Richard Arnold: US Correspondent on the latest with the seizing of a Venezuelan tanker

The US has escalated tensions with Venezuela and seized a tanker off its coast, described by Donald Trump as the largest ever seized.  

He's otherwise keeping tight lipped, saying it was done for 'a very good reason'.  

CNN reports it intensifies Trump's pressure campaign aimed at forcing the leader Nicolas Maduro out of power. 

US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Heather du Plessis-Allan that while US officials are saying the seizure does not signal a broad scale war, Trump doesn’t want to rule an American ground invasion in or out. 

He says the US has now carried out 22 attacks on Venezuelan drug boats, Trump saying that every drug boat leads to the deaths of some 25,000 Americans, but it’s unknown where he pulled that figure from. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now. We have Richard Arnold, a US correspondent with
US Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Richard, Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So what happens next after the tanker was seized?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah, a good question. US officials are saying the seize
of this tanker does not signal as yet a broad
scale war silt. Trump was not so clear about that
the other day, was he when he was asked, can
you rule out an American ground invasion?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I don't want to rule in or out.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I don't talk about it. And a number of lawmakers,
Republican and Democrat, are raising concerns about this escalation in
the pressure campaign against Venezuela's leader Duro, says Democrat Adam Smith.
We should not be trying to dominate the Western hemisphere.
This is going to drag US into a conflict that
is incredibly costly. Well, we're finding new details about the

(00:41):
seizure of this tank or. A US federal court judge
issued the sezear warrant a couple of weeks ago because
of activities by this vessel called the Skipper in smuggling
Venezuela and that Iranian oil that was subject to American
sanctions over six months at the start of this year,
that ship transported nearly two million barrels of crude oil
from Iran to Cis China. Money from that trade is

(01:02):
said to have been used to support the Iranian back
Hesberla and also the CAD security force in around itself.
The tanker was doing this by faking its locations. Its
location transponder would suggest it was in one place, when
in reality it was one hundreds of kilometers away. As
to the wider US pressure campaign, the US for a
long time was the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil, but

(01:23):
political tensions changed that and China now buys around eighty
percent of Venezuela's oil exports. Venezuela has huge stocks of
untapped oil reserves and rare minerals. Now, the US has
carried out what twenty two attacks on Venezuelan drug boats,
with eighty seven people killed in those attacks. The Trump
administration says these strikes are aimed at stopping the drug
trade from Venezuela, and it singled out concerns over fentanyl,

(01:46):
with President Trump asserting that every Venezuelan drug boat leads
to the deaths of some twenty five thousand Americans, where
that number comes from unknown meantime, America is the primary
and virtually only mass producer and exporterer of of fentanyl Mexico,
with China sending small amounts as well. So all that
is leading to the debate over what really is at

(02:08):
the core of this focus on Venezuela. A new Reuters
IPSOS poll has forty eight percent here saying the US
should not be conducting these boat strikes without first getting
court approvals, while around seventy percent opposed US military intervention
in Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Now, things lately are not going Ice as way, are they.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
No? Now, federal judge has just ordered the immediate release
of the man at the center of one of the
most notorious deportation cases here, that of Brego Garcia. He
you recalls the Salvadoran who's been living in Maryland with
his wife and kids before he was targeted by the
trumpet gration enforcement the ICE team. The judge says, this
case is extraordinary and there's no doubt about that. Back

(02:49):
in March, Brego Garcia was flown off to the toughest
prison in Latin America, the Seacot prison in Salvador. No
one they say, I'm going to get out of that place,
but he was released finally, had been sent there initially
without due process. Trump claimed he was a member of
a terror group and at one point showed a photoshop
image of the man supposedly with drug tattoos on his

(03:13):
fingers that was fake. He was then flown back to
the US, then arrested again to face human smuggling charges.
They were going to ship him off to Uganda and
then to Garner at one stage, but that all fill apart.
The Trump team is calling the release order the actions
of an Obama appointed judge. So on goes the politics. Meantime,
protesters are clashing with the ICE agents in Minnesota. Trump

(03:35):
has been speaking out against Somalian refugees as we've been
hearing and saying the US should seek immigrants from Norway,
Sweden and Denmark, countries with mainly white populations instead of
what he calls and let me quote him carefully, s
whole countries.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Okay, Richard, thank you very much, appreciate it. Richard Arnold,
US correspondent.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
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