How far will Trump go in his 'war' with Venezuela?
Americast
BBC
4.2 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s going on between the United States and Venezuela? The Trump administration has been defending its seizure of an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast. In a dramatic video shared by the US Attorney General, armed camouflaged soldiers are shown swinging down ropes from low flying helicopters, and running along the vessel’s decks.
The US claims the tanker is used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran in an "illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations". The Venezuela government in response has called the seizure blatant theft, claiming Trump is after the country’s rich oil and energy resources.
In this episode, Sarah and Justin unpack how far Donald Trump is willing to go in his ongoing campaign against the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. In recent months, the US president has accused Maduro of “forcing” criminals into the US and facilitating drug smuggling, which Maduro denies. And this week, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended the killing of over 80 people in US military strikes on alleged drug boats as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere”.
The Americast team also look at how this fits in with other South American countries, with Trump recently offering Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández a ‘full and complete pardon’.
Presenter: Justin Webb, and Sarah Smith
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This episode was made by George Dabby with Alix Pickles and Grace Reeve. The technical producer was Michael Regaard. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's going on between Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro, the leader of Venezuela? |
| 0:10.3 | Indeed, between the United States and Venezuela as a nation. |
| 0:14.4 | The US has now seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, a huge one with all the oil, which they're not intending to give back, |
| 0:21.7 | is that the first step towards proper military action against Venezuela? |
| 0:27.8 | And how much does that comport with the wider Trump view of the outside world? |
| 0:33.1 | Welcome to AmeriCast. |
| 0:37.2 | AmeriCast from BBC News. |
| 0:40.2 | When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. |
| 0:43.7 | Happy to lick your boot, sir. |
| 0:45.5 | We are the sickest country in the world. |
| 0:48.0 | Oh, dear. |
| 0:48.8 | Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? |
| 0:51.6 | Of course the president supports peaceful protest. |
| 0:53.6 | What a stupid question. |
| 0:54.6 | Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? |
| 1:03.3 | Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. |
| 1:06.1 | And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. |
| 1:09.9 | And we should say it's 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday here in the U.S., so it's three in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And we should say it's 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday here in the US, so it's three in the afternoon with you then, Justin, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. That much I can confirm. Not much else, but I can certainly confirm that, because I was up early this morning doing my day job, but I've come in, bleary-eyed back to the BBC because we've got a lot to talk |
| 1:29.3 | about. And it's absolutely fascinating. And it's about a place as well, which is a place that |
| 1:33.9 | we've both been to and both much loved when we were there. Yeah, that's right. We're going to be |
| 1:38.9 | focusing on Venezuela. The latest news is that last night on Wednesday, the US government released a video |
| 1:46.5 | of US forces basically seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker. And the pictures are remarkable. I mean, |
... |
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