President Donald Trump will demand that Nicolas Maduro leave power during a speech in Miami directed at two audiences: the generals keeping Venezuela’s authoritarian leader in office, and the tens of thousands of Venezuelan expatriates who may be key to the president winning Florida in 2020.
The remarks at Florida International University on Monday afternoon, in the heart of this immigrant community, come weeks after National Assembly leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president and just days after the U.S. imposed new sanctions on five additional Maduro associates.
Guaido on Jan. 23 declared himself the country’s leader until a free election can be called. He asked the Venezuelan military to help him, and said Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.
The U.S. has recognized Guaido and is pushing Venezuela’s military to get behind him as part of an international effort to force out Maduro. But Maduro is clinging to power, even as Trump’s envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told Congress this month that the administration maintains “the current political and economic environment is unsustainable and he will not be able to weather it much longer.”
Trump’s speech on Monday will reaffirm U.S. support for Guaido and declare that “the current path toward democracy is irreversible,” according to a White House statement issued by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The president will deliver a warning to members of the military backing Maduro, she said.
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05.05.2025