Trump says war with Venezuela is possible – US politics live

Good morning, US President Donald Trump has said he was leaving the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table, according to an interview with NBC News published on Friday. “I dont rule it out, no,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

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Trump has used social media to publicly accuse Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves” as well as “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”. Maduro has strongly denied all these accusations. Here are some of the other developments in the US overnight:

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  Trump also told NBC he does not believe it is necessary to repeal the affordable care act, also known as Obamacare. In November, Trump had suggested scrapping Obamacare and redirecting federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under Act toward direct payments to individuals.

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  TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app’s US operations to a group of investors, including Oracle, in a big step toward avoiding a US ban and ending years of uncertainty.

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  A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a US Justice Department official said. The ruling is a victory for Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.

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  Trump also enshrined the US goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.

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US President Donald Trump has said there will be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela, in an interview with NBC News.

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Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused Venezuela of facilitating the drug trade. The US military has killed at least 90 people since September in strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean that Washington claims were carrying illegal narcotics to the US.

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But, the Trump White House has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying fentanyl, which is mainly produced in Mexico, or cocaine, which is typically produced in neighbouring Colombia and shipped to the US via various routes.

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boat sails in front of a crude oil tanker anchored on Lake Maracaibo near Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela, on December 18, 2025.”,”caption”:”A boat sails in front of a crude oil tanker anchored on Lake Maracaibo near Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela, on December 18, 2025. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Alejandro Paredes/AFP/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1766142781000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”06.13 EST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1766141218000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”05.46 EST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1766142781000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”06.13 EST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”06.13″,”title”:”Trump vows additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 19 Dec 2025 06.23 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 19 Dec 2025 06.13 EST”}],”filterKeyEvents”:false,”id”:”key-events-carousel-mobile”,”renderingTarget”:”Web”,”serverTime”:1766144398657}”>

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In his NBC interview, Donald Trump declined to say whether removing Maduro was his ultimate goal, telling NBC News: “He knows exactly what I want.”

“He knows better than anybody,” the US President added, referring to Maduro. The report did not elaborate.

Maduro has alleged that the US action is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.

Trump elaborated on his claim there would be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuelan waters, adding: “If they’re foolish enough to be sailing along, they’ll be sailing along back into one of our harbours.”

The Trump administration announced on Thursday it will suspend a green card lottery that allowed a man believed to be behind both a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor into the United States.

Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on Saturday and opening fire on students, killing two and wounding nine.

He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.

Homeland security chief Kristi Noem wrote on social media on Thursday that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

The US green card lottery grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the State Department.

Trump vows additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela

US President Donald Trump has said there will be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela, in an interview with NBC News.

Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused Venezuela of facilitating the drug trade. The US military has killed at least 90 people since September in strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean that Washington claims were carrying illegal narcotics to the US.

But, the Trump White House has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying fentanyl, which is mainly produced in Mexico, or cocaine, which is typically produced in neighbouring Colombia and shipped to the US via various routes.

Opening summary: Trump says more oil tankers will be seized near Venezuela

Good morning, US President Donald Trump has said he was leaving the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table, according to an interview with NBC News published on Friday. “I dont rule it out, no,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

Trump has used social media to publicly accuse Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves” as well as “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”. Maduro has strongly denied all these accusations. Here are some of the other developments in the US overnight:

• Trump also told NBC he does not believe it is necessary to repeal the affordable care act, also known as Obamacare. In November, Trump had suggested scrapping Obamacare and redirecting federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under Act toward direct payments to individuals.

• TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app’s US operations to a group of investors, including Oracle, in a big step toward avoiding a US ban and ending years of uncertainty.

• A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a US Justice Department official said. The ruling is a victory for Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.

• Trump also enshrined the US goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.