Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered a candid assessment of Venezuela’s opposition during a closed-door meeting in New York last week, saying that the opponents of President Nicolás Maduro are highly fractious and that U.S. efforts to keep them together have been more difficult than is publicly known.
“Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult,” Pompeo said in an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post. “The moment Maduro leaves, everybody’s going to raise their hands and [say], ‘Take me, I’m the next president of Venezuela.’ It would be forty-plus people who believe they’re the rightful heir to Maduro.”
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“We were trying to support various religious . . . institutions to get the opposition to come together,” he said.
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The remarks represent a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s official line touting the unity and strength of the opposition led by Juan Guaidó, the National Assembly leader recognized by some 60 countries as interim president.
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The leaked audio comes from a surprisingly frank meeting Pompeo held with Jewish leaders last week in which he also delivered a blunt assessment of the Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan.
During the private meeting, Pompeo expressed hesitation about answering particularly sensitive questions, saying “someone’s probably got a tape recorder on, so I won’t say.”
That prompted a leader of the gathering to say, “I want to emphasize that this meeting is off the record.”
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