the Cuban version were to end, the world would be a better place also.”
Milei’s comments follow an explicit threat on December 16 by Trump against the illegitimate Maduro regime.
“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on his website, Truth Social, at the time. “Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS.”
“The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping,” Trump continued.
At press time, the U.S. has publicly confirmed the seizure of two Venezuelan oil tankers. President Trump also claimed during a radio interview on Friday that U.S. forces “knocked out” a drug facility, presumably in Venezuela.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump told WABC’s Sid and Friends in the Morning fill-in host John Catsimatidis. “Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
The facility was reportedly in Venezuela. The Maduro regime has not at press time confirmed, or even addressed, the alleged strike.
Milei’s support of these actions is increasingly the norm among Latin American leaders. In neighboring Chile, this month’s presidential election yielded a landslide victory for conservative President-elect José Antonio Kast, who told reporters during a visit to Buenos Aires after the election that he would also support a military ouster of Maduro.
“Clearly we cannot intervene in that because we are a small country,” Kast observed, “but if someone is going to do it, have it be clear to them that they would solve for us and for all of Latin America, for all of South America, a giant problem.”
Kast added that other South American leaders “all are fully conscious that the situation being lived through in Venezuela is unacceptable.”
The most high-profile exceptions in the opposition to Maduro are the leftist leaders of Brazil and Colombia, Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro. Even with them, however, Maduro has lost some clout. The notoriously mercurial Lula reportedly burned bridges with Maduro in late 2024, allegedly sabotaging Venezuela’s bid to become a member of the anti-American BRICS coalition. While previously offering Maduro public support, Lula reportedly objected to Maduro failing to publish vote tallies for the 2024 sham presidential election. Lula foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim later told reporters that Maduro had promised to publish the vote tallies but failed to, creating a “breach of trust” that offended Lula.
In Colombia, Petro had consistently objected to opposition against Maduro, from the United States or elsewhere, until December, when Maduro publicly attempted to command the Colombian Armed Forces to fight America. Petro was forced to issue a public comment clarifying that the leader of Venezuela has no military authority over the Colombian military.
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